I'm sure you've seen a certain ad for the Volkswgen car, and heard it praised, and watched it pick up prizes the length and breadth of the land.
I'd like to nominate this ad as one of the most inept, most ineffectual, most misguided efforts of recent years.
Why? Because it's a perfect example of the disease that has spread throughout our business. A disease called "cleverness." Today, in some advertising quarters, cleverness is all that matters. You no longer have to have the selling idea. You no longer have to commmunicate that idea in clear, understandable terms All you have to do is be witty. And amusing. And sophisticated. In short, "clever." And the more sane, sensible, tried-and-true rules you break along the way, the better.
The result, of course, is advertising like this. Advertising that titillates the precious few who work along Madison Avenue. That wins awards from ingrown groups of art directors. That makes conversation pieces at cocktail parties in Westport, Connecticut. Advertising that utterly fails to communicate with anyone who lives anywhere west of the Hudson River.
These are serious charges, I know--but I'm prepared to prove them. With your permission, I'd like to show you what this ad could have been--if only it hadn't worshipped at the shrine of cleverness. In short, with the sensitive aid of art director Hal Riney, I'd like to reconstruct it step by step, following the sensible rules that guide so much of advertising today.
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