First, study the product you are going to advertise. The more you know about it, the more likely you are to come up with a big idea for selling it.

Most marketers spend too much time worrying about how to revive products which are in trouble, and too little time worrying about how to make successful products even more successful. It is the mark of a brave man to admit defeat, cut his loss, and move on. Concentrate your time, your brains, and your advertising money on your successes. Back your

Now consider how you want to ‘position’ your product.

When you are appointed to head an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send you one of these Russian dolls. Inside the smallest you will find this message: ‘If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs, but if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, Ogilvy & Mather will become a company

Another way to make headlines hard to read is to superimpose them on your illustration. Another mistake is to put a period at the end of headlines. Periods are also called full stops, because they stop the reader dead in his tracks. You will find no full stops at the end of headlines in newspapers. Yet another common mistake is to set copy in a

Demonstrations are most effective when they compare your product’s performance with your competitors’.

But Resor made one mistake. He stayed too long. By the time he was 80, his ideas for advertising campaigns had become anachronistic. And partners who would have made good successors retired before he did.

Confessions of an Advertising Man still

‘If you and your competitors all make excellent products, don’t try to imply that your product is better. Just say what’s good about your product – and do a clearer, more honest, more informative job of saying it.