From the WSJ Opinion Archives
FIVE BEST
Buy These Books
They're about advertising, and they're so good they practically sell themselves.
1. "The 100 Greatest Advertisements 1852-1958" by Julian Lewis Watkins (Dover, 1959).
In this collection of 100 print ads that achieved phenomenal results ("His Master's Voice," RCA Victor; "The Pause That Refreshes," Coca-Cola), their creators tell how the ads were conceived and what they achieved. The book leads off with this classified ad published in a London newspaper in 1900: "Men Wanted for Hazardous Journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success--Ernest Shackleton." The response from would-be polar explorers was overwhelming. By comparison, the U.S. armed forces, with an admittedly mediocre recruiting record, spend hundreds of millions on advertising that promises young men and women a career, an education and a future.
2. "Confessions of an Advertising Man" by David Ogilvy (Atheneum, 1963).
First and foremost, David Ogilvy was a great advertising copywriter. "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock" is considered by many to be the best automobile ad ever written. It's to David's credit as a salesman and master seducer that he used the word "Confessions" in his title, hinting that the book was going to be sexy or reveal some deep dark secret in his past. Not a chance. What you do get is the definitive "how to" book about advertising from the ultimate man in the gray flannel suit, who reigned supreme in the advertising business from the late 1940s until well into the 1970s.
3. "Bill Bernbach's Book" by Bob Levenson (Random House, 1987).
"Forget words like hard sell and soft sell. That will only confuse you. Just be sure your advertising is saying something with substance . . . like it's never been said before"--Bill Bernbach, addressing the troops at his agency, DDB. Bill was the father of advertising's creative revolution in the early 1950s. The graphics were clean and stopped the reader before a page could be turned. The copy was smart. Easy to understand. Products and clients came off the pedestal and became human. Many of the great ads that appear in this book (subtitled "A History of Advertising That Changed the History of Advertising") came from Bob Levenson, who writes lovingly of his friend and mentor--the man who changed the face of advertising.
4. "A Technique for Producing Ideas" by James Webb Young (Advertising Publications, 1940).
Cartoonists often depict it as a light bulb that appears in a balloon over the head of a character in a "Eureka!" moment. In movies, an actor will look to the heavens, raise his right hand to his chin and exclaim "I've got it." "It" is an idea. Without ideas there would be no advertising. Yet there is no practitioner of advertising who hasn't wondered just how an idea or a headline or a visual leaped into his or her mind in a flash. This is the illuminating subject of "A Technique for Producing Ideas." The book is only about 60 pages long, but no one has done a better job than James Webb Young of explaining how we get ideas and, most important, the steps we all must take to stimulate our minds and produce ideas.
5. "Reality in Advertising" by Rosser Reeves (Knopf, 1961).
USP . . . USP . . . USP . . . Welcome to the advertising world of Rosser Reeves, where everything is repeated three times because the consumer is seen as being too obtuse to understand a subtle advertising message. It's the sort of world where a headache is depicted as a hammer pounding inside of a head. Reeves invented the term Unique Selling Proposition, or USP, for a technique that enabled his advertising agency, Ted Bates, to sell more candy, aspirin, cigarettes, toothpaste, white bread and breath mints than any other agency in the history of advertising. M&M's: ". . . melts in your mouth, not in your hand." "Colgate cleans your breath while it cleans your teeth." "Wonder Bread helps build strong bodies eight ways." Reeves tells his story with flair and a humor he never allowed into his ads.
Mr. Della Femina is chairman of Della Femina Rothschild Jeary & Partners advertising and the author of "From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor."
