I am a writer by trade and by choice. That choice led me to become a newspaper reporter, an advertising copywriter, a motion picture maker and now a college professor. These may seem to be very different types of professions but they are really quite similar. In all of them we are not only writing but we are selling – a product, a service, an idea a way of life. We are also listening, seeing and reading because in order to connect with our communications target, we must understand both the rational and the emotional behavior of our target; and we must understand how our target will believe and behave when the message is received.

The best piece of advice I ever received in my writing endeavors was from my first city editor, a grizzled old Arkansan by the name of Lew Winkler, who cut his teeth on The Stars and Stripes during WWII. He would say to me, “Fitz, the fog is too thick”. For a while, I couldn’t understand his accent. A kind soul in the city room whispered to me, “He says the fog is too thick.”

I said, “The fog is too thick?” The editor smiled tiredly and said,” Yes, Fitz, it doesn’t pass the fog index”.

The fog index was how he judged if the copy would be understood. You take the number of words in a paragraph. Divide by the number of sentences. If the result is higher than seven, then the fog is too thick. The reader will not understand. You can have a thirteen-word sentence, but it must be followed by a one-word sentence. Otherwise, the average person will not understand you.

I have found the fog index is a valuable indicator. For more sophisticated audiences, I suppose you could move the number up to eight or nine. But don’t count on being understood by the handyman or a college professor.

Words have connotative and denotative values. That means words denote specific, concrete references. They connote baggage references, implications connected to society or culture. These are implications in the head of the writer and in the head of the reader separate and distinct from the denotative value of the word. For example, will “box cutter” ever have the same meaning after 9/11? And would it have the same meaning for someone ignorant of 9/11?

Now add the complexity of a sentence. We studied grammar in grade school and immediately forgot it. Yet, how a sentence is constructed and punctuated is crucial to the understanding of the meaning of the sentence. One misplaced comma can pervert the meaning of a sentence into something altogether different from what was intended.

Now add a spoken voice to the mix. The tone of voice can change the meaning or create ambiguity. A face, complete with body language, offers more opportunities for ambiguity. Now add a recognized face to the statement. More baggage. More ambiguity. More fog.

Now add a language change and the influence of a translator. Culture change. Maturity levels of the culture.

Von Clausewitz warned us about the “fog” of war. Richard Heurer, the guru of intelligence analysts, warned us about the “fog” of bias and personal observation when trying to sort information. Add all of these fog generators to the normal fog of communication, and the real miracle is that anything at all is communicated correctly or understood with precision.

The objective is a written, persuasive communication. The battlefield is a blank sheet of paper. The standard weapons are abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxy and z. The warrior is the copywriter. The secret weapons: imagination and discipline. Throughout the history of advertising, a well-turned phrase has separated the sheep from the goats. A daring, big idea has separated the sheep.

“Woman nearly itches to death.” That well-turned phrase was the beginning of a small space advertisement that captured the imagination of early twentieth century America. And how could it not? It was succinct and imaginative. It promised unimaginable rewards for the reader. It was a great one-shot advertisement. It was the product of imagination.

“Lemon” was the beginning of the first breakthrough advertisement for Volkswagen, the breakthrough automotive campaign that changed the advertising industry. The headline was the product of imagination. But the strength of the copy was that the cleverness evolved from a big selling idea and a daring that challenged prevailing notions of what the client would accept.

IN the decades of the 50’s and ‘60’s, the prevailing notion of what made a great automotive campaign evolved from David Ogilvy:”At 60 MPH, the loudest sound in a Rolls Royce is the ticking clock”.

Or it came from the magnificent, polished and retouched photo illustrations from Andy Nelson, the legendary JWT art director and pal of Lee Iacocca. Frequently the imagination accompanying Nelson’s work was limited to “All New. Lower, Longer and Wider than Ever Before.” Every now and then, some imagination crept in as when JWT creatives declared that the 1965 Ford rode quieter than a Rolls Royce. This unbelievable copy claim was quite true although the audience did not believe it. The audience, upon seeing the advertisement, was convinced that the 1965 Ford would ride quieter than a Chevrolet. This was the main point. Quiet equaled quality. And if the consumer believed that Fords had eliminated the rattle to become higher quality than Chevy’s, which was the main point. I mean, how many Rolls owners contemplated buying a Ford or Chevy. Creativity comes in many modes and in sometimes-devious ways.

Never the less, the standards for automotive advertising were loving, prestigious copy and or glossy glorious photography. In this climate, the agency that had the Volkswagen account kept the ugly little bug invisible. Not Bill Bernbach, who captured the account and the hearts and minds of millions of Americans by daring to do the unthinkable, He called the car a “lemon”.

Many advertising critics and creative directors celebrate Bill Bernbach and DDB for imagination; I celebrate them also for discipline and hardheaded salesmanship. The “Lemon” copy, that followed the headline, communicated a litany of product benefits that spun into a glorious multi-decade campaign. Each advertisement in the campaign, regardless of medium, featured a consumer benefit enhanced by disciplined imagination and a relentless commitment to the integrity of the campaign.

The big selling idea, the imaginative turn of phrase, the disciplined copy strategy and the integrity of the campaign produced a body of work perhaps never equaled in the fifty years since. It also created a challenger brand that cut through the big, fat happy brands of the domestic automobile industry of the day. Furthermore, the VW campaign modus operandi created a blue print for a modern advertising industry that hardly resembles what came before.

Larry Dobrow, an advertising man and editor and founder of AD Magazine, points out in “When Advertising Tried Harder” that DDB’s notion of the copywriter and art director working as a team revolutionized the creative department. It used to be, figuratively, that the copywriter wrote some copy and slipped it under the door of the art director. The next morning, the art director slipped the layout under the door of the creative supervisor. And so on.

When I started at JWT in 1964 on the Ford account that was the way it worked. The offices on the west side of the building contained copywriters. The wall on the north and east side of the building contained art directors, for the “light”. Those of us who aspired to be big shots, were crammed into foggy glass cubicles, willy-nilly throughout the center of the room. Downstairs, there was a huge art studio called the “bull pen” where artists and lettering men and makeup artists fabricated presentation pieces from the scribbles of writers and the pastels and water colors of art directors.

At DDB, the copywriter and art director worked as a team and pinned their creations on the wall. In the morning, Bernbach would walk through the halls and collect what he determined to be the winners and present them to the client.

Today, almost everyone works as a team. The dominance of television as a visual medium demands creative collaboration between copywriter and art director. The old notion of the producer disappearing with the script to Hollywood and returning with a finished product is unthinkable today, as it should be. When I started in the business, television producers were refugees from Hollywood who convinced agency management that only they could be entrusted with the script. Television was a relatively new and expensive medium and nobody wanted to let a writer or art director screw it up. In the new scheme, the copywriter, art director and producer collaborate to produce a finished creative product. The pendulum swung the other way. And some might say it has swung right off of its axis. The absurdity of runaway productions is wonderfully captured in Randall Rothenberg’s brilliant,”When the suckers howled at the Moon”.

Nevertheless, creative collaboration was a new thing in the 60’s and created success. Undoubtedly, that success is one cause. Another cause may well be the degree of difficulty of copywriting on a blank sheet of paper by yourself. A more likely cause is the failure of the education system, which is failing to produce students capable of, writing a paragraph of English. Whatever the cause, with the exception of a few gigantic exceptions, copywriting has become a lost art.

Young creative wannabes show up with books filled with speculative television copy and storyboards. Or, they may even bring in semi-finished television spots they have created on their own computers. I admire their presentation skills. But can they write? This is a question asked by creative directors in public and private and frequently answered negatively.

Ask most anyone who has to staff a department. The most difficult thing to find is good, strong writers. A creative person who can take hard product facts and turn them into persuasive consumer benefits in replicatible copywriting is worth his or her weight in gold. Make that diamonds.

This is why I have always provided a copy test for young creative wannabes. It is a modification of a test I once received from David Ogilvy, himself, and which if faithfully completed will reveal to the wannabe if he or she wants to be a writer. And it demonstrates to the potential employer whether or not the applicant has potential. Most who actually finish the test report that they find work in our business. Several, to my knowledge, today hold important positions with important creative firms. I would bet they too revere the VW campaign.

Here is how that VW copy continued:” Lemon. This Volkswagen missed the boat. The chrome strip on the glove compartment is blemished and must be replaced. Chances are you wouldn’t have noticed it. Inspector Kurt Kroner did. There are 3,389 men at our Wolfsburg factory with only one job: to inspect Volkswagens at each stage of production.”

The copy goes on to delineate minute imperfections that are eliminated from Volkswagens. The copy segues easily into consumer benefits. “This preoccupation with detail means the VW lasts longer and requires less maintenance, by and large, than other cars. It also means a used VW depreciates less than any other car. We pick the lemons, you get the plums.”

This is not artsyfartsy work. It is cold-blooded product sell, enhanced by an imaginative use of daring and detail.

Later a VW commercial depicted a foggy snows cape on an early morning. A VW drives through the murk into a garage. Out of the garage comes a truck with a snowplow. The copywriter explains, “Have you ever wondered how the man who drives the snow plow drives to the snow plow? This one drives a Volkswagen. So you can stop wondering.”

This commercial is frequently described as the greatest commercial ever produced. The campaign is frequently mentioned as the greatest campaign ever created and run. It has no clever theme line to burn it into the memory. It has no music, to speak of, to tap into our right lobe. It has no glamour and no glitz.

It does have imagination, daring and detail. It converts product facts into consumer benefits. Its body of work captures a brand and its core constituents. And I believe it would work today almost as well as it worked in the late 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s.

The VW campaign is copywriting at its best. Does that mean copywriters should not use music and theme lines and all the tools of modern communication. No, it does not. But it certainly calls for the study of copywriting as a commercial art form. Copywriting requires countless hours of practice and critique. Eventually, the copywriter will learn to self-edit. Before that happens, it is back to basics.

Basics is the alphabet and grammar mastered. Basics is creative ideas expressed simply and directly. Basics is grabbing the imagination with a well-turned phrase and delivering meaningful content easily absorbed. Basics start with expository writing and evolve into creative writing. Basics are the fundamentals that can guarantee success in a multitude of creative careers.

Writing ability and creativity are two different talents. The first can be taught and learned. The second is inherent but can be enhanced.

A report in the Journal of Creative Behavior, by Dr. Douglas West describes the creative process across borders from a number of countries around the world.

He describes creatives working in hotels or inns or wherever to escape office routine. He notes sleeping, walking and/or lying down are ways of gaining creative insights. Einstein formed his time and space theory while sick in bed and James Brindley, a creative engineer of all things, would take to his bed for days in order to solve a problem.

On the artistic side, there are numerous examples of the importance of work patterns and activities to creativity. Emile Zola pulled the shades in mid-day in order to simulate the night. Ralph Waldo Emerson left his family and rented a hotel room to gain solitary conditions to write. Hemmingway wrote in the mornings and spent the nights carousing. Debussy and Beethoven needed nature to work. Schubert had a regimented schedule from 9 a.m. To 2 a.m. Haydn rose at 6:30. To work while Berlioz and Beethoven worked all day and night if needed.

Sounds much like creative people at the agency, doesn’t it. Studying work patterns may seem trivial to those not in a creative industry, but to the individual creative they are often an important process in itself.

West notes that wide experience is a pre-requisite to creativity. He notes master chess players largely play from experience. They use knowledge to determine possible moves and how they should respond.

He describes creative problem solving as combining disparate thoughts. He introduces us to the concept of “bisociation”, where previously unrelated ideas are combines. To bisociate, creative thinkers need to draw upon wide experience.

And if you think about it, the greatest creative people you have met take unconnected things and then find connections between them.

Deadlines play a major role in creative activity. Rossini was known to leave his composing to the last minute. I know a couple of copywriters and art directors like that. Rossini’s advice was to “leave work until the evening before the opening night”. This method leaves little time for man in the street interviews.

West states that the ideal creative director would be a creative “pace-setter” and a creative coach, ideally cultivating the creativity of all those around him. And above all else, the creative director must feel the power of an idea and its connection to the goal. The good creative director is the copywriter’s best friend. The director is not just a copy judge. Rather the good creative director is helping the copywriter to expand good copy and a good idea into a great idea with great copy.
Aristotle, in Rhetoric, wrote “a speaker who is attempting to move people to thought or action must concern himself with their emotions. If he touches only their minds, he is unlikely to move them to action or change their minds, the motivations of which lie deep in the realm of the passions.”

Bill Bernbach pointed out many years ago a communicator must be aware of this or fail. “Facts are not enough.” He said. The copywriter must embrace the facts and convert them into pleasing benefits.

Copy is best when it eliminates anything that signal insincerity, naiveté, or phoniness, absurd claims, pointless humor, stilted dialogue, unlikely situations, bad talent, strange voice inflections, and most of all mediocrity. These cues summon consumer rejection faster than an Iraqi fighter on an Israeli radar screen does.
Another thing that summons consumer rejection is fog. Fog is too many words and too many sentences packed together. Fog is the ultimate destroyer of a great idea. The antidote to fog is to calculate the fog index. And live by its code.
I have always believed that the best movie about an advertising agency is Amadeus, the classic life of Mozart. In the movie, the young genius faces rejection of his opera by the client, the emperor. Mozart demands an explanation. The emperor is amused by this impertinence and seeks an answer. He comes us with one.
“Too many notes”, replies the emperor, enigmatically.
He meant to say, “The fog is too thick, Fitz.”