Keith: On "You deserve a break today", Part Three.

Tim: Let's talk about McDonald's "You deserve a break today." It's one of my all time favorite campaigns.

Keith: Some acts of creativity are inspiration, some are exasperation and some are desperation. This was a little of each.

Tim: Tell me about it.

Keith: I've told this story once or twice. In 1970, we were competing with Young & Rubicam and maybe one other agency for McDonald's first national advertising campaign.

Tim: This was Needham.

Keith: Yes, I was the Creative Director of Needham. McDonald's told us that we weren't allowed to do any creative spec..

Tim: Meaning you weren't allowed to do storyboards and...

Keith: Not allowed. We'd be thrown out of the room if we had them. It was down to us and Y&R. They gave us 10 questions each, and my two questions were: "Do we have a unique selling proposition? Is there one unique proposition that should be focused on to the exclusion of all else?" And my second question was "What do you do with Ronald McDonald?"

Tim: Pretty broad questions. What did you do?

Keith: I had creative teams come up with selling propositions. Because my point of view was that you don't have one unique selling proposition, you have a million selling propositions - different to dad, different to kid, different to mom...

Tim: Right. Absolutely.

Keith: So, we put them on black cards and said, "These are some of your selling propositions." Now they were good headlines, but I couldn't present them as headlines.

Tim: Great!

Keith: We won the business. Now we had to do a campaign. So we went back to our selling propositions and we thought, "This is about an experience that is far removed from the daily, nightly meal planning, sitting around the table at home, nuclear family. This is a getaway."

Tim: Interesting.

Please click above for several early McDonald's TV spots.

Keith: Thank God this program never ran, because it would have been embarrassing. It could have been a short promotion. The key visual was this: Cityscape at night. Imagine six little McDonald stores with their golden arches illuminated neon. There were red and white stores in those days, no interiors. In the dark city landscape there are islands. They are islands where you can get away from meal planning, get away from table manners, get a way from vegetables if you are a kid, get away from high prices if you are dad. 'Come to the McDonald's islands.' We did music and we did storyboards. Fred Turner was CEO of McDonald's. He said, "This is the best the campaign I've ever seen. Maybe I need to call the Wall Street Journal and up our projections. This is fabulous."

Tim: Wow!

Keith: So we went out to California to shoot it. We were on the set, well into day 2 and received a call from McDonald's lawyers saying we couldn't say 'Come to the McDonald's Islands.' Some Root beer stands in Nebraska or some place were advertising themselves as Islands of Pleasure. Turner says, "The [heck] with root beer stands. We've got to do this."

Tim: Yikes!

Keith: There we are, with the deadline looming, on the shoot, stuff in the can, and we don't have a campaign.

Tim: Then what?

Keith: I called two music suppliers in New York because I knew what we wanted.

Tim: The pressure must have been incredible ...

Keith: It was. Of the two music suppliers in New York; one was the guy who did the Pepsi Generation who knew I wanted some uplifting getaway music. The other was the guy who had done Pan Am. "Pan Am makes the going great"

Tim: Right.

Keith: So we went to him and he said, "You've got a line?" I said, "Not exactly. We have "Get up and get away to McDonald's", because we were running with the island. He said, "Okay. We'll start working with "Get up and get away." So he brings in tune writers and I'm starting to do lyrics. In the Drake hotel, I wrote "Grab a bucket and mop, scrub the bottom and top." We emphasized clean because Ray Kroc [founder of McDonald's] was obsessed with cleanliness. Islands are clean, and so at McDonald's it's clean. The catch line was "We're so near yet far away" so get up and get away to McDonald's." We are near geographically, but far away experientially. So we did this and picked a Broadway tune (sings) and the catch line is "We are so near yet far away, so get up and get away to McDonald's."

Tim: Okay.

Keith: We take it to McDonald's and they asked, "God that's great. What do they say at the end?" We told them the ending, "We're so near yet far away." They expressed their reservations. They said, "I don't know, we love the music and we love the feeling, but there's something missing.

Tim: Oh boy!

Keith: So now we have eight notes with no words. So we go back (laughs). We go back to research and we listened to women we interviewed who were then called housewives. They said, "Give me a break. I get all the stuff." And we said," Okay, we have got to put the word break on these notes." We start juggling around and I remember typing, remember typewriters?

Tim: Sure.

Keith: "You deserve..." Keep in mind this was my group working and brainstorming, so who knows who comes up with what, we write it down. "You deserve a break today." Does that work? (Sings: You deserve a break...) Yeah. Done.

Tim: Okay.

Keith: So I called Sid Woloshin, who was the music guy, and I say "Sid, I got it." He said, "Sing it. I'll write it down." So I sang, "You deserve a break today" and Sid said, "It's not a sing-able line." I said, "What?" He said, "No. I'm not sure it's a sing-able line." I said, "Sid, you sing it or I'll find somebody else. I'm sure that we are going to have a sale." We did it and McDonald's loved it. One of the funny things about the jingle is that the singers kept singing, "Soak it up and get away" instead of, "So get up and get away". Every time we recorded it we'd have to stop the session and laugh and giggle. Later on when we got out of using :60 second commercials and into using :30s, we shortened it to, "You deserve a break today at McDonald's!"

Tim: That's great.

Keith: So it was an act of desperation!

Keith's "Any Wednesday" Columns

The play "Any Wednesday," was about a man who used his mistress's apartment as a tax write-off. It ran for two years on Broadway in the '60s. Keith's "Any Wednesday," memos written ran weekly for 23 years.

23 years.

To quote from an article, titled, "Last Wednesday," by Tim Nudd, reporter for Adweek in 2004, ""Any Wednesday" featured an image of a torn-out sheet of lined, spiral-bound paper, with breezy observations about the ad industry written sideways on the page. "There was a great Spanish poet named Juan Ramón Jiménez, who said, 'When they give you ruled paper, write the other way,' " Reinhard explained.

There was also a stock character, "Vic" (as in, "very important client"), who would make his own piquant observations. For example, Vic would often inveigh against the scourge of jargon. "Whenever someone uses jargon, I suspect they're trying to sell me something, rather than trying to help improve my business," he would say.

"I got a lot of great feedback," Reinhard said. "I did get flak once for using the word 'intrusive' as a positive. One time I printed the winning design for a paper-airplane contest on the back, in case anybody felt I was wasting paper on the front side."

Here are 10 (+ 1 bonus) of our favorites:

Arguments about whether advertising agencies should be big or small are irrelevant. Some clients need us in 20 countries, while others market their products in only one region. Some agency functions are best done big-media buying for example, while other activities need a more personal touch. Modern-day advertising agencies must therefore learn to be bog and small at the same time. And know when to be which.

The question "What would we be like if we were the world's smallest agency?" produced the following list of virtues at a recent planning session:

Fast, fun, flexible, nothing to lose, mean, daring, lean, hungry, distinctive, need to be crazy, great parties, no history, no politics, permission to fail, very creative, very aggressive, we'd know what we stand for, creative tension, easy communication, concentrate on output, simple processes, instructive.

I see no reason why we shouldn't embrace most of these qualities, even though we are one of the world's largest agencies. By doing so, we can become more efficient and more fun. And, in the end, even bigger.

I was once asked to list the qualities for good account managers. On reflection, I think they apply not just to account managers, but to all of us.

1. Common sense. (Better still, uncommon sense.)
2. An eye for a problem and a knack for solving it.
3. A gift for speaking and writing the language.
4. An urge and a talent for selling.
5. A preference for work over idleness.
6. A willingness to join the team with a dream of one day leading it.
7. A resilience that recognizes change as a normal condition of life.

I'm told that, as a schoolboy, Picasso was a terrible math student. What the teacher asked him to write the number "4" on the blackboard, Picasso saw it as a nose and began doodling to fill in the rest of the face.

Seeing the familiar in a fresh new way is at the heart of what we call creativity.

Many theories have been advanced over the years as to how each of us can release the creative posers stored up inside us. But not enough emphasis has been given to the first rule of creativity:

Be prepared to look foolish.

If you are unwilling to risk derision from those whose conventional wisdom is threatened by your idea, or if you are overly bothered by the snickers of those who take comfort in the "tried and true," it's unlikely you'll be very creative.

We all understand that there is no scientific formula for great advertising. It involves art, intuition, and magic.

The magic is the same as that which makes for great paintings, defines great literature and permeates great music. It brightens the stage for theater and ballet and punctuates the highest achievement in sports.

This being true, those of us who seek to work magic in our craft should learn to recognize it and applaud it wherever we encounter it. Which means, we not only need to exercise our talents, but nourish them as well. Or, as Goethe put it:

"Once ought, every day to least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words."

A group called the Daughter of St. Paul put together a list of words they consider to be the most important in the English language. Here it is:

Most important 6 words:

"I admit I made a mistake"

Most important 5 words:

"I am so proud of you."

Most important 4 words:

"What is your opinion?"

Most important 3 words:

"If you please"

Most important 2 words:

"Thank you" (continued on next page)

Most important 1 word:

"We"

A Japanese client shared this thought: "Genius is perseverance in disguise."

Ludwig Mies vande Rohe is credited with the observation that "God is in the details," and Mark Twain one observed that the difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between that lightning bug and the lightening bug and the lightning.

Our friend Roberto Duailibi, Director of a Brazilian agency, DPZ, provides an eloquent reminder of the importance of details in our business.

"Word here, an illustration there, the space between characters, the colors of the photography or the illustrations, the choice of the models, the scenario, the overall mood of the text and photo, the choice of type for the heading, and then for the copy, the weight of the signature, on which page to place the ad, at what time to run the commercial...details minutiae. In the end they make all the difference."

Evan as we think big in shaping our organization to meet the global needs of more and more clients, let us never forget the think small by paying attention to every detail of every detail of creativity, craftsmanship and client care.

I was asked by a member of one of our creative departments how I reconcile the apparently conflicting ideas of asking for "breakthrough creative" with the need for "client loving." My response:

1. You won't succeed at selling "breakthrough creative" by telling clients they are wrong, or implying their intelligence if inferior.

2. "Breakthrough creative" must also be right. A good question to ask is: "Would I invest my own money in this idea?"

3. The braver the creative idea, the more trust is require. Clients don't buy much of anything from people they don't trust.

4. "Digging in" is a concept alien to salesmanship. It suggests a kind of arrogance and confrontation which is hardly in keeping with the art of persuasion.

5. Enlisting the client's early involvement in strategy development helps create "ownership" of the brave creative ideas which result.

And finally:

6. You can't sell "breakthrough creative" to a client who's fired you.

"That was then. This is now."

Those are the words on a large sign posed on the door of the CEO for one of our clients in the U.S. Another important client has a marketing team which has a "five year rule" - Don't tell us anything that happened more that five years ago." These clients join a growing list of companies struggling hard to transform outmoded cultures into organizations geared to the marketing challenges of today.

Advertising agencies are trying to do the same, although it seems ironic that an industry which takes such pride in creativity and innovation has often seemed more concerned with celebrating its past than creating its future.

We do well to honor our heritage and traditions, and take inspiration from them. As long as we remember "That was then. This is now."

David Ogilvy and I were once discussing the pressures of the advertising business. He shared a favorite quotation of his which has since become a favorite of mine. It is an observation by St. Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury:

To be under pressure is inescapable. Pressure takes place all over the world: war, siege, and the worries of state. We all know men who grumble under these pressures, and complain. They are cowards. They lack splendor. But there is another sort of man who is under the same pressure, but does not complain. For it is the friction which polishes him. It is pressure which refines and makes him noble.

May our men and women never lack for splendor and nobility under pressure.

R.I.P. Jeff Foley, 1958-2008.

Our deepest sympathies go out to the family of Mr. Jeff Foley, who passed away over the holidays.

Resident of Fairfield, CT and beloved husband of Deborah Kornblum Foley, Magazine Publisher and Advertising Director, Jeff Foley died most unexpectedly in his home Tuesday, December 30, 2008, the victim of a heart attack. In addition to Jeff's devoted wife Deborah, he will be remembered by his daughter Garnet Nicole, and sons Alexander and Patrick. Jeff held many positions in publishing including the Principal of Travel Marketing Solutions, Publisher for Travel Holiday, Advertising Director / International Sales Director / European Manager for The New Yorker, and sales management for Texas Monthly Magazine. Jeff loved his business, and the friends he made in Publishing.

Jeff lived an amazing and full life. Stints in London, New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Houston, among others, Jeff embodied a maxim he loved: "live well - laugh often - love much." Jeff earned a BS Economics from Oregon State University in 1980. Notably, he won a "Persuasive Oratory" championship in a competition that included all PAC 10 schools and more than 200 universities in total. Jeff was a 1976 graduate of Washington High School, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he was a mainstay on the State Championship swim team of Iowa, and his many close friends there remained a vital and wonderful part of his life throughout.

A Memorial Service celebrating Jeff's life was held at 1pm Saturday Jan 3rd in Fairfield at the Greenfield Hill Congregational Church, 1045 Old Academy Road, Fairfield, with Reverend Alida Ward officiating. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to: The Foley Family Education Fund, c/o: Lesko & Polke Funeral Home, 1209 Post Road, Fairfield, CT 06824.

One reader, Mike McHale, Founder/Chief Media Officer of Montville, NJ-based CLEVERWORKS LLC wrote to us about Jeff, "The publishing community lost a great guy and one of my best friends last week. He was the the godfather of my daughter, Rachel. Here's picture of Jeff and Rachel at her First Holy Communion in April, 2008." Mike can be reached at mike@cleverworks.us for more information.

Our hearts and prayers go out to the Foley and McHale families, and those who knew Mr. Foley in the magazine publishing business. He will be remembered for the joy he brought to their lives - The Editors

Keith: The Road to Madison Avenue, Part One.

Keith: From Making Change to Making Omnicom, Part Two.

Keith Reinhard's Four Freedoms