By James B. Twitchell

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The book Twenty Ads That Shook The World is probably required reading for advertising majors. It’s a retrospective of the past century of advertising, and focuses on particular ads that were paradigm shifts in the way commercial messages were crafted and received by the public.

My disclaimer is that I really don’t care for advertising, as I have a slight anti-corporate streak that considers our socitey over-commercialized and monetized beyond what is healthy. It’s to the point where some of the most television-addicted among us discuss advertising as if it were entertainment on the level of the programs themselves.

That said, certain ads still catch my eye, like the minimalist Apple computers on white backgrounds, or corporate “anti-ads” deployed in a viral manner.

But even for the advertising-shy, I find study of commercials invaluable toward understanding how advertisers seek to manipulate we hapless consumers. So here’s a brief overview of this book’s twenty powerful ads.

1. P.T. Barnum: A story to sell. In advertising circus spectacles, it wasn’t just an elephant, it was an elephant from the deepest heart of Africa where a hundred men died in the process of capturing it. You can see the lineage of the story up to today, where the founders of YouTube lived in a rat infested office over Amici’s Pizza. Having a story makes the product more dramatic and therefore memorable.

2. Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound: Personalizing the corporate face. This basically means a product called “Vegetable Compound” is not as appealing as one sold by a memorable individiual, in this case the ficticious “Lydia E. Pinkham”. Other examples are Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima, Colonel Sanders, and heck, the real but unquestionably iconic George Foreman, Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs.

3. Pears’ Soap: Associated value. Put a product in an appealing setting, which enhances the product.

4. Pepsodent: Preemptive claim. Make a claim that is common to all competitors but is played up by your particular product. For example, you could say “Boffo Mouthwash: Kills 90% of the germs on contact!” when perhaps it’s true that pretty much all mouthwashes do exactly that. But the public doesn’t know this. Not a lie, just witholding the information that your particular product is nothing special.

5. Listerine: Selling the need. Invent a problem, and provide the cure. Think today’s toothbursh with color-changing bristles indicating when it’s time to get a new brush. Kinda handy, but is it really a technological breakthrough? This is a case of solving a problem we didn’t even know we had, which is an advertiser’s dream, as we may look toothbrushes without colored bristles as inferior and in need of upgrades.

6. Queensboro Corporation: First to use radio as the first electronic medium. This company embraced radio advertising when all the other companies didn’t. When technology provides a new means of mass communication, getting ads on it might be a good way to differentiate yourself from the competition.

7. The Kid in Upper 4: Birth of Advocacy Advertising. Ads begin to get psychological, perhaps because the obvious tricks are exhausted, or the public has grown used to them. Associate the product with a cause that enhances the product, even if the product has no obvious relationship to the cause. Consider how Mobil Corporation sponsors public television. The show probably has nothing to do with oil, but the show’s viewers may think better of Mobil because of the positive content in the show.

8. DeBeers: Establishing desire. Diamonds were continually reinforced as some must have product that was extremely valuable, even worth going into debt for. In a sense, the diamond isn’t so much the product, as the desire for one.

9. Coke on Christmas: Days of the year associated with a product. Holiday spending is huge, but another sneaky way to get people to buy stuff is to get it associated with an annual holiday via an ad campaign. The example here is Coke and Christmas, but on a lesser level I can think of huge TVs, guacamole, and chips for the Super Bowl, chocolate for Easter.

10. Volkswagen Beetle: “Strong” contrary to competitors. The product’s uniqueness was used as a selling point. Take a look at this ad that played off of Americans looking at the odd shape of a Volkswagen as a negative, but prompting the reader to read further, where they find the ad copy describing how Volkswagen’s quality control was exemplar.

11. Miss Clairol: Abstraction can be used to sell a “difficult” product. Embarrasing or taboo products (tampons, condoms, deodorant) are hard to sell through typical advertising methods. The secret strategy for Clairol hair dye was sexual innuendo and ambiguity. Ads read “Does she or doesn’t she?” which referred to the question of whether or not these beautiful models dyed their hair, but subconsiously it was a question of some sexual talent in the mind of the consumer.

12. Marlboro Man: Independence. We all know the buff bronzed cowboy lighting up a smoke in the American west, but Marlboro was originally a women’s cigarette. The macho spokesmodel became recognized the world over, which is a real sign of success in the ad world: a commercial that can cross cultures in a wordless manner.

13. Hathaway Man: Branding. In the 1950s brands were rediscovered, consumers were eager to enter affiliation with products, and pay extra for using a particular brand. Like Marlboro, the Hathaway Man was branding the company and the persona wearing the shirt, not the shirt itself. Subtle, but huge difference.

14. Anacin: The unique selling proposal. A painful headache was described as “hammer in the head,” a problem for which Anacin had the best cure. It was memorable and lodged in the consumer’s mind: just like the clanging hammer.

15. 30 Second Politics: Negative advertising. This political ad showed a child followed by a mushroom could, claiming that if you voted for the opponent, America would be destroyed. Suddenly it was okay to have a commercial that blatantly trashed its competitor.

16. She’s Very Charlie: The politics of scent. The melding of perfume, the powerful memories attached to smells, and association with the seventies women’s liberation.

17. Absolut: Metaphysics of wrap. This is where ads get mental and conceptual. Nothing but a long series of famous artists designign the Absolut bottle in their styles. Excellent branding, plus the implication that Absolut is an anyhwere product, useful everywhere and by all kinds of different, unique individuals.

18. Apple’s 1984: Ad as artifact. This legendary commercial took advertising to the level of spectacle and event. The style was cinematic, as if a whole movie could be filmed about the product. There was barely any image of the Macintosh computer being advertised, just a serious, high quality message, style, and mood that displayed much about the vision Apple had for itself.

19. Infomercial: The hard sell via television. I wrote a post on Ron Popeil’s late night pitches. The art of crafting a sales pitch for television has to be recognized even if the end result is often kitchy.

20. Nike and Michael Jordan: Hero as product. Welcome to the height of celebrity sponsorship, where a celebrity’s personality (and even the company brand) is intertwined with the product.

In reading this book, I found that advertsing is much more psychologically and socially complex than just selling a product through establishing utility to the consumer. In the future, with more intrusive customer profiling and targeted advertising, I’m certain there will be more paradigm shifts in advertising ahead.

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