A History of Marketing

Today, my guest is journalist and author Mark Tungate. Mark has spent over 30 years covering the advertising, branding, and luxury industries.Mark’s book Adland: A Global History of Advertising tells the story of the most influential people and iconic advertising campaigns from around the world. Mark is also the editorial director of the Epica Awards, a global creative competition judged by journalists.Listen to the Podcast: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / YouTube PodcastsIn this episode, we cover the ancient origins of advertising, the emergence of ad agencies, the creative revolution of the 1950s and 60s, and much more.You can find more of Mark’s writing on LinkedIn and his photography on Instagram. Now here it is: my conversation with Mark Tungate.The Origins of "Adland": Approaching the Global History of AdvertisingAndrew: Adland is an incredibly ambitious book. It covers the history of advertising, but it's not a picture book or an encyclopedia. It weaves several narratives of the people and the campaigns that define the industry, and it covers every continent, save for Antarctica. So what inspired you to take this on?Mark: Simply because nobody else had done it, I think. I'd been writing about advertising for years at that point, and I was interested in advertising history because you want to know the background of the subject you're writing about. But it seemed to me that all the books on the subject were in silos, almost, or other country silos. It was like the history of British advertising, the history of US advertising, and then there were a whole bunch of places that nobody had ever really written about. So I thought, maybe I can take this thing on. Maybe it's me that should do this, rather arrogantly perhaps. But I thought, okay, let's give it a try. Let's see if we can do it.Researching and Interviewing Industry LegendsAndrew: In our emails prior to this, you mentioned that you had a blast writing the book, and it certainly comes through on the page. It's a very, very fun read. So what was your approach to researching it, and what made it so fun?Mark: Researching it was basic journalism in a way: existing sources, texts, articles, doing the background research, and then getting out there and interviewing people. Many of the people who'd made the interesting parts of advertising, or the most iconic parts of advertising, were still around. So I got to speak to them, which was absolutely amazing and probably the most fun part of writing the book. John Hegarty from BBH, George Lois—an absolute legend, really funny guy—Phil Dusenberry, the late, great Phil Dusenberry from BBDO. These people were living legends and really good fun to talk to.Andrew: There are so many tremendous characters in this book. Did you ever find that advertisers, sort of being salespeople themselves, that they maybe talk up their own history or embellish? And as a journalist, did you have to validate things, or what was that process?Mark: I guess that happened a lot. But what made it easy for me is that these people are storytellers. So you just sit there, and you turn on your tape recorder or your recording device, and they do the job for you. So that's great. Obviously, like with any interview you do, people exaggerate or they maybe misremember things. So you have to take everything with a dose of salt, and being skeptical is part of the job of being a journalist, I think. But by and large, I took them at their word.Andrew: One of the lines in the introduction of your book resonated with me. It's from—you're quoting Colin Jones's book, Paris: A Biography of a City—and the quote goes, "No history of anything will ever include more than it leaves out." So it's impossible to include every ad from every campaign, from every product, from every company. So how did you approach what to include versus what was on the cutting room floor?Mark: It's a good point. It sorted itself out in a way. I had a list of people, absolutely, and campaigns and characters, if you like, that I absolutely had to include—figures like Bernbach and Ogilvy and Mary Wells, or people I admired and wanted to interview. Others came up along the way. Like, I'd meet somebody who'd say, "Oh, you have to interview this guy, he's amazing," or, "You have to interview this person." That happened a lot. But I didn't want it to be too much like an encyclopedia. I didn't want it to be like a series of Wikipedia entries. And it was in danger of getting that way at one point. So I wanted to tell the story of advertising. I wanted people to be able to read it as a story. I've always said I don't actually read many books about marketing, and I always want to write books about marketing that people could read on the beach. So it became almost like a casting process where I would say to myself, okay, who's going to move the story forward, and who are the most interesting and fascinating people who are going to be great fun to read about? And that was how I made those decisions.The First Signs of Advertising: Brothels in Pompeii, Posters, and Early NewspapersAndrew: We only have so much time together, and this book captures centuries of history and multiple continents, so we'll only get to capture a small fraction of it. But I thought we could just start at the beginning. What were some of the earliest records of advertising you came across while researching the book?Mark: It's quite controversial that. Some people say cave paintings were a form of advertising, which, okay. It's said that there are forms of advertising in Pompeii. Somebody told me that there was, apparently among the ruins of Pompeii, there was an ad for a brothel, which I joked about, the two oldest professions working together, which is a nice anecdote. I guess you have to take it slightly with a dose of salt—but advertising has been around forever. Ever since people have been selling stuff, there's been advertising. The word "poster," for example, comes from the word "post," so you're talking about posts driven into the ground with people sticking information to them. So that's been around forever. So, I think almost as long as there have been sort of speaking, intelligent human beings, there's probably been a form of advertising.Andrew: I would say it gets a little bit to, what is the definition of it, somewhat. Because a sign outside of a shop that says "Goat for Sale" is sort of an advertisement, but it's not really the way that we think of it today. One of the early milestones happened in Paris, France. Can you tell the story of the first French newspaper and how it led to the first personal ads?Mark: This was a guy with a name that's quite difficult to pronounce called Théophraste Renaudot. And he was a physician to Louis XIII, and he was also a philanthropist as well. So he wanted to help the poor, and he set up this—I guess the best way to describe it is a kiosk where people who had jobs could come and place advertisements, basically job ads, and say, "I need someone to chop wood or milk the cow or whatever." And unemployed people could come and look at these ads and basically get in touch with the people and apply for the jobs. Théophraste decided that this wasn't enough. He wanted to circulate his job ads more widely, so he created this pamphlet, which became the first newspaper in France, although it only had job ads, it didn't have editorials at the time. But it was essentially what we think of today as being a newspaper. It was a folded sheet with information, and that information was jobs, people looking for hired help.Andrew: It's amazing. One of the things about advertising today is it sort of subsidizes all of our free media, television and radio, and we get content in exchange for ads. And it strikes me, this is intertwined right from the beginning. I think this was 1631, so the first newspapers, intertwined—it's just remarkable that it happened.Mark: As a journalist, that's why I've always quite enjoyed writing about advertising. And as a journalist, I felt that it was almost incumbent upon me to do that because, ads, if you're a journalist, ads basically pay your wages. There's no really getting around that. So I don't feel bad about writing about advertising.Advertising Evolves: From Personal Ads to Ad AgenciesAndrew: So back then, these are personal ads, so it wasn't an ad agency doing that. Can you tell me about when the first advertising agencies started to emerge?Mark: We're probably talking the 19th century when there was a lot more printed material around, particularly newspapers were really coming into their own at that point. So the first agencies were really what we might think of as media buying and selling agencies today. So they would be middlemen between the newspapers who had space to sell and the clients who wanted to buy that space. So those were the first agencies. They weren't creative agencies; they were representatives of the media.Andrew: So these were people where, instead of going to—if I want to market a product, I don't want to go to every newspaper individually, I'd go to a middle person, a middleman who would sell the space, and they'd take a margin for it. And so when did creativity start entering the picture?Mark: It's difficult to put a finger on, but I have the feeling that the clients basically started hiring copywriters to make their ads more interesting and more persuasive. So creativity began then. A lot of those people were also journalists, actually. And you find throughout advertising history that people flip between the two, as I've done actually. So I think that's really the start of creativity, but it was very much in its infancy at that point.John E. Powers: “The Father of Creative Advertising”Andrew: Your book cites that John E. Powers is known as the father of creative advertising. And whenever I see "the father of” anything, you have to think, “Okay, there are probably a lot of fathers.”Mark: There's probably not just one.Andrew: I think Ad Age cited him as the father of creative advertising. He worked primarily from the 1870s to the 1890s. And what's funny is today, I did look up some of his advertisements. You can see them on his Wikipedia page, and they're all pretty well preserved, and they don't seem very creative by today's standards. They're just walls of text. What do you think he did to earn this designation of "father of creative advertising"?Mark: My feeling is that he was more thoughtful about it than anyone who had been before. He would experiment. He really wanted to try and form and craft the most persuasive sentence that he possibly could. So I think that, okay, maybe or maybe not he was the father of creative advertising, but I think he was the father of the real craft of copywriting in a very applied way. So for me, that's his real contribution. He was almost a forerunner to somebody like David Ogilvy much later, who was also a great wordsmith. So I think that's where—that was his contribution, the craft of advertising, absolutely.Andrew: I copied down an excerpt from your book. I'm going to read it out loud because I think it does capture some of that wordsmith. So Powers once claimed that, quote, "Fine writing is offensive. He concentrated on facts and regarded hyperbole as an anathema.” And you tell the story of how he was hired by a Pittsburgh clothing company that was on the verge of bankruptcy, and he said, "There's only one way out," he told his client, "to tell the truth." And the ad that he created read, "We are bankrupt. This announcement will bring our creditors down on our necks, but if you come and buy tomorrow, we shall have the money to meet them. If not, we will go to the wall." I just thought this is so funny. Like, imagine—it is sort of like the "Everything Must Go" liquidation-type sale. It just—do you have any reaction to this little excerpt here?Mark: It's funny because he is telling the truth, but there's also a slightly emotional blackmail aspect to it as well. "You can do some good here, come and come and save us, come and come and buy some clothing and save us from bankruptcy, folks. This is a good thing that you're going to do here." So there is a, although he says, okay, no hyperbole or anything, there is a sneaky element of persuasion in there.Andrew: I think the bluntness of "We are bankrupt," that is something that will catch your attention as well.Mark: That's true. I don't think anybody's going to say that now, are they? They exactly couch it in more subtle, discreet terms these days, I suspect.Albert Lasker: The Father of Modern AdvertisingAndrew: So the next major figure I wanted to ask you about is Albert Lasker. And you write, "There were other contenders for the title, but few historians would disagree that Albert Lasker was the true father of modern advertising."Mark: And there are too many fathers in my book, aren’t there?Andrew: Every chapter has a father. (Laughs) So can you share a bit about who Albert Lasker was and what he contributed?Mark: Lasker was another wannabe journalist, actually. And I think originally he wanted to go into journalism, but one way or another, he found himself working in this agency in Chicago called Lord & Thomas. And with a colleague of his, he developed, within the agency, a sort of copywriting school. So, they tried all sorts of tricks to try and capture people's attention, like using overusing capitals and overusing italics, which must have looked awful to today's eyes. But his idea was literally to grab eyeballs. And he ended up running the agency. And the interesting thing about it was that he actually had a stable of 10 copywriters, which was unheard of because most agencies had like one or two. So I think what he did was that he turned advertising into something that was considered slightly dodgy and a bit sort of piratical and swashbuckling into a serious business. He made advertising respectable. I believe that was his contribution.Andrew: A lot of advertising was for things called "patent medicines," which today we'd think of like snake oil salesman or something like that, where it's like, this is a very dubious medical product, and people are making claims. And that was a—how do you sell that to the masses? Well, advertising is one way. And it sounds like around this time, more established companies and reputable companies were working with agencies and embracing advertising as well.Mark: That's exactly right. It went from the Wild West to a more modern America. And America was, certainly, I would say, the birthplace of modern advertising, for sure.Andrew: We aren't going to have time to capture every biography of every person in this, but I'd be remiss not to mention—I'm just going to rattle off a bunch of names—J.C. Leyendecker, John E. Kennedy, Claude Hopkins, who I think was hired by Albert Lasker, absolutely, Harry McCann, Rosser Reeves, J. Walter Thompson, Stanley Resor, Bruce Barton, Leo Burnett, Raymond Rubicam, George Gallup, Ernest Dichter, and David Ogilvy. They're giants in advertising. I'm sure I hope to record podcasts someday on each of these figures. Something that struck me is that they're all either Americans or they're immigrants who built their careers in America. They helped form this Chicago and Madison Avenue scenes of advertising. What was it that led modern advertising, the modern advertising industry, to take shape in America during this time, and specifically, what led to Chicago and Madison Avenue emerging as the main areas for advertising?Mark: I think it was simply because the US was technologically and economically more advanced than Europe at the time. I mean, Europe was stuck in the 19th century until quite a long time after the First World War, indeed. I grew up in London in the 1970s, and sometimes London in the '70s still felt like it was stuck in the 19th century compared to New York. So, the US was forward-looking, it was inventive, it was the first with commercial radio, it was the first with the motor car, at least on a mass-produced basis. So there was stuff going on in America that made—there was stuff to sell. And when there's stuff to sell, advertising emerges to support it. So, that's my feeling about it. And of course, it attracted people, a bit like Hollywood in a way, which I guess was growing up around the same sort of time. It attracted people with sharp minds, business minds, a love of words, a lot of imagination, and they all congealed around these figures in Madison Avenue and in Chicago. That would be Leo Burnett, for example, and to create this nascent industry, which was full of smart, imaginative people working in a technological revolution, in a way.The Creative Revolution: The “Mad Men” Era of AdsAndrew: Let's jump ahead to the 1950s and the creative revolution. Up until this time, the art department and the copywriting departments were mostly kept separate. There were some ads that were really beautiful—beautiful artwork—but they weren't necessarily married in the same way to typography or to the words. And there were fantastic wordsmith ads, but they were sometimes walls of text that didn't really embrace visuals. But all of a sudden, these things started getting intertwined. When this changed, advertising got a lot more exciting. If you look at some of the ads from now, they feel very contemporary, very modern, persuasive. They just look cool. So how did the creative revolution emerge, and who were the people responsible for ushering it in?Mark: The creative revolution is probably my favorite era of advertising. And funny, just as an aside, when I was working on the book and I was already deep into it, I remember meeting a friend of mine, another journalist, in Cannes, where the big advertising festival takes place every year. And he said, "Yeah, I was just thinking about you and your book because there's this new TV show that's coming out soon called Mad Men." He said, "You should get into it. I think you'd really like that." And so my book—I was actually in Madison Avenue researching the whole Mad Men era around the time that the series was just about to come out. It came out slightly after my book was published.To answer your question, you can't talk about the creative revolution without talking about Bill Bernbach, who was the co-founder of DDB. And Bernbach had worked at another agency with a graphic designer called Paul Rand, who's incredibly famous. The IBM logo is his, basically. And they had always worked together, so they would build a concept up from the beginning with the art and the copy working together, which was insanely—hadn't really been done before. So that was the idea and the magic that Bill took with him to DDB, which became the spark for the creative revolution. He also had—he also was a guy who was a wise cracker. He had a good sense of humor. He thought that people should be treated intelligently. He believed in irony and sarcasm, which had never really been used in advertising before. And to use your word, I think he thought that advertising should be intellectual and funny and cool at the same time. He was doing what jazz musicians were doing, I think, but with advertising. So he was trying to create something that was a bit more hip.Andrew: I'm going to read a couple of quotes from your book related to this collaboration between Bernbach and Rand and let you react to them. So first, you quote, "Bernbach worked in tandem with Rand, his lively copy rendering the art director's images doubly effective. This was the birth of the creative team." I'm going to flash forward a bit. "When Bernbach opened his own agency, it was on this basis: copywriters and art directors working side by side." So it really was this that art directors and copywriters together were creating things from the beginning. Once Bernbach implemented this, this sort of became the standard for agencies. This was adopted more widely.Mark: That's right. The creative revolution isn't just one agency. Other agencies began to say, okay, we should be doing this as well. And of course, what happens in any country, in any form of advertising, is you'll have a bunch of people who start this thing, and then they'll break off and form their own agencies, and it creates this ecosystem. That, in my book, I discovered that happened all the time. There was always one guy, or maybe a couple of guys, and they'd train the next generation who would go off. And sometimes you'd have these little explosions, these sort of constellations of creativity in different countries, started at one place. Interesting. So that's what happened there.Andrew: And so what were some of the most iconic ads from this period of the creative revolution?Mark: Well, the one that everybody talks about, and you can't get around, is "Think Small" for the VW Beetle. So basically—and I'm sure you've seen it—tiny VW Beetle in the midst of a vast blank, more or less, page. The art director was Helmut Krone. And, this was in an era when cars were big and flashy, and advertising for cars was big and flashy. And here's this little tiny Beetle with a very short, sharp sentence, "Think Small." There was a bit of copy as well, of course, written by Julian Koenig, who was also part of the team. And then there was another one in the same series called "Lemon," where it talked about how they would scrap certain Beetles because they weren't up to scratch, they weren't perfect enough. And so they were very eye-grabbing headlines, and the copy was very well-written and funny. Another one I like from that era is—is for—I think it was a Christmas ad, actually, for Chivas Regal whiskey, and the line is, "Give Dad an expensive belt." And I think you've got the creative revolution right there. It's funny. It's managing to convey a sort of status on the drink by saying, by admitting it's expensive, but also in a very witty and almost like a throwaway line. I just think that's wonderful. And then the third one I could probably talk about is the one for Avis, which was the second most popular car hire firm at the time, and the line was, "We Try Harder" because they're the second, so they have to try harder to get it. Again, telling the truth, but turning it around and making it funny and interesting.Andrew: It's so brilliant. It's like embracing their positioning as second, which is very contrarian… To pitch that to a client, like, "Hey, don't try to hide this fact, you're second: embrace it." It's very bold as well.Mark: That's the other thing as well. Not only did they have to come up with all this stuff, they had to sell it to the client. So there's talent right there. So, it's not just the creative, the account team are doing a great job here as well.Andrew: We've cited a number of print advertisements, but the creative revolution also coincided with the emergence of television, of course. And television predates it a little bit, but it's around this time that it became—started to see some color. You started to see televisions in everybody's home, and television had a mass, much larger impact in the culture in the late '50s and '60s. Do you have any favorite television ads from this period?Mark: The VW did one where, "How does the snowplow driver get to the snowplow?" So you see a little VW driving through the snow. That was a classic. And George Lois cites one—he worked at DDB, but I think he was already working at another agency at that time—where he was working on an ad for Xerox, and he made a film of a whole bunch of monkeys xeroxing, photocopying stuff to prove how easy it was to use the photocopier. And that was apparently a bit of a breakthrough in TV advertising because it was controversial and fun. Once the creative revolution got going, TV advertising suddenly became entertaining.Andrew: You mentioned the show Mad Men and how that was part of the creative revolution era of advertising. And in the show's name, it's Mad Men, and most of the names we've mentioned up to this point have been men. And it was, like a lot of industries, especially at this time, a very male-dominated field. One of the women advertising leaders of the creative revolution was Mary Wells. Can you tell me about who Mary Wells was and what her contributions were?Mark: Mary Wells is one of my absolute heroes, or heroines, if you prefer, of advertising. Unfortunately, I never got to meet her. A fascinating person. She originally wanted to go into theater, she says, in her biography. And I think that's what, in a way, made her stand out because she realized that advertising could be about creating a theatrical experience, a dreamlike experience, in a way, by having this slight touch of magic about her. She became one of the biggest names in '60s advertising. You may have seen, this is a famous one, it's a French tourism image she commissioned from the photographer Elliott Erwitt. And it's basically a father and son riding a bicycle. So the little boy is on the back of the bike, and it's shot from behind, and they're riding down this typical tree-lined road in the south of France somewhere. They're both wearing berets. I think the little boy is carrying a baguette. And it's like the whole of France is in this picture. It's irresistible. And so that was commissioned by Mary, and I think it captures her way of seeing the world as a kind of dreamlike place. And also, in the '70s, she was given the brief of making New York a more desirable place for tourists because you'd had the Son of Sam killings. New York was, in cinema, was portrayed as a downright violent place, and tourists didn't want to come.Andrew: If you've seen Taxi Driver…Mark: Exactly, yeah. So, she was given this brief, and so she worked with a designer, another famous designer called Milton Glaser. And Milton came up with "I Love New York," with the heart, "I heart New York." And that was, under Mary's brief. So those two came up with this thing, which is still an icon today. It hasn't aged at all. So, even if that was her only contribution to advertising, and it wasn't, she would still deserve the legendary status that I think that she should have bestowed upon her.Andrew: It's amazing how certain things, they just become such cultural icons, they almost feel like they're above advertising, in a way, where that—at the end of the day, "I heart New York," it's a tourism slogan. But it's been elevated to such a high stature in popular culture that it's on mugs and shirts and bumper stickers and everything. And it all ties back to an advertising campaign, too.Mark: Absolutely, yeah.Andrew: Well, all of my questions so far have been very American-biased. I'm showing my bias here.Mark: Oh, don't worry, that's okay.Andrew: And, Great Britain, around the time we're in, the 1970s, late '60s, '70s, this was a really booming era, and especially for television advertising. Filmmakers like Sir Alan Parker and Sir Ridley Scott, they started their careers in directing commercials. Can you share more about how the British pioneered television advertising?Mark: I think a couple of things happened. I think that the Brits, people like Alan Parker, were jealous of the creative revolution and wanted to recreate it in London. And also, advertising in London was a quite freewheeling, dynamic industry. And so there was a lot of experimentation going on. And Alan Parker actually started making ads in the basement of the ad agency where he was working at the time. And don't forget that the Brits are all about the theater, right? Shakespeare, drama. And so, they were quite skilled, I think, at writing fairly decent scripts, ads that were—TV ads that had a story, a bit of a narrative arc, that were funny and sometimes even quite beautiful. And of course, because of all that, they stood out. And creativity and impact are never far apart. So if they stood out, they were successful. So, hey, let's have more. So I think that's how that began.Andrew: It's cool that advertising, it's this confined medium. You only have 30 seconds usually, maybe a minute sometimes, to tell a very compelling story, grab somebody's attention, take some risks, stand out. And it becomes a sort of training ground for—you know, they're not Sir Alan Parker and Sir Ridley Scott because they're commercials. They reached that knighthood status because of how they took what they've learned in commercials and brought it to the cinema and brought it to storytelling. And absolutely, it is one of the cool benefits of advertising is that you see it as sort of a training ground for people who can go on to tell amazing stories and really influence the culture.Mark: Oh yeah, there are many. David Fincher also worked in advertising, and there are others, you could—but yeah, that's that's true. It's a good training ground because I think you have to be economical, you have to tell a story in a short period of time, and you have to—it has to be action-packed. So yeah, all the elements that you see in films by Ridley and others.Andrew: Britain in the '70s and '80s, this is a part—so I can tell by your accent you're British. What do you personally remember about British ads growing up? Are there anything that sets them apart, any things that come to mind?Mark: I was born in '67, so, by the time I was 10, we're in the mid-'70s, and stuff is going on. And my dad always used to say, "The commercials are the best thing on the telly." And the thing is, at that point in time, he was right, because we had reruns of American shows. The own—the sort of own-brand British shows were made on a very small budget and were normally not that great. And so when you had an amazing ad—I remember one particular one, it was from Saatchi & Saatchi, and it was for British Airways. And basically, the scene is, they land the entire island of Manhattan at Heathrow Airport using special effects. And it looked like something from a Spielberg movie. It looked like something from Close Encounters. It was amazing. I was blown away by this thing. And even now when you watch it, it's pretty impressive. And it was all about—I think the end line was like, "Every year, British Airways flies the entire population of Manhattan," or "the equivalent of the entire population of Manhattan from America to the UK." And I just thought, wow, this is—and I think that was the point, that ad was probably the point where I thought, actually, this advertising stuff's pretty cool. I didn't know I'd end up writing about it one day, but I think there was a point when I realized there was something interesting going on. So I remember that one in particular.Andrew: So you mentioned Saatchi & Saatchi, and that's one of those iconic advertising firms that you still hold in high regard today. Can you tell me a bit about who Saatchi & Saatchi were and that origin story?Mark: That was Maurice and Charles Saatchi, were brothers, of course. And I think one of them had been a journalist, but they certainly, like Charles was an art director and was interested in art, and of course went on to start the Saatchi Gallery and to work in the art business. So, they wanted to—again, I think that what happened there was they were ambitious to create a new advertising, which was perhaps more glamorous and more dynamic than some of the advertising that had been going on. So in that respect, I guess Saatchi & Saatchi were, in a way, our version of DDB in the United States, along with a couple of others. I mean, BBH, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, were very influential with their Levi's advertising as well in the '80s. So those are the two that, when you think about British advertising in that period, crop up quite a lot.Andrew: We've talked about North America, we've talked about Britain, but one thing that I think, an ad that's very iconic that brings these together, is Apple's "1984" ad. It's widely considered as the greatest advertisement of all time, and it was developed by an American agency, Chiat/Day, but it was filmed in England, and it was directed by Sir Ridley Scott. Can you tell the story of this ad and describe the impact it had and its significance?Mark: I think it marked the launch of a new era, in a way. It was the launch of the Apple Mac, which was cleverly positioned not as just a computer, but as a creative tool, which basically underpins the whole of Apple's image, ever since, "tools for creative people." And it was going against IBM, which is very much, "International Business Machines." This is like the alternative. So that was clever. The ad itself is extremely atmospheric and imaginative. It seemed to be shot on a huge budget. I don't know whether it was, but it seemed to be. It looked like there was money on the screen. It was first shown on the Super Bowl, which also heralded that event as the annual showcase for the best advertising, which of course, it has now become. And when I think about it, it was the first time real life had caught up with science fiction. Suddenly, we were living in the future with this ad because the end line is, "And that's why 1984 won't be like 1984." So these two worlds had collided: the world of literature and the world of computing, and also, on top of that, the world of advertising. So it was a magic potion, in a way. Total genius, actually.Andrew: And it's one where it shows a few things. One, it shows Steve Jobs' timing, or Apple's timing. It's one—you couldn't do that in 1983, you couldn't do that in 1985. You had to do it in 1984 and have it be the ad that ties to this iconic book, a major event like the Super Bowl. It came at the beginning of 1984 as well, so they're able to use it for the rest of the year. And then it's also one where you don't see the product at all. You don't see computers in use. It sort of just is all about an emotion, a time, a feeling, and somehow it works, and it captures a lot of attention.Mark: It's almost an anti-computer ad, bizarrely, but so yeah, it's—I believe Lee Clow was one of the people behind that, at TBWA.Andrew: So we've covered ancient advertising up to 1984, and I've only covered a small portion of Adland. And I want to ask a few more questions, and I want to read one of your quotes that comes near the conclusion of the book. "If the history of advertising has one overriding theme, it is this constant tug of war between two schools: the creatives, who believe art inspires consumers to buy, and the pragmatists, who sell based on facts and come armed with reams of research." If you were to look at the past few decades, or if you looked over the history of advertising, who would you say is winning the tug of war? Has it shifted over time from these creatives and the pragmatists? Who's winning today? What are your thoughts on this idea?Mark: It's funny how you change because I wrote that book a while back, and I was definitely on the side of the creatives because I guess I saw myself as a—I was a writer, so I saw myself as this creative person, not interested in, and I hate math, I'm terrible at maths, and the data guys represented math, like the math teacher. But, I've grown perhaps a bit more mature since then, I hope so anyway. And to be fair, now I think it's—I think the ideal is a mixture of both. So creativity inspired by solid research, inspired by data. But I would say I still think that creativity is the key to a message you remember, which is the goal of all advertising. And creativity is a very intangible human thing. So I don't think creativity will ever be replaced by AI, for example, which is a whole other conversation we could get into. So for me, creativity is—I mean, Bill Bernbach, talking about him, he said creativity was perhaps the last unfair advantage that business people had. And I like that idea of creativity being an unfair advantage because it's not easy to do, and if you have it, you're good.Andrew: If I was to think of this tug of war, clearly during the creative revolution, the creative part was winning the tug of war. If I think of the post-internet era of advertising, I think that the pragmatists, or that has become much more data science-oriented. What's our cost per click, what's the very measurable ROI? And there are moments where creativity shines through, and of course, they work together. But if I was to really be forced to pick one today, or since the launch of the internet, really, I'd probably lean towards the pragmatists sort of starting to win more of the battle or shape more of the industry. Is that—does that align with you, or what's your reaction to that?Mark: It's interesting. What I find is that the creatives who, I think, resisted big data, or some of them did, have now accepted that it can make their work better because it's made it easier to talk to a smaller bunch of people. So, to target your advertising, to know who you're dealing with, rather than just throwing it out there. Because, with a TV commercial in the old days, you really didn't know who you were getting. I mean, there were ways of, there were focus groups and stuff like that. But, a TV ad would go out into masses and masses of households, and only a certain amount of those people were in the market for a car. Whereas now, you can probably find out exactly who's in the market for a car and fire the ad at them. So I think the creatives have learned to deal with that world and to work within it. But I think they're still allowed, and indeed encouraged, to come up with these ideas that are quite magical. I mean, you mentioned earlier that I'm involved in the Epica Awards, which is a creative prize given by journalists. And every year, I'm staggered by the amount of creativity and innovation and wonderful ideas that emerge. So yes, data is important, yes, there are more facts to inspire creativity, but creativity, really, it'll never die. It's still there, and I think it's still holding its head more than holding its head above water, that's for sure.Andrew: Yeah, and it is, in some ways, it's presented as opposing forces. I think there are plenty of examples of them working best together, and not just recently. Like, one ad that comes from David Ogilvy, who we mentioned earlier, is he was always doing a lot of research on his clients. He had this ad for Rolls-Royce in which he said, "At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock." And it's very creative. You wouldn't think to—all the things of a Rolls-Royce, you wouldn't think that the ad would showcase the electric clock. And it's very surprising, but it's very—you just imagine him reading every little thing he could about this car and this coming out and using that research and the data and all the stats about it and highlighting the one that could capture somebody's imagination and their attention.Mark: Yeah, that's very Ogilvy, that would—that he believed in research. He worked with George Gallup for a while, and so Ogilvy was quite a rational person, but he was capable of turning facts into gold with his pen. He was a terrific writer, so that's what made him one of the creative revolutionaries as well, I think.Andrew: So you published the first updated second edition in 2013, so we're probably 12 years on by the time this is published. Do you have any plans for a third edition of this book?Mark: I would love to say yes, but right now—writing a book is a lot of fun, but it's also extremely time-consuming, and it's really hard work. So although there's a lot to say, particularly about the digital era—I scratched the beginnings of the digital era, particularly in the second edition of the book—so there's a lot more to say, but right now I prefer to say it in the articles I write and in the interviews I'm doing on a more or less day-to-day basis than to tackle another book. But hey, never say never. Maybe I'll just get inspired one day and say, okay, let's do this. Maybe I'll get frustrated and say, no, we need to do a third edition. So never say never, but there's not one cooking at the moment, no.Andrew: And you mentioned your work today and the Epica Awards. Can you tell me about what the Epica Awards are and what your role in it is?Mark: I work for—my day job, if you like, is I'm a journalist for a site called AdForum, which is a B2B site for people who work in the ad industry. And we have an awards, the Epica Awards, which started out as the Editors and Publishers International Creative Awards, but people just call it Epica now. And so the idea is that once a year, we invite agencies—not just advertising agencies, but design agencies, production agencies—to send us their best work. And we get around a table with a whole bunch of leading journalists, and we decide which is the most interesting and the most creative and innovative out of all that work, and we give some prizes and make a few people happy. So it's kind of a great job, writing and writing about and rewarding creativity. There are worse jobs to have than that, so I enjoy it very much.Andrew: And yeah, seeing and thinking about some of the best campaigns in the world, it just sounds like a fun job in general.Mark: Yeah, no, I got—and I get my, my boy is 13 now, so I get him embroiled. So when I'm watching something really cool, I say, "Come look at this, this is cool." So now he wants to work in advertising, too.Andrew: That's amazing. Well, Mark, I've truly enjoyed this conversation, and I had an absolute blast reading Adland. I recommend it to everybody who's listening. How can listeners learn more about your work, can follow you online?Mark: I'm on LinkedIn, where I publish quite a few of my articles, or I link to quite a few of my articles, so you can find me there. If you want to find out about my more domestic life, life in France, and also my own attempts at creativity because I'm interested in photography, I'm pretty active on Instagram as well. So you can come and stalk me there. So those are the best two places, I guess, right now.Andrew: Thank you so much, Mark. I truly enjoyed this conversation.Mark: Well, thank you so much for inviting me. It was a real honor, and I'm very happy to have been on the show. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketinghistory.org