Behind the Curtain

Words of wisdom from her book, A Big Life in Advertising.

Photo of Lawrence found at: www.braniffinternational.org

Learn the Dance- first your left foot, then your right
“Bill Bernbach had once taken great pains to teach me something relevant. He told me that there was a danger in clients who came to an agency desperately in need of direction and guidance because, he said, ‘the same brilliance, the same guts you use to grab the brass ring and lead that client to a success will be perceived as arrogance and irritation as soon as the client is successful.’ I remember him wagging his finger at me, 'You have to stay close and take your agency through a transition from leading the client to taking more and more direction from him.’ He looked at me, an owl: ‘Mary,’ he said, ‘don’t imagine that anyone else at the agency will know when to switch from the left foot to the right.’”

Knowledge is the Key
“Great advertising, the kind that works, almost always comes out of the product you are going to advertise or the product’s world. You need to have an open mind, the nosiness of a detective, and to assimilate all the information you can get from every imaginable source when you start to create advertising. It is knowledge that stimulates great advertising ideas and you own intuition. If you find that the product is factually superior to its competitors in any important way, you are in clover…There is nothing better than a fact if you have a great one. If, on the other hand, your product appears to be inferior to its competitors, maybe it is and maybe it isn't’t, but don’t be naïve, it is always possible that the competitors’ advantage is really just a way of looking at the product, a dream that some other advertising wizard had and presented in adverting so good it has been accepted as a vital truth. You yourself have to know before you can spin…Advertising, in any form, is about telling stories that captivate readers or viewers and persuade them to buy products…You can tell stories in many ways, with or without words. But knowledge is the fuel that ignites your talent in the advertising business.”

Creative Chemistry
“Alchemy plays a big role in creative businesses. In the advertising business a writer and an art director are assigned to one another by agency management and they have to toss ideas at one another until they establish an intimacy and a trust, at which point a psychic marriage of their talents takes place and they are magically able to produce advertising that sings. Sometimes. Sometimes alchemy doesn't happen and you have to find them different partners. It is a mysterious process.”

Going to the Chapel
"In ad biz, during an agency-and-client courtship, there is not enough time for the intimate research it would take to prepare an agency for the truth about the products the client makes or the services it sells—or its marketplace—or its competition. No prenuptial sleuthing reveals the client’s soul either. No bank or accounting firm will give out the kind of between-the-lines information an agency would do well to have before signing a contract that makes it responsible for media payments and for hiring expensive talent. Advertising executives, like most salesmen, are so responsive to fantasy they assume they will find a life with the client that will make everybody happy, famous and maybe even rich. They eagerly tie on blinders and open their arms to new accounts. (The more the merrier!) Then, after the contract signing, after the press announcements and after the agency self-congratulations, the truth slowly but surely reveals itself. Agencies and clients learn to live with each other, sometimes with enormous success, until, over time, one or the other loses interest or there is a disaster. It is a lot like getting married.”