A lot of foot soldiers contributed to the groundbreaking advertising created during the Mad Men era of the late 1950s and 1960s. David Herzbrun was one of them.

In his 40+ year career as a copywriter he toiled for Doyle Dane Bernbach, J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy, among others. Although creative directors and copywriters might argue the analogy, a copywriter was akin to being a back-up bass player in a good band. You were constantly joining new teams or looking for your next award-winning gig.

In between working as a hired hand, Herzbrun even attempted a solo run with his own agency. But for this true collaborative writer, nothing ever matched the electric petrie dish, creativity and mentoring environment of his first stint with DDB–even his second stint at DDB years later when he discovered that the “MBA suits” had taken over the place.

It was at DDB that Herzbrun came to work on the Volkswagon account. At the time, Americans coveted their big v8 Cadillacs and Buicks. The “Bug” was an anomaly and foreign. But the creative team decided therein lay its hook. Among the notable VW ads created during this period was one of its most famous (and award-winning). ”Snowplow” essentially answered the question, “How does the snowplow driver get to the snowplow?” 

In his book, Playing in Traffic on Madison Avenue: Tales of Advertising’s Glory Years, Herzbrun recounts his copywriting gold, zingers earned by years of  practicing his trade for big and small companies, all still valuable in today’s content-driven online marketplace:

• Don’t use big, high-falutin words. A dress cataloger once ”dressed down” Herzbrun’s initial copy: “I changed words our readers might not understand. You’ve got to remember our ladies are not very educated but that doesn’t mean they’re dumb. I figure intelligence happens as much among poor  as rich, same with those who go to college and those who don’t. Now you take a barely educated, intelligent lady and give her a word she don’t understand, and you make her feel dumb. That makes her feel bad. When she feels bad, she’s not in a buying mood. Make her feel dumb enough times, and she won’t read your catalog again. In fact, she’ll buy her dresses from someone who makes her feel smart.”
• “Never confuse art with technique. If museums did that they’d be filled with Rockwells and no Picasso’s.”
• Define the product’s target “persona.” On the Avis account, Herzbrun said, “We tried to define how Avis talked. It was Broderick Crawford in ‘Letter To Three Wives.’ The voice of a successful man who was very intelligent but not well educated, and who’d been raised on the wrong side of the tracks. This made it a lot easier to write the ads. Before writing I would first either cast or create the character who wouild do the (magazine) ad writing. This allowed me to write in a distinctive and appropriate style for each campaign. The characters became so real to me that even 27 years later, I can recall each of them vividly: The Scottish-born English educated New Yorker who spoke for Chivas; the Jamaican sugar millionaire whose English family settled the island four centuries ago and who studied English at Princeton; the ex-Army platoon sergeant from Newark who spent a lot of time on his feet in his appliance store and thought a lot about shoes.”

Today we think we invented “truth in advertising” with blogger reviews and bad customer service Twitter shout-outs. But there really is nothing new under the sun. During the Avis “We Try Harder” days, the pitch was, “We’ll never rent you a dirty car.” But when Herzbrun rented his Avis car, the ashtray was full of butts. He emptied the evidence into an envelope which became the inspiration for a pointed open letter of apology print ad that Avis surprisingly green-lighted.

Unfortunately, Herzbrun’s story, while filled with exotic travel, celebrities (Andy Warhol, Christo, Victor Borge) and large international clients, has a “relatively” unhappy financial ending compared to other early Mad Men who struck it rich with their award-winning creative. Living as an ex-pat while opening their international offices, there was a fluke in the DDB office org chart reorganization, and the company went public without him. Yet Herzbrun’s retained his good humor and was grateful to be “touched by glamour, sprinkled with stardust and destined for greatness.”

I love the TV series Mad Men. I’ve always been a fan and a student of the post-WWII, baby-boomer advertising industry which started on Madison Avenue and invented consumerism worldwide. While the show’s writers spin award-winning weekly dramatic tales, the “advertising accounts” strategized about in Don Draper’s office and during 3-martini lunches are grounded in fact from the era.

Amazingly, some of the show’s sponsors, like BMW and Clorox, have TV commercial pedigrees dating back to the early days of TV sponsorships. The show launches their commercials with a short backgrounder slide on the history of the advertiser’s TV spots. Mad Men should be required viewing for all advertising journalism students–and inbound marketers.

David Ogilvy’s path to advertising icon status predated the 1950s, but his reputation was cemented during The Golden Age of Advertising. But unlike some of his peers, David was schooled in the ways of direct response advertising, as he says, having bought his “first direct mail course from Dartnell in Chicago with my own money.”

Direct Response Ads Are Measurable

Why was this so important? Because direct response, unlike general advertising, was measurable–something we take for granted today with our Google AdWords, Google Analytics and email marketing metrics. No matter how cleverly written a pay-per-click ad is, for example, you won’t continue to throw money at it if it doesn’t produce new leads or orders. You pays your money, and within minutes, hours or days, you know if you won, lost or broke even on that investment. That’s direct response. DO (as he was known) said, “Direct response is my first love. Later it became my secret weapon.”

David was such a believer in the principles of direct response that he said, “No copy should ever be presented to a client until it has been vetted by a direct response expert.” He steadfastly believed that when you spent a client’s money, you had to show a return on that investment–not just earn a bunch of creative (“whatever that means”) awards for the agency–a lesson that still holds up today, probably more than ever. Not only is Ogilvy, the man, still revered, but his company is still one of the world’s leading advertising agencies as part of the WPP Group of London.

Homage to the Original Mad Men

In homage to the upcoming season of Mad Men, I’ll be sharing wisdom from other sages of the Golden Age of Advertising. As you look for new ways to market your business, there’s no finer inspiration than the original Mad Men. Take it from Advertising Hall of Fame Honoree David Ogilvy who says in this video, “For 40 years I’ve been a voice crying in the wilderness to get my fellow advertising practitioners to take direct response seriously. Today, my first love has come into its own. You face a golden future.”

I just love working with my Texas friends and clients. They always know the biggest and best recipes for having a good time. Years ago I worked with one of the country’s largest telecommunications companies, teaching their salespeople all about direct marketing.

Whether we were done with training or not, when it was happy hour in Texas, it was happy hour in Texas. That was the first time I learned that you could order pitchers of margaritas while you waited for appetizer trays of jalepeno poppers.

My most favorite Texan taught me how to make the perfect margarita. “Pick the cheapest, off-brand bottle of tequila you can find,” he instructed. “The cheaper the better.”

Who knew? He was right!

Here’s his famous recipe, for which the statute of limitations has expired on my promise to keep it a secret from other yanquis (non-Texans).

Dale’s Famous Perfect Margarita

• 1 can frozen limeade concentrate
• Cheap tequila
• Cheap triple sec
• Grand Marnier
• Water (optional)

Dump the limeade into the blender. Fill the limeade can once each with the cheap tequila, the cheap triple sec and Grand Marnier. Add 1/2 can of water if you must (obviously, you’re a yanqui). Blend for about 10 seconds. Remove half the mixture and reserve it in the refrigerator. Fill the blender with ice, and blend till the ice is chopped.  Run a lime wedge over the rim of the glass, then dip the rim in kosher salt. Pour. Repeat with reserved mix.

Cinco de Mayo–felicidades, amigos!

Sometimes a diva needs her own personalized silver soldered tiara.

That was the mission on my recent vacation to beautiful San Diego where I was fortunate enough to land a spot in Portland artist Sally Jean’s workshop, “Totally Tiara.”

I’ve been designing and creating jewelry for the past five or six years as a hobby. In my recurring fantasy, I quit my day job, liberate my 70s Bohemian skirt and peasant top (again in style, I might add) and set up a table selling my handmade wares at the Farmer’s Market.

But then Carolyn, our bookkeeper, reminds me that payroll is Friday, so I get back to work. (My good friend, Sue, says, “Why do you think they call it work? If it was fun, they wouldn’t pay you to do it.”)

There were about 20 of us aspiring artists in this class. Besides me, two others had traveled great distances to study with the Queen of Silver Solder. One woman flew in from Hawaii, another was from upstate Illinois. All the rest were from up and down California.

Besides trekking home with my very own tiara, my other objective was to master a new skill that used an entirely different section of my brain. As The Database Diva, I spend a lot of time thinking about the best way to present complicated relationship-building tactics to my clients who want to leverage their customer databases.

Burning Brain Cells vs. Skin Cells

You burn a lot of brain cells mastering the creative process for email or drip marketing campaigns. You must think of exactly the right words and offer such compelling ideas that your readers are entertained or educated enough to buy what you’re selling or ask to stay on your list. (Or at least not opt out). Very. Tough.

With soldering there’s a specific hand-eye coordination required–while holding a soldering iron that’s 100-plus degrees Fahrenheit.

I sat across from a woman who had taken Sally Jean’s class 13 times. She owned many crowns. I was in awe of her prolificness. Her pace was brisk as she added spikes to the base, and she was very fluid in her work, even though she was conducting 7 or 8 simultaneous conversations around the room. I thought I was a multi-tasker. I was truly amazed.

Within the first few hours of the 3-day class, I had dripped molton solder on my index finger. It was so hot, I didn’t even feel it at first. (Just a flesh wound, as Monty Python used to say.)

Within 5 hours I felt like a dismal failure. Everyone was soldering much faster than I was, and my iron was operating on the scorched earth principle. Instead of beautiful shiny charms, I was cremating my pieces (or inventing the Goth look of the technique…never one of my favorites).

I burned a lot of skin cells in that class. I could not get the hang of Sally Jean’s loving command, “Melt and Flow! Melt and Flow!”  I had soldered precisely zero times before this. Why did I think I could show up and master it in a mere  3 days when almost everyone else had been a Sally repeat offender?

My fellow artists were encouraging. “Keep going, you’ll get better; it takes practice,” they all said. “When you get home, solder something everday,” said another. I doubted this advice as I pushed yet another ashy charm off to the side and picked up my next victim–with a death grip on the pliers.

How much longer would I have to endure this ego bashing (which hurt more than my finger)? And, surely, Sally was not serious about taking a group picture with all of us wearing our crowns. I guess I could hold up my iron as a lightsaber. Darth Diva.

“Done Is Better Than Perfect”

But then a miracle happened. I realized I was trying to be perfect. I was totally out of my comfort zone–where I typically live everyday. I was being tentative because I didn’t want to ruin my expensive stash of class supplies. I didn’t want to wear a Goth tiara or put it on display as evidence of my vacation at the art colony. I was putting a ton of pressure on myself expecting to produce first-class craftsmanship, while the reality was I was a soldering virgin! And I was failing anyway.

(Ironically, Sally had also taught “Soldering for Virgins” a few days before, but I couldn’t attend. Even if I could have, I proabably wouldn’t have signed up. I assumed it was the “beginner’s class.” I wanted a challenge–until now that I had one.)

With the realization that there was no way I was going to produce jury-level art, I relaxed. I breathed. I ate some chocolate (not on the low-carb diet, but, heh). And I created my first beautiful silver-soldered charm. It was magnificent. I didn’t care that I had 45 more charms to go.

So, success. I got my new learning experience. But I did not finish my project in Sally Jean’s class. I did not fly home wearing a tiara. But I did turn on the soldering iron as soon as I got home. The solder amazingly “melted and flowed.” I am now a soldering addict.

You can see my finished masterpiece, entitled “Inspiring Divas” above. It features pictures of the wonderful line of women in my family tree that I am lucky enough to descend from. The spool of thread is from my great-grandmother’s Marshall, TX, dry goods store. It’s close to 100 years old. The brooch in front was my grandmother’s.

The takeaway: Your art could be your career, your writing, your marketing, your tiara. How committed are you? Only you will know where all the little flaws in your crown are. So to some degree, you must suffer for your art if you care about it and you want it to someday be better. The secret is to fear the creative process, and then do it anyway.

List segmentation is like making a bunch of “custom order buttons.” But first this food story.

This week I had lunch with life coach and friend Patty Cook at Yia Yia’s, a very nice local restaurant known for its business lunches, great food and exceptional customer service.

When our server came to take our order, Patty and I did the typical menu reinterpretation. Patty’s a vegan and I’m doing the low-carb thing. She patiently explained each of our individual menu options, making sure to offer suggestions on items we could add, as well as dishes that would work for us if we removed a few things (chicken for Patty, croutons for me).

Kelly, our server, was masterful in her knowledge of every dish, professional in her delivery–not rushing us at all– yet knew we were there for a brief time before scooting off to our next set of engagements. She wanted us to have just enough information to make an informed decision on something we’d enjoy.

After the custom-designed luncheon menu presentation, I commented, “Wow. That’s impressive. I can’t believe you know so many combinations of dishes so well.” To which Kelly replied, “Many of our customers come here exactly for that reason. In fact, we have an order button on the register for our best customers because everytime they come here, they get the same thing, and they’re usually in a hurry to eat and get back to work.”

Brilliant.

Did you catch that? Some customers have their own order button on the register! Right next to the Cucumber Martini and the Calamari is Joe, Tom and Charley. Kelly is walking around the dining room with a complete database of ingredients and menu combinations in her head and she’s instantly able to pair these options with specific customers and situations to satisfy the vegans, the low-carbers and the frequent diners.

What if I would’ve just ordered off the menu (yeah, right; like that could ever happen) and had my salmon salad served “as is?” Couldn’t I have just picked off the croutons and set them aside on my bread dish (which was also off the menu for me)? I do this often enough at other restaurants where the menu doesn’t always list all of the ingredients you end up with in your dish…or when I’m too distracted to remember to ask for everything I don’t want. But having Kelly explain our options so we were served exactly as we wanted made Patty and me feel especially well taken care of.

OK, this is not really an article about fine dining and great service. It’s about how to leverage what you know about your customers, figuring out what they want, and then seeing how you can customize your sales portfolio for each customer segment of your database.

What do you suppose is the #1 reason people opt out of your marketing emails? Too much email? Too little time? No. It’s because you’re irrelevant. You’re boring. You are all about you and your products, your services. You make me work too hard to figure out how I can apply your offering to solve my problem. That’s not my job; it’s yours. You’ve got 3 seconds to win me over in your email. Fail and you’re deleted–worse, I might opt out forever.

Is Database Segmentation Easy?

No, it’s really hard–till you figure it out. The hardest part is knowing how to group everybody when you don’t know your customers very well. That’s when I say, “Ask.”  Send out a customer survey. Don’t guess. You’ll guess wrong, and then where will you be? Just looking ridiculous and completely irrelevant, serving croutons when hearts of palm would’ve delighted.  

Does List Segmentation Work?

Define “work.” Here’s my defininition: More meaningful conversations. Because now you have my attention. I’m listening, and I’ve removed my finger from the delete key. I may even click on a link or 2, and then–oops!–I’m engaged. Talk to me repeatedly like that about my interests, my needs, and I might even start believing you really want to help me (not just sell me something) and that you have the best solution for my problem. You’ve earned my sale, just like Kelly earned a 25% tip and a repeat customer!

Just when she thought she was out, they'd pull her back in...

Sometimes looking in the rear-view mirror of life gives you insight you hadn’t seen before. I was doing a little Spring cleaning this weekend and came across a tribute I wrote 9 years ago to my grandmother. It was published in the Direct Marketing Assn newsletter as I was getting ready to start my term as president.

I’d like to share it with you because it speaks to what’s most important to all of us: appreciating what you have and making the most of your life, even if these are not the best of times. I’d like to know your thoughts and what life lesson you learned from someone who is or was important to you, so please leave me a comment.

* * *

While the US, Europe and the rest of the world was celebrating New Year’s Eve Y2K, I was in a room at Missouri Baptist Hospital preparing to say goodbye to one of the most important people in my life–my grandmother.

She had a remarkable life, and consistently over the years, many friends and strangers glimpsed what we–her family–knew so well about her. My treasured memories of her are as a “cool grandmother.” She bought a new emerald green Firebird when she was 70 (which she reluctantly let me drive), and she took me to see my first rock concert (The Who) at SIU-Edwardsville.

But she was also cool because she was the only grandmother I knew who was a college graduate (UCLA-Class of ’27) and for many years a corporate executive at Famous Barr, at a time when you didn’t see many women with their own offices on the 12th floor.

There was no word “retirement” in her vocabulary. Bernice understood the importance of having projects, a purpose, and she strove to make her work matter. When Famous’ mandatory retirement policy forced her out at age 65, the company turned around and immediately hired her back as a consultant for 3 more projects lasting 12 more years.

When most grandmothers would have then happily retired to a leisurely life of baking cookies, cooking homemade stew and tending grandchildren (which she also excelled in), mine accepted an offer to be part of the new family business. At age 78, she became the Director of Commercial Sales, her third full-time career, and the job she held till she was 90.

But this career lady was not all business. Living for her was about learning and doing. It is still one of life’s great mysteries to me how effortlessly she combined family, work, friends and passions. At 83, she and 2 friends enrolled in a ballroom dance class. She loved the arts and nature and knew every bird species, tree, shrub and flower at the Botannical Gardens.

Bernice Kranson (or Gegey, as we called her) was a Cardinals baseball fanatic who kept (former Centerfielder) Willie McGee’s baseball card in her wallet before it was fashionable to love him. She went to about 20 games a year, even though the last 2 were in a wheel chair.

My grandmother loved to shop through mail order. (I have no doubt she’d be teaching the other seniors in her building how to shop online today.) She supported so many worthy causes with generous donations that she received bundles of the best direct mail, which she let me confiscate for my direct marketing research. In fact, I got one of my best lessons in target marketing from her. Her buying behavior skewed so “young” that she received a lot of “age inappropriate” offers.

At her funeral, the Rabbi quoted Leo Rosten:

“The purpose of life is not merely to be ‘happy’–
The purpose of life is to matter –
to be productive –
to have it make some difference that you have lived at all.
Happiness, then, in the ancient, noble sense,
means self fulfillment
and is given to those who use to the fullest
whatever abilities God or luck or fate has bestowed upon them.
Happiness lies in stretching to the farthest boundaries
of which we are capable the resources
of the hand, heart and spirit.

As we battle the challenges life is throwing our way right now, let’s remember who and what are really important to us. Then, let’s go out and “matter.” Our careers are not the only things in our lives, even though our careers are important to us. Don’t under-appreciate the lessons you’re learning now. Your participation in life–even if it’s a struggle to transition–your volunteering to help others, the ideas and experiences you share–all of it matters.

A tip I give clients for finding topics to write about for e-letters and blogs is to take ideas from daily headlines and put their own POV on them.

For those of us who spend a great deal of time thinking about topics to write about, researching topics to write about and then actually sitting and writing, plagiarism sucks. When you take original thought and add value to it, that’s Kosher. When there’s wholesale appropriation of someone else’s work, that’s embezzlement.

When I was a journalism student in the late 70s, it went without saying that you’d be run out of town on a rail if you were caught stealing someone else’s work–forget about hoping ever to work as a reporter or broadcaster. As recently as 2003, Jayson Blair was given a career-ending opportunity to resign from the New York Times for his repeat offenses of plagiarism and fabrication.

But somehow the Web is the Wild West. I can’t count anymore the number of times my writing as a “citizen journalist” has been stolen and reappeared on other websites (I already know I’m a damn good writer). I’ve even had my alter ego, The Database Diva, stolen by a wannabe in another state (like I don’t know how to do a Google Alert ON MY OWN NAME???) It’s infuriating to realize that otherwise *normal*-acting members of human society suddenly lose their ethics gene when they connect to the Internet.

I know it’s a rampant problem because here’s an example that happened to one of my favorite sites.

A few months ago I gave a talk on how businesses can use social networking to get more referrals. To explain the concept of social networking to my relatively low-tech audience, I purchased rights to use this under-2-minute video from Common Craft, one of the most innovative training companies (and one I’ve talked about before in this blog). Then, this week, as I was researching something completely off-topic, I found this video.

Compliment? Or Kleptomania?

I sent the video to Common Craft owner, Lee LeFever, who told me, “I appreciate you pointing out the video – it does seem that they lifted some of the ideas and script from the Social Networking video. It’s disappointing to see, but they did take it in some new directions.”

Whatayagonnado? But still.

What’s your take on this “creative license?” Have you had any of your work stolen online? How did you handle it?

The hardest thing in the world is to explain something so simply that someone “gets it” the first time. This is especially true of technology and Web 2.0. New media is especially confusing because original ideas are created at lightning speed, and the early adopters–mostly all A.D.D.–run with it and don’t spend time distilling it for the rest of us.

Clarity is elegant.

I collect great examples of communication. I collect knock-out headlines, other people’s handouts, sales letters, and BIG ideas. I mostly print them and store them in personal “swipe files” that now take up 2 lateral file drawers (and countless online file folders. But I hate online filing systems).

Here are 2 great additions to my online favorites. First is Lee LeFevre’s brilliant site, Common Craft, where in a free library of “how to” videos he explains popular-but-mysterious ideas, like Twitter, in 3 minutes or less. This one is “Twitter in Plain English.”

The second addition is Zappos Shoes CEO Tony’s easy explanation of Twitter and how to set up a Twitter account. If you still don’t “get it” after reading his post, you’re thinking too hard. But it’s another great example of taking something new, unknown or complicated and distilling it down to elegant simplicity.

(By the way, after deciding to Follow Tony on Twitter, he returned the favor and now Follows me. The man is a populist.)

Do you have favorite examples of utter simplicity?