Advertising can be a cutthroat business. Do you find it’s hard to be nice?
Nice is kind of like a muscle. It’s easy to forget to use…but we’ve won business because we were told we were nice. One of the stories in the book is about a client we won recently, U.S. Bank, which was a little apprehensive about working with a New York agency-they’re based in Cincinnati and Minneapolis. (But) we have this amazing security guard in our building, Frank, He’s just like this nicest, happiest, wonderful guy who greets everybody with this enormous hello. And when the chairman of U.S. Bank came up to our offices after receiving a typical Frank greeting, he said “You know what? That really made a difference to me. A company that would hire a guy like Frank gets what U.S. Bank is about,” because their whole positioning is based on a five-star service guarantee, that everything is about service and customer satisfaction.
So what’s the meanest thing you’ve done in your career? Have you ever done a negative ad?
Well, we’ve done comparative advertising. I wouldn’t call that mean. Comparative advertising has a role, if it’s true. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything that I would look back and say that was mean (laughs) but you might have to ask other people that.
Your agency is famous for the Aflac duck. How did that start?
We met the Aflac folks…and the CEO of the company, Dan Amos, told us “It just makes me crazy that nobody knows the darn name of this company.” They had less than 13% advertising awareness at the time and I think 30% brand awareness-and this is a Fortune 250 company. So we flew back to New York-they’re based in Columbus, Georgia-and we worked and worked and worked and had lots of ideas, and then it was this very random creative spark we had: “Oh my god, the name of this company sounds like a duck quacking!” We went to focus groups and it wasn’t the idea that won. Then we went into a quantitative round. We had five ideas, and Aflac felt that they could only invest in testing four and the duck was going to be dropped out, so we said we’ll pay to test it. And when we tested it, it was the highest scoring insurance ad ASI testing service had ever tested. It was double the norm. We put it on the air and within six days they had more hits to their website than they’d had in the entire previous year. Their brand awareness is in the 90s now…and our duck has a higher Q score than the Energizer Bunny and Ronald McDonald.
Does that show how powerful a good TV ad can be when you get it right?
Yes, but it also shows how powerful advertising can be when you get it right. If we were launching it in 2006 rather than 1999 when we did maybe we would launch it with some viral campaign. But TV is a medium where when you have a very simple iconic idea, it’s perfect for that.
What’s wrong then with advertising today?
I would say lack of courage. We unfortunately live in a very unforgiving time. I don’t think this is the fault of our clients or the people on the agency side, it’s just about the kind of pressures we work under…. everything has to be tested a million different ways, and there aren’t a lot of opportunities to trust your gut instinct.
