Margaret Hockaday believed that crafting offbeat copy was the key to successful advertising. Hockaday is quoted in a November, 1957, issue of Advertising Age as stating that "offbeat advertising isn't off the top of the head - it must have a conviction and honesty and a well-formulated thought behind it to be good.... However you approach offbeat, the only judgment of its context is the idea behind it" (1).

Hockaday felt that creating offbeat advertising, that is, advertising that looks like nothing that came before it, allows a message to cut through the jungle that is advertising clutter and reach the consumer. Hockaday noted in the November article that "every day we wake up, we have to be sure our different is different and keeps moving.... We certainly owe it to our public. They have a right to expect some entertainment and excitement for their loyalties" (8).

Moreover, Hockaday felt that women had a real edge when it came to working in creative advertising. In a 1962 article by Philip Schuyler, Hockaday states that "fashion is a great part of the hidden ingredient.... Imagery, taste, the unpredictability of women, the emotional basis of they make must somehow go into the strong creative advertisements that really appeal and sell to women ..." (17). She continues, "I do give women the edge in putting that extra something into copy and art that makes women consumers change their minds" (1962, 19).

Margaret Hockaday had great insight into the mind of the consumer, especially the female consumer, and knew how to create different advertising that would create a real presence for a brand in the national marketplace. Hockaday took risks for clients that were looking for something original, and those risks proved to make her career that much more successful. There is much to be learned by studying Margaret Hockaday's techniques, from the creation of the central offbeat of a campaign, to understanding the customer's need to be rewarded, to creating media attention by carrying out a campaign through several integrated media. One really "can go anywhere if you have an idea" (Neuberger-Lucchesi 1994, 187).

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