A Few True Golden Rules - Keep Current, Be Curious, Never Stop Listening

G. Steven Dapper
Hawkeye Worldwide Communications
Founder, Chairman

Advertising – What It Takes

I have a fairly broad definition of what I believe advertising is. To me, it’s a compendium of all communications that a consumer sees, feels, touches, hears, smells, and so on. If they’re walking through a store, the packaging on a particular product is advertising. If they are at home, the direct mail they receive in their mailbox, the e-mails and pop-ups on their computers, or the images they see on television are advertising. The logos on the NASCAR autos or even the t-shirts with every name known to mankind are advertising.

I do not believe there are any specific golden rules for successful advertising. I think whatever rules do exist should be broken, because once you set them down on paper and decide to follow them every time, you create the same vanilla message over and over again. So I suppose that means the true golden rule is to keep changing, keep searching for that original thought, and never forget that the brand has to be successful for you to be successful. Whatever tool is needed to move the product and brand should be explored, whether you’re on the client side or the agency side.

It’s also important to stay current regarding the world around you. For me, it helps to have two young daughters and to have followed them through their teenage years, observing what they and their friends are doing. I think you need to experience going to the theater, the ballet, taking trips out to Iowa, journeying to a farm community, going bowling in Kansas, venturing to Australia, or Cartegena, reading everything you can. You can’t shut down to the new things going on in life.

The essential skills for success in advertising include being eclectic and covering different types of ground, because being curious about the world is probably one of the best traits that anyone can have if you want to succeed in marketing and advertising. You must passionately try to understand why people do things, what triggers them to make their purchase decisions, how they use these products after purchasing, and always have empathy for people who like different things than you do.

Being inquisitive about the world and how it works is extremely important for success in advertising from a communications standpoint, but it takes common sense, passion, and the ability to deal rationally with others to get your ideas sold. In the end, everything that gets produced is a team effort, and there must be that passion about wanting to do things right.

Advertising is a fine balance between art and science. The science part of it is consuming information, but the true challenge is translating these facts into a relevant strategy, into an original, creative execution, and generating the right communication stream. I passionately believe that the physical, creative part of what we do is an art, an exceptionally true craft. An individual sitting down with a blank piece of paper and coming up with an idea, a look, a feel, a word that captures the essence of what that brand means to a consumer or what problem it solves for the consumer is able to do so because it is inherent within them. It can be structured and certainly nurtured, but it can never be completely taught. There is something in a soul that allows you to create wonderful, effective advertising.

It is a group of individuals that the world sometimes believes to be too quirky. Some of the most disciplined people I’ve ever met in the advertising business comprise the creative talent. You must study a lot of things, you have a time frame, you have to shoot a commercial, you have to set type, and you have to get something produced for it to have an effect on the consumer. I think people set pretty good timetables for themselves. However, they may run by their own clocks. The good thing about advertising and being disciplined is that there are so many ways to get to that end solution, and advertising has been great in not dictating how people have to work or dress as long as you can get to that end result on time. If it works, go ahead and do it.

The one crucial element in advertising is to never stop listening. Keep looking at the entire world and what goes on in it. Change is all around you, and if you stop noticing it, you’re dead. Coming out of college, I almost took a job at the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago. A recruiter said would be a big mistake to go into the unstable advertising world. It would be too unpredictable. Well, I’m glad I kept going on Interstate 80 to Madison Avenue. It has been and is a fascinating experience and the banking industry doesn’t appear to be that stable of late!