Being Reasonable ha simulato un’intervista a tre vecchi “guru” della pubblicità, David Ogilvy, Bill Bernbach e Rosser Reeves, utilizzando delle risposte che i tre avevano dato, a suo tempo, nel corso di interviste autentiche, quando erano dei punti di riferimento per tutto il settore. Per motivi di tempo, sono costretto a lasciarla in inglese, ma questo spero non vi impedisca di apprezzare la modernità e il rigore professionale delle risposte. L’intervista la dovrebbero leggere soprattutto i “creativi” del giorno d’oggi… e sapete a chi mi riferisco.

What do you think of advertising that sells lifestyles or attitudes?
Bill Bernbach: The magic is in the product… No matter how skillful you are, you can’t invent a product advantage that doesn’t exist. And if you do, and it’s just a gimmick, it’s going to fall apart anyway.
Rosser Reeves: The writer must make the product itself interesting. Otherwise, a great part of his ingenuity and inventiveness will be used in devising tricks which lower the efficiency of advertising, rather than raising it.
David Ogilvy: If you spend your advertising budget entertaining the consumer, you’re a bloody fool. Housewives don’t buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night. They buy the new detergent because it promises a benefit.

David, we say “homemaker”, these days. That aside, isn’t the most important thing to break through the clutter?
Ogilvy: When you write an ad, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it “creative”. I want you to find it so persuasive that you buy the product - or buy it more often.
Bernbach: Getting a product known isn’t the answer. Getting it wanted is the answer. …be sure your advertising is saying something, something that will inform and serve the consumer, and be sure you’re saying it like it’s never been said before.
Reeves: Strangely enough, such [creatives] have a pseudo-rationale for this striving after mere “difference”, and they plead it with passionate earnestness…:
1) Advertising (not the product) must compete with a tremendous number of other advertising messages.
2) Therefore, the advertisement (not the product) must get attention.
3) Therefore, a given advertisement (not the product) must be different.
Such reasoning bypasses the product and, when it does, it bypasses the advertising function. It is a classical example of confusing the means with the ends, for if a product is worth paying money for, it is worth paying attention.

Bill, your creative revolution was, in many ways, a revolution against Rosser and his supporters. How do you define breakthrough creative?
Bernbach: The creative person has harnessed his imagination. He has disciplined it so that every thought, every idea, every work he puts down, every line he draws, every light and shadow in every photograph he takes, makes more vivid, more believable, more persuasive the original theme or product advantage he has decided he must convey.

Bill and David, both of you were creatives. What does “creativity” mean to you?
Ogilvy: I am supposed to be the No. 1 creative genius in the whole world, and I don’t even know what the hell the word ‘creativity’ means… But I’m not afraid to tell creative phonies that their commercials are utter nonsense.
Bernbach: Today everybody is talking “creativity”, and, frankly, that’s got me worried. I fear lest we keep the good taste and lose the sell. I fear all the sins we may commit in the name of “creativity”. I fear that we may be entering an age of phonies.

Le fonti di queste risposte:
David Ogilvy: Interview with Stuart Elliott, The New York Times, 10/30/91
Bill Bernbach: Bill Bernbach’s Book (Levenson & Bernbach)
Rosser Reeves: From Reality in Advertising

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