Isn’t It Iconic the Why and How of Creating Great Ads

By Stanley Herbert Schulman

This book presents a theory of how people communicate, relate to each other, and find fulfillment of their emotional and social needs in advertised brands. Then by deconstructing sixty recent ads, the book illustrates twenty artistic techniques that advertising writers and art directors use to create great ads and great brands.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781304714961

Book preview

Isnt It Iconic the Why and How of Creating Great Ads

Isn't it Iconic

The Why and How of Creating Great Ads

Stanley Herbert Schulman

Copyright © 2014, Stanley Herbert Schulman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

The copyright of the individual ads used here belong to the advertiser. These advertisements are included here under the fair use exemption of the U. S. copyright laws and conform to fair use guidelines for a critical study and are restricted from further use.

Isn’t it iconic ad designed by Cheryl Green

Quote

I love the way this is written. It’s informational, insightful and eloquently executed, with so much wit and wisdom. 

Linda Kaplan Thaler, Chairman, Publicis Kaplan Thaler

This book...

This book presents a fresh way of thinking about how great ads are put together and how great brands are built. 

Beyond food and shelter, humans have emotional needs that need to be fulfilled; these are to feel safe and protected and  to believe and belong. They are why tribes and nations are formed, and also how the most successful brands align themselves with these emotional needs. 

Pragmatically, the book also presents twenty of the creative techniques (in sixty examples) that advertising art directors and writers use to create that emotional connection.

About the author

Stanley Herbert Schulman has been a senior vice president of Wells Rich Greene BDDP, Lowe Lintas and Publicis, as well as a creative director of Arnold, Grey and J. Walter Thompson.

He has been responsible for major ads and campaigns for Burger King, Campbell's, Chase, Diet Coke, Frito-Lay, JVC, Kodak, McDonald's, Men's Journal, Papermate, Revlon, Rolling Stone, Stanley, Timberland and US Weekly.

His memoir of an entertaining life in advertising, A Soldier in the Cola Wars, How I Helped Put the Mad Men Out of Business, will be published later in 2014.

Introduction

To create great advertising, you need to develop an understanding of the thinking behind great advertising. This is a book that explores how the human mind works and the primary social and emotional needs that advertised brands hold the promise of fulfilling. It is also a design book that examines the principle techniques that advertising art directors and writers use to create an emotional alignment with consumers. The iconic brand is presented as the ideal, the model of fulfilling human needs, to which every advertised brand should aspire.

The best advertising is aspirational and optimistic. It appeals to an individual's desires to be one's best, to possess the best and be among the best - to identify and align with products and companies that exemplify excellence and groups of others who share in the same ideals the product represents. The best advertising uses the same techniques as other art forms and the information it conveys is more often emotional that just a recitation of claims.

I originally developed these materials for a course in advertising design concepts, tearing recent ads from Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and US Weekly. Three dozen of these ads are deconstructed here to demonstrate the insights and artistic techniques that creative artists use to match up the inherent qualities of a product with the emotional desires and social needs of its consumers.

Advertising in the Global Village

A caveman ties a stick to the leg of a Pterodactyl with an enormous wingspan. This must be the 747 of Pterodactyls. As the Pterodactyl soars off, the caveman caws with gratification until a Tyrannosaurus Rex seizes the Pterodactyl in

its mouth and shakes it violently until the stick falls to the ground. Now dejected, the caveman enters a cave and reports to another caveman, apparently his boss. As the boss gnaws on a joint of meat, their dialog is translated from grunt into subtitles.

CAVEMAN: Package didn’t make it.

BOSS: Did you use FedEx?

CAVEMAN: No.

BOSS: Then you’re fired.

CAVEMAN: But FedEx doesn’t exist yet!

BOSS: Not my problem.

The dejected Neanderthal drags himself outside the cave making a couple of grunting sounds that are not (and don’t need to be) translated. As he vents his frustration by kicking a small dinosaur, he in turn is stomped under the foot of a giant Mastodon.

Among overnight delivery services, FedEx has an advantage. It possesses all the characteristics of an iconic brand.

Authenticity: wasn’t FedEx the first overnight delivery service, an innovator that changed package delivery and business communication?

Excellence: the reliability for which FedEx is known.

Uniqueness: it is one of a kind, the standard by which others are judged.

Charisma: a special quality of leadership that captures the popular imagination and inspires allegiance and devotion.

The commercial doesn’t have to make the claim that FedEx is reliable, everyone knows that. So much so that people commonly use the name FedEx as a verb: to FedEx it. What the commercial does is to raise what almost everyone already believes to a higher level. It implies that FedEx isn’t just a delivery service; it is one of mankind’s great inventions – somewhere between fire and suitcases with wheels.

In the silly logic of the joke, it was famous for reliability before it even existed. To get the joke, the viewer’s brain has to churn its hard drive for past experiences and information about FedEx, unreasonable bosses, Dilbert and Darwin. In a matter of milliseconds, millions of people processed what they were seeing, cross referenced it with what they already knew,