Whenever you can, make the product itself the hero of your advertising. If you think the product too dull, I have news for you: there are no dull pro… - David Ogilvy

I once found myself conspiring with a president of the Board of Trade as to how we might persuade H.M. Treasury to cough up more money for the British Travel advertising in America. Said Sir David Eccles, “Why does any American in his senses spend his holidays in the cold damp of an English summer when he could equally well bask under Italian advertising is the answer.” Quite so.

Many of the greatest creations of man have been inspired by the desire to make money. When George Frederick Handel was on his beam ends, he shut himself up for twenty-one days and emerged with the complete score of Messiah – and hit the jackpot. Few of the themes of Messiah were original; Handel dredged them up from his unconscious, where they had been stored since he heard them in other composers’ work, or since he had composed them for his own forgotten operas.

A lot of advertisements and television commercials look like minutes of a committee meeting, and that is what they are. Advertising seems to sell most when it is written by a solitary individual. He must study the product, the research, and the precedents. Then he must shut the door of his office and write the advertisements.