Broadcasting Telecasting (Jul-Sep 1963)

Campbell-Ewald's Adams General Motors' Smith Interpublic's Harper the most profitable ideas" for the advertiser. Most advertising research "has been oriented to what has been tried and what has been done to the old and to the past. It is concerned with proof, not discovery. Creativity is fo cused on the future and on the new. The new is a product of imagination, experience and knowledge." Imagination, he added, can "create the noncommunicative as well as the communicative; the unpersuasive as well Finland, 2.1% each, declining past Australia, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, West Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and Brazil to Denmark, with 1.4% of its gross national income spent for advertising. At the other end of the list, he cited Russia, Red China, East Germany, Cuba, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia — all with no advertising. Mr. Dillon asked, "Do you think for a moment that this is a coincidence? Do you think that it is just a matter of luck that advertising and freedom and dignity of man go hand in hand? Do you think advertising is merely a frill that rich and successful nations can afford? If you do, I would like you to remember that in all countries where freedom of the press and freedom of speech and freedom of religion are suppressed, they are suppressed under the argument that the people are not yet rich enough for that luxury. . . . Advertising is never welcome among the politically or intellectually arrogant who have appointed themselves the nursemaids of the people. Tyranny . . hates advertising like the devil hates holy water." The BBDO executive told his au dience that if it believed with him that "advertising plays such a vital part in maintaining the freedom of our social structure, then you and I as the citizens charged with advertising bear some heavy responsibilities. Among these responsibilities, Mr. Dillon called for advertising to be "as free as possible from legitimate criticism." He continued that he is "gravely concerned that we may not meet our responsibility to protect the principle of freedom of speech in advertising. For the first time in 228 years, we are finding a spate of cases where truth is no defense against suppression. . ." More important, Mr. Dillon concluded, all in advertising should continue to support "the long-standing American tradition of noninterference in the communications content of media. We have a grave responsibility to protect the independence of our communications media — for the day on which we do not do so, we open up an additional opportunity of news management by the state. I happen to be very much in favor of having news managed by managing editors and advertising managed by advertising managers." BROADCASTING, September 23, 1963 as the persuasive; the ineffective as well as the effective. The new expression that doesn't communicate may be just as creative as one that does." An agency should have an atmosphere of freedom for the imagination, and still give it guidance. "We may repudiate research as a substitute for imagination, but we are obliged to turn to it for evaluation of its creatures," he said. Mr. Harper said creative people should have their own pre-testing methods which they can use or reject. This would encourage them to try things — "to go 'far out' without fear of lifted eyebrows, closed minds or phony permissiveness. Within this atmosphere, creativity can come into full flower. It can express the finest inspiration of the creative mind in support of the business purposes of the advertiser. This is a use . that liberates rather than inhibits." Resentments ■ Inside the agency, "the creative person is no bargain to get along with," Ernest A. Jones, president of MacManus, John & Adams, asserted. "Creative people are rewarded and motivated to a large degree by the things they make and deeply resent having their creations meddled with by those they may consider as interloping imposters. They may consider the creative function an embattled enclave surrounded by management Indians, with the authority for "completely irrelevant criticism." Creative people, he continued, "are sensitive, volatile, ego-centered, tactless and often inarticulate. . ." Creativity, Mr. Jones declared, "is a divine affliction." But "it can also be a pain in the assets of any otherwise wellmanaged agency. The creative spirit must be directed to a commercial end." MJ&A has established seven bench 49