Then We Set His Hair on Fire: Insights and Accidents from a Hall of Fame Career in Advertising [Hardcover]

Phil Dusenberry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 2005

According to advertising legend Phil Dusenberry, business ideas may or may not be valuable, but true insights are much rarer than ideas and much more precious. A good idea can inspire one commercial. But a good insight can fuel a thousand ideas, a thousand commercials. An insight gives you an entirely new way of thinking about your business.

Consider just a few of the breakthrough insights that Dusenberry’s agency, BBDO, has offered their clients over the years: That General Electric’s unifying tagline should be “We bring good things to life.” That Pepsi should be targeting the “Pepsi Generation.” That Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection theme should be “Morning in America.” That Visa should compare itself with American Express, not MasterCard. Talk about moving the needle!

Dusenberry argues that these brainstorms don’t come out of thin air, even at a world class organization like BBDO. They are actually the result of a rigorous and disciplined process of insight generation, one that any manager in any type of business can adopt. Dusenberry explains this process—Research, Analysis, Insight, Strategy, and Execution (RAISE)—in plain English. And he offers examples of some of the greatest business insights of our time, from the birth of Federal Express to the positioning of HBO.

Moving the Needle will help businesspeople get to the heart of their toughest problems.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When author Phil Dusenberry began his career at the giant ad agency BBDO in 1962, advertising--and really all of marketing--was a very different industry. Products were simpler, customer segmentation and targeting less sophisticated, and even the vocabulary of sales and marketing less extensive. In the ensuing four decades, as Dusenberry rose to become Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of BBDO, the world changed. Still, the relative simplicity of a bygone era comes through in Then We Set His Hair on Fire--it's a refreshing read and a throwback to the time of David Ogilvy's classic, Confessions of an Ad Man.

Partly a memoir, partly a textbook on classic advertising campaigns, and partly one man's discourse on the complicated art of persuading people to do a simple thing--"buying more stuff"--Dusenberry's work will satisfy different audiences. Most obviously, eager business students wanting to learn the behind-the-scenes details that went into the creation of world-famous advertising campaigns will find a trove of rich anecdotes. Dusenberry describes the epiphanous moment that led to GE's two-decade slogan, "Bringing Good Things to Life." He then weaves an entertaining narrative around the clients and campaigns that defined his career: HBO ("There's no place like HBO"), Pepsi ("Generation Next"), Cingular ("Raising the Bar"), even President Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign ("Morning in America"), and others.

Dusenberry pays brief lip service to the science of advertising, describing the kind of background research that underlies great ad campaigns, but he admits a greater faith in gut instinct and the all-important insights that drove his clients' success. The alternative? Dullness and failure. According to the opinionated and colorful Dusenberry, overly careful reliance on empirical data leads to copycat advertising, which in turn produces the worst of all situations: a "parity economy" in which goods and services are relatively commoditized, without the kind of special differentiation that creates lasting businesses.

Instead, Dusenberry exhorts his readers proverbially to "move the needle" in non-trivial ways, to get "sauce on your sleeve," to "stand for something," and every once in awhile, when circumstances warrant, to make the boldest of all moves, "betting the farm." These axiomatic phrases might seem trite from another author, but somehow, Dusenberry makes them seem trenchant with his never-ending stories. In one of the newer stories, for example, he recounts how BBDO staged a pro bono campaign for New York City shortly after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, using celebrities such as Henry Kissinger, Robert DeNiro, Billy Crystal, Ben Stiller, and Barbara Walters to illustrate the power of the dreams that draw so many young people to the city, even today.

It's those powerful dreams that have become lost in so much advertising today, and which Dusenberry recalls in spades. While his playfully titled volume cannot be taken as a comprehensive, scientific manual for better advertising, it does well in reminding us of the qualities from advertising's origins that remain ever-relevant. --Peter Han

From Publishers Weekly

In Dusenberry's practical if sometimes self-congratulatory memoir-cum-handbook, he asserts, "A good idea can inspire a great commercial. But a good insight can fuel a thousand ideas, a thousand commercials." The book is as thick as Campbell's Chunky Soup with instructive anecdotes from his long and storied career as former chairman and chief creative officer of BBDO North America. With illustrations from BBDO accounts including GE, Federal Express, Gillette, HBO and Pizza Hut, Dusenberry stresses the importance of strategic insight for distinguishing your brand and cutting through the proverbial clutter. GE's tag line, "We bring good things to life," which endured from 1979 to 2003, was built on the corporate giant's pervasiveness, for example. Dusenberry addresses the challenges of branding in today's "parity economy," doing research, creating ads that actually "sell more stuff," launching a brand, distilling what it stands for as the starting point for generating insights, and building a superior creative team. Throughout, he strikes an authoritative but conversational tone as he offers behind-the-scenes observations (e.g., on the infamous Michael Jackson Pepsi commercial). Dusenberry's theses are hardly earth-shattering, but his firsthand take on some major campaigns of the past few decades make the book worth a browse for aspiring marketers. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover (September 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591840821
• ISBN-13: 978-1591840824
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #435,821 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars On Causing "Insight Moments", September 8, 2005

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Then We Set His Hair on Fire: Insights and Accidents from a Hall of Fame Career in Advertising (Hardcover)

This book really isn't about advertising (nor about arson for that matter); rather, in it Dusenberry shares much of what he experienced and learned throughout a 40-year career which culminated in his election to the Advertising Hall of Fame in 2002. As he explains, "This is a book about insights in business -- how we get them, how we recognize them, how we keep them coming....Ideas, valuable though they may be, are a dime-a-dozen in business....Insight is much rarer -- and therefore more precious...a good insight can fuel a thousand ideas....More than anything else, an insight states a truth that alters how we see the world." The allure of a powerful insight: Once you experience one, "you can't see the world in any other way." The most valuable insights are those which reveal and then guide and inform an appropriate course of action. Such insights initiate an chain reaction of ideas, some of which -- in turn -- generate other insights.

This process can occur in any human enterprise and invariably requires effective communication, cooperation, and collaboration involving several different people. However, everything begins with a need to be filled, a question to be answered, or a problem to be solved. Then extensive research must be conducted, with the results rigorously analyzed. Hopefully, what Dusenberry calls a "salient fact" will be revealed which should lead to a compelling insight. Then there must be a strategy which will "drive" the insight during implementation. In advertising, Dusenberry claims, "if you have a great insight and strategy, great ads practically write themselves." He would probably be the first to concede, however, that mass production of automobiles (e.g. Ford), creation of feature-length animation films (e.g. Disney), and splitting the atom (e.g. Manhattan Project) may involve the same process but are immensely more complicated than devising and then executing successful advertising campaigns for FedEx, Frito-Lay, GE, Gillette, HBO, Pepsi, Pizza Hut, and VISA.

What I especially appreciate about this book is Dusenberry's personal, indeed conversational style as he allows his reader to accompany him "down memory lane" to re-visit many of the most significant "insights and accidents" during his career. For each, he carefully establishes a context: the situation, the objective, the challenge(s), the competition, the nature and extent of collaboration at BBDO, the relationship with the given client, the compelling insight, and its primary strategy; then its production, execution, and the eventual (if not always immediate) impact of the given campaign. I also appreciate Dusenberry's wit and, when appropriate, his self-deprecation. He may be in his industry's Hall of Fame but he is mercifully free of a Rushmorean self-image.

Frankly, I have become allergic to book titles which are cute, catchy, clever, eye-catching, sticky, gooey, etc. The relevance of this book's title is best revealed within Dusenberry's narrative. However, I do reassure those who read this brief commentary that the title is eminently appropriate. More importantly, the situation to which it refers illustrates that when accidents occur during the production of television commercials featuring celebrities such as Michael Jackson, most of them respond to problems in a professional manner.

This is a thoroughly entertaining and well as an unusually informative personal memoir about advertising and BBDO, of course, but also about certain basic business principles which are relevant to all other industries and to all other organizations. In Chapter 13, "Building a Foolproof Insight Creation Machine," Dusenberry offers eighteen "guidelines" (not rules) to guide and inform anyone who is then inspired by his concluding remarks: "A strong insight can fuel a thousand reasons to act and make something happen. That, more than anything, should be your reason to fight and persevere for your own insight moment. When you are armed with a powerful insight, the ideas never stop flowing." Dusenberry's memoir provides an abundance of such insights. Hopefully, at least one or two of them will help his readers and their associates to cause their own "insight moments" to occur.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A few thoughts from the client side, June 29, 2009

By 

J. Myers "myerspercussion" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Then We Set His Hair on Fire: Insights and Accidents from a Hall of Fame Career in Advertising (Hardcover)

First, to eliminate any confusion, this is the same, word-for-word book as One Great Insight Is Worth a Thousand Good Ideas: An Advertising Hall-of-Famer Reveals the Most Powerful Secret in Business. So buy one or the other, whichever is cheaper. Now THAT's an insight you can take to the bank.

Having worked with Phil for 7 years as a client, it is refreshing to revisit his charm and wisdom. Of which he had plenty. I found the book to be mostly accurate. Two mistakes pop out: 1. The Jay Leno/Doritos theme line was Crunch (not munch, that's a Frito's term) All You Want, We'll Make More. That was penned by Tracey-Locke's top creative guy and he should have been mentioned for that insightful creativity. 2. A MAJOR creative force at BBDO, Harvey Hoffenberg, isn't mentioned once. Harvey was responsible for MANY of Pepsi's incredible TV spots in the 80s. He and Phil had a falling out and considering the sizeable ego involved, that's apparently the price of friendship lost. But it's unfair and inaccurate, as if US History had been written without mentioning Ben Franklin. There were other people suffering the same fate but Harvey's omission REALLY stands out.

And for those of you who are interested in how advertising worked (note past tense: the heydays of great advertising are GONE in the US; just turn on your set to see the ample evidence) I believe Phil gives too little credit to the myriad of people who are involved (for better, and, sometimes, worse) in that complex dance. Think of it as the ultimate "telephone game" where one person tells the next a short message with the hope of getting it to the end intact. Great advertising people enhance that message at every step. And by "people" I mean the brand managers and their superiors; the advertising managers; the agency creatives, account people and producers; and then the production companies -- their producer(s) (including casting, set design, location scouts, props, wardrobe, etc) and the director; and the people in post: editor(s), effect, music, sound effects, etc. They all need to get aligned like so many planets.

And if that alignment comes unglued, it gets ugly. There was one spot that BBDO produced for Pepsi called "Crack" that never saw the light of day. The idea was that the earth was incredibly parched and created a giant fissure that "ran" all over the place looking for refreshment and ultimately ran to a Pepsi machine where, when it was totally consumed by the crack, created a big refreshing AHHH heard around the world. When CEO Roger Enrico saw it he said "no." It just didn't work. Pepsi paid the $1MM+ tab for it and we moved on to the next round. That was Enrico's genius. He knew the high-wire act of creating the world's best ads couldn't bat 1.000 and BBDO was never in the slightest dinged for that one. The old Sicilian saying -- A fish stinks from the head -- is true. In this case, Enrico's brilliance is what cascaded down over the company and the agency, to the benefit of both.

So if Phil is guilty of anything in this book it is the oversimplification of that delicate, complex "dance." And overuse of the words "I", "me", "my" and the like. There IS a lot of wisdom in this book -- notably that most companies/brands/products don't really understand how they are viewed by their customers. His wine shop metaphors are dead on. The consumer holds all the keys, you just have to reach out and touch them to see where the beef is if you absolutely, positively want to send the very best.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Probably one of the truly best, and important, business books I've read, April 25, 2006

By 

Susan Reimers (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Then We Set His Hair on Fire: Insights and Accidents from a Hall of Fame Career in Advertising (Hardcover)

And I've read A LOT. This one, however, goes behind the scenes on how a product lets the consumer know it's here by a "memorable" campaign, not the the 24/7 onslaught of pop-ups or product placement or posters-in-public-bathrooms that we have been experiencing of late. It's enough to make a person wistful for the good ol' days of advertising. I'm NOT in the business, but I can still remember each and every ad Dusenberry mentioned. (And I can still recite: Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun! :-) ) At the same time, I can't remember a single ad that aired last night during "Desperate Housewives." Newcomers may blow off the meanderings of a mere high-school graduate who "did good" in advertising, but from this consumer's viewpoint, Dusenberry GOT it, and that's an insight I'll cherish.