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When author Phil Dusenberry began his career at the giant ad agency BBDO in 1962, advertising--and really all of marketing--was a very different industry. Products were simpler, customer segmentation and targeting less sophisticated, and even the vocabulary of sales and marketing less extensive. In the ensuing four decades, as Dusenberry rose to become Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of BBDO, the world changed. Still, the relative simplicity of a bygone era comes through in Then We Set His Hair on Fire--it's a refreshing read and a throwback to the time of David Ogilvy's classic, Confessions of an Ad Man. Partly a memoir, partly a textbook on classic advertising campaigns, and partly one man's discourse on the complicated art of persuading people to do a simple thing--"buying more stuff"--Dusenberry's work will satisfy different audiences. Most obviously, eager business students wanting to learn the behind-the-scenes details that went into the creation of world-famous advertising campaigns will find a trove of rich anecdotes. Dusenberry describes the epiphanous moment that led to GE's two-decade slogan, "Bringing Good Things to Life." He then weaves an entertaining narrative around the clients and campaigns that defined his career: HBO ("There's no place like HBO"), Pepsi ("Generation Next"), Cingular ("Raising the Bar"), even President Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign ("Morning in America"), and others. Dusenberry pays brief lip service to the science of advertising, describing the kind of background research that underlies great ad campaigns, but he admits a greater faith in gut instinct and the all-important insights that drove his clients' success. The alternative? Dullness and failure. According to the opinionated and colorful Dusenberry, overly careful reliance on empirical data leads to copycat advertising, which in turn produces the worst of all situations: a "parity economy" in which goods and services are relatively commoditized, without the kind of special differentiation that creates lasting businesses. Instead, Dusenberry exhorts his readers proverbially to "move the needle" in non-trivial ways, to get "sauce on your sleeve," to "stand for something," and every once in awhile, when circumstances warrant, to make the boldest of all moves, "betting the farm." These axiomatic phrases might seem trite from another author, but somehow, Dusenberry makes them seem trenchant with his never-ending stories. In one of the newer stories, for example, he recounts how BBDO staged a pro bono campaign for New York City shortly after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, using celebrities such as Henry Kissinger, Robert DeNiro, Billy Crystal, Ben Stiller, and Barbara Walters to illustrate the power of the dreams that draw so many young people to the city, even today. It's those powerful dreams that have become lost in so much advertising today, and which Dusenberry recalls in spades. While his playfully titled volume cannot be taken as a comprehensive, scientific manual for better advertising, it does well in reminding us of the qualities from advertising's origins that remain ever-relevant. --Peter HanAccording to advertising legend Phil Dusenberry, business ideas may or may not be valuable, but true insights are much rarer than ideas and much more precious. A good idea can inspire one commercial. But a good insight can fuel a thousand ideas, a thousand commercials. An insight gives you an entirely new way of thinking about your business. Consider just a few of the breakthrough insights that Dusenberry's agency, BBDO, has offered their clients over the years: That General Electric's unifying tagline should be “We bring good things to life.” That Pepsi should be targeting the “Pepsi Generation.” That Ronald Reagan's 1984 reelection theme should be “Morning in America.” That Visa should compare itself with American Express, not MasterCard. Talk about moving the needle! Dusenberry argues that these brainstorms don't come out of thin air, even at a world class organization like BBDO. They are actually the result of a rigorous and disciplined process of insight generation, one that any manager in any type of business can adopt. Dusenberry explains this process—Research, Analysis, Insight, Strategy, and Execution (RAISE)—in plain English. And he offers examples of some of the greatest business insights of our time, from the birth of Federal Express to the positioning of HBO. Moving the Needle will help businesspeople get to the heart of their toughest problems.
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