Luke Sullivan - Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This

CONTENTS

Copyright 2012 by Luke Sullivan. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Sullivan, Luke.

Hey, Whipple, squeeze this : the classic guide to creating great ads / Luke Sullivan. 4th ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-118-10133-9 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-22383-3 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-237182 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-243763 (ebk)

1. Advertising copy. I. Title.

HF5825.S88 2012

659.132dc23

2011039737

TO MY DEAR WIFE,

CURLIN,

AND OUR KNUCKLEHEADS,

REED AND PRESTON

FOREWORD BY MIKE HUGHES

COMING UP WITH A GOOD IDEA is hard, but its not that hard. Whats harder is coming up with ideas on demand and on time. Whats really hard is bringing your ideas to smart, elegant life in the real world.

My guess is Mr. Edison wasnt the first genius to look into the darkness and see the need for light, but creating a working light bulbthat was a world-changing achievement. Its said that he and his team developed and studied more than 3,000 approaches before landing on one that worked. Thats 3,000 failures on the way to one success.

Advertising isnt quite that brutal, but sometimes we talk about it as if it is. Like other businesses that arent nearly as macho as they pretend to be (Wall Street!), the ad business talks of war rooms, concepts that are killed, and bloody battles between creatives and suits.

Its silly, especially when you consider that there are actually two different and engaging ways to find joy in this business of advertising.

The first is to be part of a team that produces strategies and creative work that are, to borrow a phrase from Steve Jobs, insanely great. Like entertainment, the arts, product design, cooking, and surgery, advertising is one of those businesses that gives its practitioners an occasional opportunity to do something marvelous. That marvelous something might inspire laughs or smiles or thoughts or even action. It probably wont change the world, but it could make at least a little dent. It could make the world a little more interesting. A little better. Do something like that occasionally and your peers will give you awards and your clients will give you money. Unfortunately, this is very difficult and doesnt happen very often.

The second path to bliss in this business is to find joy in the work itself. You would think this would be easy. In advertising, youre surrounded by intelligent, witty people. Theres no heavy lifting. You occasionally go to Santa Monica and stay at Shutters while producing videos that will appear on screens large and small. You rub shoulders with filmmakers and every once in a while with stars. You can play video games under the guise of keeping up with technology or keeping up with the kids.

Life is short and we spend much of itmuch more than 40 hours a weekdoing our jobs. Its possible that the only secular salvation in this not-necessarily-evil circumstance lies in turning our jobs into artand then creating exceptional art. This is true of writing music, painting canvases, sculpting, plumbing, delivering the mail, and preparing tax forms. And making ads.

A confession. We work very hard at making ads, but not only because its whats best for our clients. We do it because its whats best for us. Whats best for us as human beings is to work at the craft of our chosen arts. And these are, we repeat, arts: persuasion is one, design is another. Writing, photography, filmmakingall arts. (Marketing research, often mistaken for a science, is another.)

Great films come from the minds of great filmmakers. Great meals come from the talents of great chefs. Great art comes from the vision of great artists. And great ads come from the ideas and intuitions of great advertising people.

The world rewards us for our passion. It has long been proven that the best-crafted positionsselling arguments and adsarent just the most delightful, theyre the most effective. They are, when all is said and done, true hard-sell advertising.

The only worthwhile test of an ad or a movie or a book is how it does in the real world with real people. (The movie executives who turned down E.T. because of its test scores deserved their fate.)

There are no rules in our business, but there are a few things we believe. We believe the right side of the consumers brain buys faster and with more conviction than the left side. We believe in the discipline of focus. We believe in and welcome and live for and fear competition. We hate to lose. We believe that whats brilliant in this business is also whats smart in this business.

We believe in consumers. We believe in magic.

I envy the young and would-be advertising people who are reading Lukes book for the first time. In these pages theyll discover both the possibilities for moments of genius and the joy of the work itself. Theyll marvel as I do at Lukes ability to find fresh and funny ways to tell us truths. Theyll go back to their studies, their work, or their job hunt with fresh enthusiasm. Theyll be eager to tackle new challenges.

I also suspect that those of us who still have dog-eared copies of the first editions of Whipple will be eager to see what Luke has to say about the new media in this new and improved version. Once again hes been able to nail the fears we all have about change; once again he shows us how to cope and maybe even how to excel. (I bet a lot of us will find ourselves reading the whole thing all over again.)