This is a slide deck I prepared for the agency, reviewing Rosser Reeves famous Reality In Advertising book 57 years on.

1. Inspiration in the
form of a book
report. Kind of.

2. Today is the 26th Feb

3. It’s my birthday

4. I was born way back in 1977
which makes me 41
Old huh?!

5. Well.
Today we’re gonna talk about a
man born more than a century
ago, in 1910.

6. Who published a book in 1961.
Which makes it 57 years old.
The same age the author was
when he wrote it.

7. The book ‘Reality in
advertising’ is by Rosser
Reeves. Reeves is ad-land
legend and one of the real
life inspirations for the
character Don Draper.

8. Reeves is described like this in the dust jacket;
Rosser Reeves, one of the few men elected to the Advertising Hall of
Fame, is the legendary ex-Chairman of the Board of Ted Bates &
Company. He applied these principles to help to build Ted Rates &
Company from a small agency to the fourth largest in the world. Now
retired he is still, at fifty-eight, a man with rather dazzling reserves of
energy. He is a licensed pilot, a skilled yachtsman, a collector of
modern art, and a writer of poetry and short stories. From time to
time, he emerses himself in chess, and was captain of the first
American team sent to Moscow.

9. And here’s some of what people said at the time of publishing:
“A great polemic—of equal importance to Claude Hopkins’s
historic book. I shall order 400 copies—one for every officer and
employee and one for each of our clients.”
DAVID OGILVY, President, Ogilvy, Benson and Mather
“By far the best book on advertising I have ever read. Like radar,
Rosser Reeves penetrates the advertising fog.”
GERARD LAMBERT

10. An admired fellow with some big ideas - but how
does Reeves stuff stand up in adland today?
This morning I want to do a book review of sorts,
and pick up on a few of Reeves’ key ideas and
principles in order to pressure test them for
relevance, today, 57 years in retrospect

11. ONE.
Reeves believed that the purpose of
advertising was to sell. A belief that
some advertising people seem to have
forgotten (in this opinion)...

12. ADVERTISING IS THE ART OF GETTING A UNIQUE
SELLING PROPOSITION INTO THE HEADS OF THE
MOST PEOPLE AT THE LOWEST POSSIBLE COST.
If this is true, the problem of the advertising man
begins to define itself, and in a very clear
sequence. First, it is the creation of the right
message. Second, it is the writing of the
advertisement so that it projects this message to
the maximum number of people.

13. TWO.
He’s famous for coming out with the
popular term – Unique Selling
Proposition (USP) – and argued that the
job of any advertising was to amplify the
USP in as compelling a manner as
possible. The caveat – the brand had to
deliver on the USP.

14. Cool backstory - there is some
specualtion that the USP was
touted to divert attention
away from media and
government scrutiny that
advertising was subliminally
influencing folk.

15. A strong USP
Must make a clear proposition of value to the reader.
The proposition must be one that the competition
either cannot, or does not, offer.
It must be so strong that it can move the mass
millions, i.e., pull over new customers to your
product.

16. THREE.
Penetration and Usage Pull.
Reeves was instrumental in researching and
proving to that the principles of penetration
and salience as driving factors in advertising
success.

17. Penetration is volatile.
Like vapor, it can melt into thin air.
Like the mercury in a barometer, penetration is
supported by pressure—the pressure of the same
story, and of advertising dollars. When the
pressure falls, or the story changes, the
penetration barometer falls; and your chance to
exercise your usage pull comes down just as fast.

18. FOUR.
Reeves was a rational guy, famously perhaps
the opposite of David Ogilvy. Reeves was
disdainful of ads that were funny or clever for
the sake of it. He was also wary of what he
called ‘brand-image advertising’ and felt that
his USP / claim-based advertising would
deliver better sales.

19. Stick to a single, strong claim.
There is a finite limit to what a consumer can
remember about 30,000 advertised brands. He
cannot remember all the advertising he reads, any
more than he can memorize the Encyclopedia
Britannica. What is more, there seems to be, in
addition, a limit to what he chooses to remember
about tires, or soaps, or cereals. For he has, after
all, many other things on his mind—his work, his
family, his home, taxes, money, friends, hobbies,
sports.

20. Too-frequent change of your advertising campaign
destroys penetration. There is merit in repeating
the same campaign (even for decades) as long as it
is delivering. A great campaign is unlikely to wear
itself out.

21. Reach should take precedence over frequency.
The ideal dispersion, of course, would be to reach
100% of the people and then repeat with as much
frequency as the budget will permit. There is no
such buy; but until an advertiser can reach
maximum audience, 80% to 90%, he must keep
reaching out for more and more different people.
Then, and only then, should he begin to add
frequency.

22. FIVE.
Avoid puffery. Avoid visuals
and gimmicks that attract
attention to them rather
than to the USP.

23. Only occasionally are great salesmen
“things of beauty.” They do not carry
paintings by Picasso in their hands, speak
in rhyme, or sing, dance, and play the flute.
They are usually very earnest men, who
speak convincingly and with knowledge
about why their product is better.

24. On originality...
A preoccupation with “originality,” at times. Leads writers to
absurd extremes. In advertising, the originality fads begin
their endless cycles. One eyepatch (following the bold and
correct lead of a David Ogilvy) breeds a succession of mere
eyepatches. One beard, on a Commander Whitehead,
becomes a thousand useless beards. Men sit on horses
backwards; they sip martinis against Sahara sand dunes;
they wear evening clothes down into the Caribbean surf;
they play white pianos on mountain tops. Two animated
brewers, because of their entertainment value, start a chain
reaction of useless animations. One great jingle becomes a
burst of empty melodies.

25. OK, OK, Yawn.
It’s 9:39AM, and it’s Monday.
Get to the point already.
What’s changed in 57 years?

26. If I’m honest I started out thinking - most
of that sounds pretty right. But then as I
thought about it a little longer, I realised
less and less of this is actually right.

27. Penetration and salience are still the
accepted and I think proven
foundations of what effective
advertising needs. Instead of Reeves
we now instead refer to modern
research resources - Like Ehrenberg
Bass - and modern day salesmen like
Byron Sharp ‘How brands grow’ for
confidence in these notions

28. The USP appears to be alive and well. A lot of work
starts here. However, research on this suggests
consumers don’t really pay much attention to claims -
- and our efforts might actually best focused on
creating a distinctive brand - and not bothering to
persuade people how it’s much different.. Kennedy
and Erenhberg argue that creativity required to
deliver campaigns that are memorable and distinctive
are too often hemmed in by the brands selling
proposition

29. But that’s what’s almost or close to the
same - then what’s different?

30. There has undoubtedly been a shift (stylistically /
creatively) towards what Reeves would have called
puffery; brand-image advertising, that which is
emotional, visual, and novel advertising.
Again modern references like WARC reinforce that
this is actually what works.
WARC - rise of purpose based campaigns
WARC - Rules of campaigns that are effective

31. Which makes Reeves POV
wrong, and Ogilvy right.

32. But there is also this one major and most
significant change that has occurred
since Reeves hung up his smoking jacket.

33. The internet.
Personal media channels
Social media
Direct to consumer brands
Fragmentation of channels
Noise
Disruption
Interactivity

34. On the one hand, I
think Reeves would
have loved Google -
it’s the ultimate USP
engine - meeting
rational needs with
rational logical copy
based proof of a
product’s difference.

35. On the other - I think
he’d have flipped his
lid on how to contend
with a creative,
expressive, and at
times with a
completely random
channel like YouTube

36. That said, I think
he’d be a huge
fan of targeting.
Aren’t we all?!

37. In the end though - I think
he’d probably remind us
that we (ad-men and
ad-women) are in the job
of selling things.

38. And as our own Dave (King) put it the other day -
As an agency…we’re in the privileged position of
having a singular mission - to work in the best
interests of our clients.
It’s a mission that’s pure and clear. And should
acknowledge the best thinking of the past, before
working out how the fuck to deal with the complex,
beautiful canvas we have to work with today.

39. Rosser Reeves ~1941