Readers of this blog often ask me to recommend good books on advertising. If you have even a passing interest in the ad world, then you need to put Bob Garfield’s And Now a Few Words from Me at the top of your reading list, like, right now, today.
For 25 years, from 1985 to 2010, Bob Garfield served as judge, jury, and eloquent executioner of TV advertising from the pulpit of his weekly “AdReview” column in the industry publication Advertising Age (now called simply Ad Age). His critiques were often funny, frequently scathing, and nearly always on the mark.
As Garfield himself says in the book: “[W]ith well in excess of a thousand ads subjected to my pitiless scrutiny, I’ve really blown the call only eleven or twelve times.” On one or two occasions, his criticisms brought down not just a single ad or ad campaign, but an entire company.
The 200-page book is divided into 10 chapters (or as Garfield says in the introduction, “The Ten Commandments of Advertising, brought to you by God”). What inspired him to write it—because, let’s face it, God has more important things to do and He is a fantastic delegator—was the Cannes International Advertising Film Festival.
Every year, thousands of creative and advertising industry practitioners from around the world descend on the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, France to screen each others’ work, clap each others’ backs, and award each other trophies.
And although many of the ads screened are brilliant and absolutely deserving of a gold Lion trophy, many more entries are pointless, preposterous, gratuitous, ostentatious, vulgar, unfunny, and irrelevant.
In Garfield’s words:
“To sit through the film screenings—one dreadful commercial after another—is to wonder by what delusions of competency these things got suggested, much less entered? By what standards of salesmanship did they get approved? And by what twisted notion of decorum, never mind self-knowledge, do the all-in-blacks in the audience whistle and hiss at entries exactly as unwatchable as their own?”
Unfortunately, a lot of those ads win trophies, too.
Published in 2003, And Now a Few Words from Me was, and very much still is, a wake-up call for advertisers focused more on selling their own cleverness and creativity than their clients’ products. Garfield’s observations remain as fresh and relevant as ever as he recounts myriad television ad campaigns that failed—often, spectacularly—because they were made more for the purpose of winning awards and the admiration of other ad industry creatives than to serve clients.
“Most advertising is unnecessarily terrible,” Garfield writes, and we couldn’t agree more. As armchair ad critics, most of us can sense when an ad misses the mark, even if we may not be able to put into words exactly why.
But Garfield can, and does—in a sharp, funny, irreverent style that will have you at turns smacking your forehead and laughing out loud.
Whether it’s the indiscriminate use of celebrities, sex, special effects, stupid jokes or sheer vulgarity, Garfield zeroes in on advertisers’ transgressions like a heat-seeking missile, taking down offending ads with a passion and precision we all can appreciate and admire.
Ripping advertisers a new one
For readers of this blog, the schadenfreude is delicious. If you are as irritated as I am by the inanity of today’s television commercials, then you will feel a rush of righteous joy watching Garfield take advertisers to task.
Here are a few of my favorite Bob-isms from the book:
“Advertising is fundamentally about nothing more complex than communicating a selling idea to a prospective customer. If some fast-talking goof on the Atlantic City boardwalk can do this with a vegetable peeler, the greatest minds in marketing should be able to pull it off with millions of dollars and a vast media world at their disposal.”
* * *
“To paraphrase Tolstoy, all good advertisements are alike; they all combine sound strategy with sound execution of a sound selling idea. But all bad advertisements are alike, too; they make the same few mistakes over and over and over.”
* * *
“That’s a big problem in advertising. Creatives are all the time writing ads for one another or for themselves. Quite frequently they write ads for one another or themselves and harvest trophies for their efforts. The clients, however, harvest no such trophies. What the clients harvest is failure, because somehow in the euphoria of the creative process they fall into the thrall of the Clever Ones who typically misunderstand what the target audience—or the world at large—is really like.”
* * *
“… Attention and awareness are secondary benefits; they should never be the goal. As the drunken buffoon who puts the lampshade on his head knows only too well, attention doesn’t in and of itself win friends. There is no point in getting everybody’s attention if you have nothing to offer once you have it. What people do then is just nervously edge away.”
* * *
“Most of the best advertising ever created is nonhilarious. As things stand now, though, a commercial pod on TV is a series of comedy blackouts, some funnier than others, but all at some point beginning to run together, depriving all of them of the very memorability that ostensibly commended the humor solution to begin with. But I guess it’s easier to win trophies by being the funniest guy in the room. And maybe it’s the best way for the all-in-blacks to deal with what I have long suspected to be their institutional self-loathing. The funnier their commercials are, the better they can persuade themselves—in spite of their nagging doubts—that they aren’t mere Madison Avenue hacks flogging useless crap to Philistines, but comic artists capable of entertaining millions.”
Telling stories and naming names
Throughout the book, Garfield calls out familiar brands as he cites example after example of advertisements either famous or infamous for their greatness or extraordinary sucktitude.
You’ll find out what Garfield thinks of classic advertising characters Mr. Whipple (Charmin toilet paper), Madge the Manicurist (Palmolive liquid soap) and the Marlboro Man, and gain a new appreciation for some of the best ads ever to air on television: Apple’s “1984” commercial, which many regard as the pinnacle of creative brilliance; Budweiser beer’s “Whasssup?” campaign, which spawned a catch phrase that swept the nation; and Duracell’s very first Energizer Bunny ad, the delightful surprise of which drove Garfield to a standing ovation, hooting and hollering and jumping up and down on a hotel bed in his underwear.
Below: Apple’s Macintosh computer commercial, “1984.”
On the other end of the spectrum, there are the provocative Calvin Klein jean ads featuring an underage Brooke Shields—and the even more outrageous ads the company was forced to pull due to their disturbing resemblance to child pornography; the Benetton shock campaign that exploited AIDS, racism, and genocide to sell its sportswear on a pretext of social consciousness; and myriad other commercials from advertisers who decided that death, mental illness, and dick jokes would make hilarious gags for selling stuff on TV.
For my money, one of the most important points Garfield makes in this book is something I have said numerous times on this blog: Advertising is an uninvited (and usually unwanted) guest in our homes. As such, its creators have a responsibility to treat their audiences with respect and dignity. (See: “Hey, advertisers! People hate you, and you deserve it.”)
Alas, it seems the Golden Rule does not apply to self-indulgent advertisers intent on getting our attention at any cost.
Garfield closes the book with a positive message for creative and advertising professionals who feel insecure about their professions and would rather be painting paintings or directing films or doing stand-up comedy for crowds in packed nightclubs:
Advertising is an honorable profession.
It is not art, but it is an art form. It’s worthy of doing, and doing well.
Just for God’s sake, do it Bob’s way.
Get your copy of Bob Garfield’s And Now a Few Words from Me
More than just essential reading for creatives in the ad industry, And Now a Few Words from Me is a fun, fascinating, and cathartic read for anyone who watches TV.
Get your copy here or click the image to go to Amazon.
The links in this post are affiliate links to Amazon.com. Meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase.
Have you read Bob Garfield’s “And Now a Few Words from Me”? What did you think? Would you like to recommend any other good books on advertising? Share your comments below.
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