Providing to your readers, in an economy of words that succinctly get to the single, distilled point or principle that you seek to convey, is infinitely more effective and engaging than droning on endlessly, even if you employ 15-cent words and $1.50 phrases and $15 paragraphs that have each and every punctuation mark—including the oft-used em-dash, which I rely on a bit too much myself—in their proper place.Or, to put it another, much better way: less is more.
That’s why I want to take a moment to rave about this fantastic ad that my father-in-law, longtime advertising genius Bill Daniel, created a few months ago.
Before moving to Palm Springs four years ago with my wonderful mother-in-law, Pat, Bill was a force in the Chicago ad world for more than 35 years. After working for the likes of McCann-Erickson and Foote, Cone & Belding (FCB), for 20 years he co-owned an ad firm in Chicago (Equinox Advertising, which later became Washington Daniel).
Along the way, he was instrumental in numerous award-winning campaigns for the likes of Reebok, Allstate Insurance, IBM and Anheuser-Busch. At FCB, one of his brainchilds was The Silver Bullet, for the Adolph Coors Co.
As for this classic rabbit-foot ad, it is appearing regularly in Below the Line, a movie trade publication. It replaced a text-heavy ad that, while highly informational, was only slightly more digestible than the 70-word monstrosity that began this post.
Which Below the Line ad do you suppose will be remembered, and acted upon, more frequently?
I hope and trust that you will enjoy Bill’s creative masterstroke as much as I do. And if you want to try to lure him out of semi-retirement a bit more, just drop him an email at wjdaniel@mac.com.
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