Conversation with Leo
Burnett, Advertising Legend (2)
‘If you don’t get noticed, you don’t
get anything’
By Denis Higgins
Monday, January 22, 2007
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• Leo Burneet
Pix: Sun Publishing |
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Copywriters were working Saturdays even in those days……
Yes. And this was a big account – I mean, it looked
potentially very big – it looked like maybe a $2,000
account, based on our intended budget, which was very big
in those days.
I walked into Art Kudner’s office, introduced myself,
told him who I was. I said, "Would you take this account?"
He said, "We sure would!" So I spent the rest of
the day with him; we had lunch together and I got acquainted
with Art.
I found him banging the typewriter in his office – he
was copy chief then. I later discovered that Obie Winters
– I didn’t know this at the time, and this had
had no influence on my selection – but Obie Winters,
who had gotten me to Detroit, gotten me in the automobile
business, had just come to work for Erwin Wasey from Green,
Fulton & Cunningham. And so it was a reunion with Obie.
And, additionally, getting acquainted with Art.
Erwin Wasey was in Chicago in those days. It was a very happy
arrangement; they did some great work for LaFeyette. I was
in the middle of that, and I learned a lot from Art, as well
as from Obie and others at Erwin Wasey. Then I went to work
for Homer McKee after I left LaFeyette and Art told me when
I left: if you ever are interested in a job, get in touch
with me.
Were you writing copy as an ad manager or editing it?
Oh; I was writing some. But then, of course, at Homer McKee,
I wrote a great deal. But shortly after I went to Homer McKee,
we got the Marmon account, which was a big thing in those
days. Finally, I stayed in Indianapolis about ten years and
had a very happy life there – my three children were
born there.
Homer McKee was a fine, thriving agency. But things started
going bad with Marmon, due to a change of management and one
thing or another. In the meantime, we’d had a thing
called the stock market crash in ’29 and things weren’t
too rosy generally. We had a very comfortable life in Indianapolis
and a nice home there. But I talked it over with my wife.
At my age – I was 40 – I thought I’d better
get the hell out of Indianapolis if I was ever going to amount
to anything in the ad business. So I called Art on the phone.
In the meantime, Erwin Wasey had moved their main offices
to New York.
I had seen Art over the years; from time to time I had dropped
in to see him – Art and Obie both. But I called Art
in New York. I said: "I don’t know whether you
will remember this, but years ago you told me if I was ever
interested in a job with you or with your agency, to talk
to you." And I said: "I’m doing that very
thing – this is a helluva time to do it." He said:
"That is just great with me; I meant it at the time,
I mean it now; you go to work for our office in Chicago; and
I’ll get in touch with Chet Faust (who was running the
shop at that time) and you go to work there as soon as you
can; and you work salary and stuff out with Chet."
So I went to Chicago and to work for Erwin Wasey; I was put
in charge of their creative work there. It was there that
I first got acquainted with some of the people who later joined
me. Shortly after joining Erwin Wasey I persuaded them to
hire Dewitt (Jack) O’Kieffe, a brilliant writer who
had worked for me in Indianapolis. He, of course, was one
of those who joined me when we started our own shop in 1935
and is now senior vice-president of our company.
During that time, in those early days of writing advertising,
you worked – from what you said – mainly on so-called
hard goods or automotive accounts. Now, after all your years
of experience, do you think it’s more difficult to write
copy for one product over another? Like an automobile over
a refrigerator, say?
No, I don’t think it makes very much difference. I think
if you find the right appeal in a product –one that
you can focus on – you can develop it on any product.
I know in the experience of our own agency, some of our best
successes have been in industries that I knew nothing about,
or our agency didn’t know anything about until we started
with them.
We knew nothing about the railroad business until we got the
Santa Fe account. We knew nothing about the petroleum business
until we got the Pure Oil. We knew nothing about the shoe
business and so we got the Brown Shoe Co. account. We knew
nothing about the food business, until at Erwin Wasey I started
learning about the food business, about the Green Giant Co.
– and was responsible for all the Green Giant advertising,
practically from the time it started.
We redesigned the giant as he is today and we’ve had
the account since the very beginning.
What about the individual copywriter? You see in Advertising
Age and the Chicago Trib and elsewhere – you see ads
for copywriters with experience on a specific type of product.
Do you think a copywriter must have experience in a certain
area?
No, not generally speaking. On some types of products –
drug products, for example, I think a background of information
and experience is highly desirable – knowing what’s
worked and what hasn’t worked, and knowing some of the
scientific facts that are involved. Then I think in the food
business it is desirable for a writer to have some basic knowledge
of nutrition. But that knowledge and experience aren’t
nearly as important as his expressiveness, his ability to
think and to marshal his thoughts into persuasive English.
These things he can learn.
But there are some instances where specialised knowledge is
desirable. There are certain types of agricultural products
where some background is desirable.
What do you think a copywriter should read? What’s your
own taste in reading – you read biography and….?
Well, almost everything. I don’t have time to do a great
deal of reading now; my wife and I are studying Spanish –
sort of a hobby – and most of my leisure hours are spent
studying Spanish.
You still do a lot of writing at the shop?
Well, not a great deal – not a great deal that appears
in finished form in advertising. I do a great deal of guiding.
I write a lot of briefing memos, listing a lot of thought-starting
ideas to provoke and stimulate others around the place.
We’re going through that process right now on Gallo
wine. We had a meeting recently of 30 or 40 of us all afternoon
– a briefing session on wine, looking at everything
that had been done and all the background, the research we
had all boiled down. Out of that I’m going to take this
weekend to write a memo to all of our creative section. We
are going to stir up the creative juices of the whole place,
you see, to be brought to bear on it. We often do that when
a special problem comes along. When something new comes along,
everybody likes to get into the act; and we give them all
an opportunity, regardless of who has the final responsibility
for it.
That’s one of the things that I also wanted to ask –
there are several schools of thought about how you stir up
an individual’s creative juices. Some writers put their
feet on the table and stare out the window with a glass of
beer in their hand. Do you have any specific approaches to
the problem? From a copywriter’s point of view? Do you
have any rituals you follow, any special methods?
No. My technique, if I have one, is to saturate myself with
knowledge of the product. I believe in good depth-interviewing
where I come realistically face to face with the people I
am trying to sell. I try to get a picture in my mind of the
kind of people they are – how they use this product,
and what it is – they don’t often tell you in
so many words – but what it is that actually motivates
them to buy something or to interest them in something.
In all the years you have been in this business, Mr. Burnett,
you’ve talked with many people and you’ve edited
many pieces of copy from many different writers. Have you
ever discerned any thread winding its way through all these
people? Do you see any qualities common to all of them? Or
do you think copywriters are made up of all sorts and all
types?
Well, I think they come from all sorts of places and are made
up of all types, but I think among the best ones there’s
a flair for expression, of putting known and believable things
into new relationships. We try to be – which I think
typifies the Chicago school of advertising, if there is one,
and I think there is one – we try to be more straightforward
without being flatfooted. We try to be warm without being
mawkish.
I believe that today visibility, sheer visibility, is more
important than it’s been, speaking of printed advertising
– and that applies to television, of course, too. Sheer
visibility is important with today’s rising advertising
costs; if you don’t get noticed, you don’t have
anything. You just have to be noticed, but the art is in getting
noticed naturally without screaming or without tricks.
Putting eyepatches on fire hydrants?
Obvious tricks, yes. Of course, we, over and over again, stress
this so-called inherent drama of things because there’s
usually something there, almost always something there, if
you can find the thing about that product that keeps it in
the marketplace. There must be something about it that made
the manufacturer make it in the first place. Something about
it that makes people continue to buy it… capturing that,
and then taking that thing – whatever it is –
and making the thing itself arresting rather than through
relying on tricks to do it.
I mean whether it’s a big cake or..Or an automobile?
Or an automobile. I remember years ago we had a great success
when the great industry was advertising through the American
Meat Institute, which was one of the big landmarks in our
agency. We convinced ourselves that the image of meat should
be a virile one, best expressed in red meat. A lot of people
in the industry said you can’t show red meat –
uncooked meat - it’s distasteful.
But we argued to the contrary, and we did quite a lot of research,
which showed it wasn’t distasteful to women at all.
We felt that there is nothing like a piece of red meat to
say "meat." So, right from the beginning, we showed
a lot of red meat.
But then we went a step further, and this came about more
or less by accident. I was in a studio myself one day, the
tag end of the day, and we had taken a lot of pictures for
ads. At that time I was very active; then we were quite small
and a very small group of us did the ads together.
I was in Hi Williams’ studio here in New York and I
said, I wonder what would happen if you put a piece of red
meat on a red background: Would it disappear or would it be
dramatic? Run it as a bleed ad – this was before television
- and I said, well, let’s try it and find out. This
was after five o’clock, but we had meat around the place
we had been using for other pictures and cooking it and so
on, recipes and what have you. So we took a round steak and
slapped it on a piece of big red cardboard, and Hi photographed
it. We took a couple of pork chops and put them on a red background
and photographed that, and some frankfurters and put them
on a read background and photographed that.
Later he sent me the prints on these things, and they were
terrific, you know. So we chopped them down to size for a
bleed page, and took them to the next committee meeting of
the Meat Institute. And, boy, everybody cheered and said give
us that! This was inherent drama, you know. This was drama
without any tricks. I mean, the red background was a trick;
red against red was a trick, but it was a natural thing to
do. It just intensified the red concept and the virility and
everything else we were trying to express about meat. We ran
those red background ads a long time. This was inherent drama
in its purest form, which we try to find without getting too
kooky or too clever or too humorous or too anything –
it’s just natural.
I have just one quick question for you. And that is: David
Ogilvy says that he heard – we were talking about using
vernacular and expressions like "Winston tastes good
‘like’ a cigaret should" and all that –
he said that you are alleged to have a little box in your
desk or on your desk, and when you run across a new figure
of speech or an expression that strikes you as smart or unusual
or offbeat, you write it down.
I have a great big folder – and it’s getting bigger
all the time – in the lower left-hand corner of my desk.
I’ve had it for as long as I can remember, ever since
I started the agency, and I call it "Corny Language."
Whenever I hear a phrase in conversation or any place which
strikes me as being particularly apt in expressing an idea
or bringing it to life or accentuating the smell of it, the
looks of it or anything else – or expressing any kind
of an idea – I scribble it down and stick it in there.
Then about three or four times a year, I run through there
and throw a lot of stuff out and pick out things which seem
to me to apply to some of the work that is going on in the
shop and write a memo about it. So my ear is always tuned
for putting usual things in unusual relationships that get
attention and aptly express an idea. I call this Corny Language,
and I have always done that. I also have another file which
is a bulging one – Ads Worth Saving – which I’ve
had for some 25 years. I go through them.
Your own and others?
Others – I go through magazines every week. I read the
New York Times every morning as well as the Chicago papers,
the Wall Street Journal – and I rip out ads that for
one reason or another strikes me as being effective communications,
either in the manner of their presentation or in the headline
or for some other reason. And about twice a year, I riffle
through that file – not with the idea of copying anything
but it’s apt to trigger something that could apply to
something else that we’re doing. |
