Behind every famous line is a set of working methods, most of them a century old and still in use.
Advertising has two histories running side by side. One is the campaigns everybody remembers: a small Volkswagen adrift in white space, a cowboy sold to men who thought filter cigarettes were effeminate, a line about diamonds that reshaped what an engagement was supposed to cost. The other is the quieter history of method — models of how attention turns into purchase, arguments about long copy against short, and the invention of new jobs inside agencies. The two keep colliding. Rosser Reeves argued that one repeated claim beat everything else; Bill Bernbach at DDB argued that how you said it mattered more than what you said, and made the case in print. Account planning appeared in London in the 1960s to put research inside the creative process rather than after it. These ten questions cover both strands, and the vocabulary that carries between them.
Every question in this quiz is listed below with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Play first if you would rather not see the answers — or read through as a study sheet.
Play it insteadAnswer: B. The Volkswagen Beetle
Why: Doyle Dane Bernbach made the campaign from 1959, using plain white space and self-deprecating copy while rivals promised chrome and size. It is routinely voted the most influential print campaign of the century.
Answer: A. Unique selling proposition
Why: Rosser Reeves set the idea out in the 1950s: one specific claim, repeated relentlessly, that competitors cannot make. He is credited with the campaigns for Anacin and for M&M's.
Answer: D. De Beers
Why: Frances Gerety wrote it in 1947 for the agency N.W. Ayer. The campaign is widely credited with making the diamond engagement ring an expectation in countries that had no such tradition.
Answer: C. Attention, interest, desire, action
Why: The model dates from around 1900 and describes the stages a buyer is meant to pass through. Later versions add steps after the purchase, such as satisfaction and loyalty.
Answer: B. Long, informative copy grounded in research
Why: He founded his agency in 1948 and set out his views in Confessions of an Advertising Man. His Rolls-Royce advertisement famously built an entire page around a claim about the electric clock.
Answer: A. Mass media such as television, press and outdoor
Why: Below the line covers direct mail, sampling, sponsorship and point-of-sale material. The distinction originally came from how agencies earned commission.
Answer: D. The instruction telling the audience what to do next
Why: It can be as plain as a web address or a telephone number. Direct response advertising is judged almost entirely on how many people follow it.
Answer: C. Filter cigarettes were seen as a product for women
Why: Leo Burnett's agency relaunched the brand around a cowboy in 1954. It became one of the longest-running campaigns in the industry and one of the most studied.
Answer: B. Represents the customer's perspective while the work is developed
Why: The role emerged in London agencies in the 1960s and reached America two decades later. It exists to bring research into the creative process rather than to judge the work afterwards.
Answer: A. Advertising that names or clearly identifies a rival product
Why: American regulators encouraged it from the 1970s, and the cola advertising of that decade is the standard example. Several European countries restricted the practice for much longer.
Stripped of marketing, the evidence on training is stable and fairly boring. The principles that keep surviving scrutiny.
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