What Makes a Successful Ad?

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The TV show Mad Men presented a world from 60 years ago that was unrecognizable in its styles, technology, and social mores. Yet, the advertising principals employed by Sterling Cooper’s marketing team are very familiar. While life changes quickly, the parts of our brain that control emotional responses are slow to evolve. The elements of a winning ad in 1960 are not that different than they are today.



Creating Customer Loyalty in a World of Change and Choice

Fifty years ago, consumers were fiercely loyal to products ranging from cars to colas. That loyalty was frequently baseless and often passed from one generation to the next. If I drove a Chevy, so would my offspring, and for years, the three U.S. automakers counted on it. When a variety of better-made, inexpensive imports arrived in the 1980s, GM, Ford, and Chrysler never saw them coming, because they never thought their customers would go elsewhere.