ADVERTISING...ART VS. TECHNOLOGY - The Pocket Internet

"ADVERTISING...ART VS. TECHNOLOGY"

(Page 2)

No. 2, all of you here in the advertising field, I want to point out that you are very lucky to live in a city of creative minded businessmen. Most of the big cities in the United States owe their growth and success to some obvious natural resources. Such as a seaport, or coal or oil deposits. The Twins Cities do not really have any obvious natural resources on which to base industry. Except for one natural resource that's pretty hard to beat. I refer to creativity.

"If you think for a moment
about your great industries
here, you will realize how
creative they have been."

If you think for a moment about your great industries here, you will realize how creative they have been. This may not be, from a physical standpoint, the best place to mill wheat. But it is here that two milling companies, General Mills and Pillsbury, are practically the sole source of creativity in their industry. Where else did people think of new ideas like cake mixes, biscuit mixes, refrigerated roles and cookies, and exciting kids' cereals? Where else did merchandising imagination ever think up a successful product like Cream of Wheat? Where did people use more creativity in a new product than in the development of "Scotch" Tape?

Gentleman, you can go right through the list of industries in the Twin Cities and come up with one consistent fact -- business creativity. The most sophisticated guidance system developed for use on America's spacecraft, made right here by a manufacturer of furnace controls... a home permanent kit that revolutionized beauty care... the first electrical appliance that let you cook right at the table.

"..SPAM, a product which
they've all imitated but
have all run a poor second to.."

And of all America's great meat packers, which one had the creativity to bring out SPAM, a product which they've all imitated but have all run a poor second to?

As advertising men, you are doubly fortunate to live in such an atmosphere. Creativity is catching and you are all infected with it. That's one of the reasons people from this area are in such demand for marketing and advertising posts all over the country -- imagination is your most important product. More important, creativity only thrives where there is a society in which there is a ready acceptance of innovation. Where new ideas are not welcome, new ideas do not come. You are fortunate to serve businessmen with the capacity and the courage to follow new lines of thinking.

"When new ideas are not welcome,
new ideas do not come."

However we are not here to praise Minneapolis -- but to bury a controversy. It is a phony controversy, but it is becoming a loud one. In recent months the trade press has been babbling with the righteous indignation of those who foresee the decline of creativity in advertising.

They point with alarm to the intrusion of heartless computers upon the advertising scene. They sneer at the pretension of new research techniques. They call upon heaven to witness the injustice of harvesting the proud creative advertising spirit to the cruel shackles of nameless mathematical equations. And, in the midst of all this, they managed to leave the distinct impression that in their case, at least, the brilliant intuition of a proud human spirit stands ready. Ready to save the advertiser from a grubby horde of ink-fingered drudges whose bankruptcy of imagination has driven them to pitiful reliance on mere numbers.

Let me quote from an advertising leader, in last Sunday's New York Herald Tribune, who called for a return to intuitive advertising thinking, untrammeled by fact. Said he: "The non-intuitive mind usually starts and stops in a row of figures. It's not people. Not feelings. Not sympathy. Not war. Not humor. Not pity. Not understanding."

"However, I really don't think
there is much indication
that we are running out of
people that rely heavily
on intuition."

I guess you can see just what kind of a wretched fellow he thinks you are if you don't rely principally on intuition for your judgment. However, I really don't think there is much indication that we are running out of people that rely heavily on intuition. There is one industry in the United States that relies entirely on the belief of people that their intuition is vastly superior to arithmetic. Customers of this industry prized their own intuition so much and despised simple arithmetic so much that they enable this industry to gross about 50 billion dollars a year. The industry to which I refer is the professional gambling industry whose volume has more than doubled in the past ten years. The basis of this industry is very simple. The man who places a bet on a horse, dice, roulette wheel or game uses virtually pure intuition. The professional gambler uses pure arithmetic. That is presumably why the professional gambler always refers to his customer as a sucker. I must confess that I have an intuitive reluctance to be a sucker, even if it indicates that I have more warmth, pity, understanding and sympathy.

Now, I am sure my advertising industry friend would immediately say that there is good intuition and bad intuition, and that the gambling industry thrives on people who used intuition that is defective. Whereas, by contrast, it might be assumed that good intuition is characteristic of the people who are best employed to make advertising decisions.

But, how do you tell who has good intuition?

Let's take a situation where intuitive sense appears to be the only method of making a judgment. Less take a baseball player standing at the plate and judging whether he will swing at an on-coming ball. To swing or not to swing. It seems unlikely that any mathematical analysis of ballistic characteristics of the missile is of any help at a time like this. There must be an almost instantaneous judgment of the probable flight of the ball and a complex set of muscle movements ordered by the brain. But, now, what do all of us do to measure the quality of this intuition? Do we examine this man to see whether he is warm, humorous, understanding and rich in human associations? We do not.

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