We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
hy lohn E. McMiUin
Commercial commentary
Why the biggest aren't the best
A couple of weeks ago, in this space, I bitterly criticized the current state of P&G commercials, and ended my tirade by asking grumpily, Is today's best advertising being done by the biggest advertisers?
1 am informed by reliable experts in the publishing business that approximately 71.2% of all editors who ask such loud rhetorical questions (in either headlines or copy) fully expect to answer themselves with a resounding "No." And I find I am no exception to the statistic.
I don't believe that today's best advertising is being done by such titans as P&G, General Foods, General Motors, Lever, American Tobacco, and others in the top 10.
1 think you're much more apt to find outstanding examples of advertising creativeness amid the radio and tv commercials of .smaller, younger, more imaginative companies ( Revlon and Lestoil to name two) who are now fighting their way to the top.
Similarly, I know that it pays to pay attention to the commercials that emanate from some of the smaller agencies (under $50 million in billing). And, in your search for really outstanding advertising, it's well to look beyond Madison Ave. to such clearer, more truly American climates as Chicago, and the West Coast.
Advertising and the Middle-aged Mind
There's nothing very original, of course, about such statements. Native son admen, and small agency operators have been making them for years (often without very much success).
So far, though, I've never seen any published explanation for the phenomena. Why is it (as any honest adman will admit) that such a staggering amount of mediocre stuff pours forth annually from the offices of some of the biggest advertisers and agencies?
Here are a few theories: I suspect, first of all, that any large formal organization (client or agency) tends to develop middle-aged minds in very young people with lightning-like speed.
When youngsters come bouncing into the ad business, fresh out of college, they are often bursting with enthusiasm, imagination and ideas. Most of the ideas aren't very good. But at least, there's a spark, and freshness, and creative potential in those who suggest them.
However, before many of these kids ever have a chance to learn how to discipline and harness their creativity, they start to get pushed up the ladder toward the "executive type" jobs — supervisors, assistant account men, etc.
Here's where the middle-agedness begins. For they cease to be concerned with imagination and ideas, and tend toward typically middle-aged preoccupations with dollar signs, and costs, and sales figures and statistics, and dividends and pension plans and (God save the mark) whether they can retire at age 5.5.
As a result, you'll find along Madison Ave. more .51-year old minds {Please turn to page 30)
SPONSOR • 13 SEPTEMBER 1958