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August 12, 2010
The Man Who Sold America
I am on vacation for this week and the next. My days include going to the grocery store, playing tennis, riding my bike, going to the beach with my kids and picking tomatoes. But above all, I love to sit on the back porch, reading books that will entertain and inform me. I have just finished The Man Who Sold America, a new biography of Albert Lasker, legendary advertising man, by Jeff Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz (former CEO of Foote, Cone & Belding, successor firm to Lord & Thomas, which was headed by Lasker).
The advertising business prior to Lasker “served mainly as intermediaries between advertisers and publishers….were little more than brokers of magazine and newspaper space….the more successful advertising firms had spheres of influence….J. Walter Thompson controlled space in the nation’s leading women’s magazines, NW Ayer controlled the agricultural publications.” The copy was secondary to “keeping the client’s name before the customer. Clients wrote the ads and even were kidding their own names, about the worst thing you can do, such as Armour’s Ham What Am. That was advertising: sloganizing.”
Lasker changed the essence of advertising to “salesmanship in print…advertisers had to give consumers a reason why they should buy their goods.” Here are some examples of campaigns that worked:
- Van Camp’s Evaporated Milk—Make the “scalded taste” a comparative advantage by asking consumers to look for the almond flavor, “turning vice to virtue”
- Schlitz Beer—Pure beer must be filtered then sterilized in the bottle, making it healthful. The Schlitz brewery in Milwaukee had plate glass windows to give visitors a clean view of the process
- Quaker Puffed Rice Cereal—Tag line was “Food Shot from a Gun”. The firm invented a personality, Professor Anderson, to explain the process as “personalities appeal, soulless companies don’t”
- Goodyear Tires—Moving the brand from “Straight-Cut” to “All Weather” allowed it to become the #1 in category
- Sunkist Oranges—A combined ad and PR campaign for Orange Week in Iowa in March, 1908, with fruit shipped in special bannered trains and ads touting “Oranges for Health, California for Wealth”, yielding a 50% jump in sales
- Kotex—Going direct to consumer with sanitary napkins was considered heresy. Lasker developed a “trained nurses recommend” campaign, then worked with the client to develop a plain white box with a blue ribbon that was available on store shelves without asking the pharmacist.
- Lucky Strike cigarettes—Lasker suggested that the client stop supporting its nearly 50 brands and concentrate spending on Luckies. He linked the “toasting” process of Luckies to “reduced acidity on the throat that “protected the voice.” He recruited Metropolitan Opera star sopranos to give advertising testimonials and did not even have to pay them—they just wanted the publicity associated with the endorsements. He later initiated a campaign that suggested a weight loss regimen via smoking, “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet.”
Here are a few rules from Lasker’s agency that might prove useful to all of us. On the creative process, “no man is privileged to reject his own ideas, no matter how absurd…it is a healthy conflict where everybody attacks everybody’s work with no quarter given and no pride at stake.” On working at a firm, “Try to learn from everyone, high and low…he finally leads who first learns to serve….always think of the other fellow’s viewpoint and try to get him to think of yours…Believe in yourself and grow creatively every minute so that you will justify your belief.”
He had a rather limited view of public relations, perhaps shaped by his brief foray into the political campaign business, working against Upton Sinclair’s bid for Governor of California in 1934. Sinclair, a well known author and muckraker (The Jungle on the meat industry in 1906) frightened business with promises of higher taxes and communal industry. Lasker mobilized his agency, finding new ways to reach voters, including a series of radio soap operas such as The Bennetts, in which members of a middle class family worried about the effects of Sinclairism (no more church choir if atheist governor elected). The favorite billboard ad was a supposed quote from Sinclair (taken out of context), “If I am elected Governor, I expect one of the unemployed in the US will hop the first freights to California.” Phony newsreels were produced for the cinema, with “swarthy indigents from Eastern Europe endorsing Sinclair—‘Vell his system vorked vell in Russia, vy can’t it verk here?” Pamphlets were prepared “quoting all he had said against the Catholics, and another against the Jews, under the cover of ‘By His Own Words Shall Ye Know Him.” His motto on PR: a few simple ideas hammered home steadily.
Lasker retired from advertising in 1942, selling his clients to a start-up of three of his employees, Messrs. Foote, Cone and Belding. He spent his remaining ten years in philanthropy, giving generously to mental health, cancer and contraception. He persuaded the American Society for the Control of Cancer to change its name to the American Cancer Society. His mission was to “do something of significance.” That is a goal each of us can embrace.
Posted by Edelman at August 12, 2010 4:37 PM |
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Comments
For all of Lasker's brilliance one has to ponder his responsibility in cynically promoting smoking and the -apparent- contradiction with his later support of the American Cancer Society. He was/is not the first among tobacco promoters/manufacturers wanting to cash on cigarette sales and also feeling good for supporting the fight against cancer.
Posted by: Philippe Boucher at August 13, 2010 6:04 PM
Hey Richard,
We're holding down the fort here, although we may have an intern or two use your desk while you're out.
Sounds like a fascinating book. Thanks for the overview of Lasker's life's work. I do remember that song "This is the cereal that's shot from guns!" It's had a fifty year lifespan in my head, although I could never imagine how they'd set up a factory to do that little trick. Maybe they just made the cereal on a large battlefield...
It sounds like Lasker's application of "no quarter given" in the creative process may have been extended to near character assassination in his work against Sinclair's run for governor. In that, he seems like a forerunner to the Lee Atwaters and Karl Roves of a later time.
Posted by: Jim Markowich at August 18, 2010 11:22 AM