Two Ways to Win in Advertising
And why most advertisers choose the wrong one
Most of what you’ve heard about advertising is wrong. There are exactly two ways to win. One of them takes money. The other takes brains.
Way #1: Outspend Everyone
If you want to be #1, the most reliable way to get there is simple: spend more than everyone else.
I don’t mean slightly more—I mean obliterate the budget of your competitors. Drown them. Blitz the market. Wallpaper every available surface with your logo. Hammer people with your brand until they see it in their sleep.
Don’t believe me? Ask:
Coca-Cola
Nike
Amazon
Microsoft
These companies don’t just win—they buy winning. With that much repetition, with that much muscle, the message barely matters. Why? Because most people don’t deeply analyze most of their purchases. We don’t. You don’t. I don’t.
I don’t stand in the grocery aisle thinking philosophically about cola. I buy the one that’s been rattling around in my brain the longest. If I’m broke, maybe I’ll grab the generic. Otherwise, it’s usually Coke or Pepsi—not because I love either, but because I’ve got more important things to worry about and they’ve spend billions of dollars on making their brands stand out.
Repetition works. Brute force works.
Quality is optional. Creativity is optional.
“Good enough” + repetition = sales.
That’s Way #1.
But here’s the thing: most businesses can’t play that game. You don’t have Coke’s budget. Trying to out-Coke Coke is a great way to go bankrupt.
If you don’t have their budget, don’t play their game.
Luckily, there’s Way #2.
Way #2: Get the Message Right
If you can’t outspend them, you have to out-smart them.
You don’t have the luxury of lazy repetition. Your message has to work like Velcro—it has to stick, or you’re dead.
This is how the great ones did it:
A History of Getting It Right
Advertising has two histories: the history of money—and the history of ideas.
This is the second one. And it belongs to the scrappy, the clever, and the outnumbered.
Claude C. Hopkins (1920s)
Hopkins was boring. No fancy art. No clever jokes. Just brutal, direct, sell-or-die copy.
His masterpiece? A campaign for Schlitz Beer. At the time, every beer brand claimed to be “pure.” But Hopkins took a tour of the brewery, saw how they cleaned the bottles with live steam, filtered the air, and used pristine artesian wells—and told that story. Suddenly, Schlitz went from nowhere to #1.
Lesson: Specifics sell. Vagueness dies.
Albert Lasker (1930s)
Lasker helped invent modern copywriting. Before him, most ads just described products. He made ads into little salesmen, one-to-one conversations that closed the deal.
He famously helped grow Palmolive by figuring out that people don’t care how soap is made—they care what it does for them. His copy said, “Keep That Schoolgirl Complexion,” and sales skyrocketed.
Lesson: People don’t buy products—they buy outcomes.
Raymond Rubicam (1940s)
Rubicam co-founded Young & Rubicam, and he introduced the radical idea that creative should be based on research.
One example: For Jell-O, they discovered that children were influencing family grocery purchases. So they ran fun, colorful ads aimed at kids, not just moms—and Jell-O sales exploded.
Lesson: Talk to the people who actually make the decision.
David Ogilvy, Rosser Reeves, and Leo Burnett (1950s)
Ogilvy brought British wit and sharpness to American ads. He famously said, “The consumer isn’t a moron; she’s your wife.” Respect the reader’s intelligence, or lose her.
He gave us the Hathaway Shirt Man with his elegant eyepatch, making dress shirts mysterious and cool.
Rosser Reeves invented the Unique Selling Proposition (USP). His client M&Ms: “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.” Short, memorable, benefit-driven.
Leo Burnett understood that people love characters. He created the Marlboro Man, the Pillsbury Doughboy, and Tony the Tiger. Mascots made brands feel human.
Lesson: Give people a reason to buy, then make it impossible to forget you.
Bill Bernbach & Phyllis Robinson (1960s)
These two—at Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB)—rewrote the entire rulebook.
They created the legendary Volkswagen “Think Small” campaign. Instead of pretending the Beetle was something it wasn’t (a big, glamorous American car), they leaned into its honesty: It’s small. It’s weird. It’s German. And that honesty made it cool.
Lesson: Truth beats spin. Always.
George Lois & Mary Wells Lawrence (1970s)
George Lois made ads that punched people in the face. His work for MTV, Tommy Hilfiger, and ESPN was loud, brash, and impossible to ignore.
Mary Wells Lawrence made brands glamorous. She took a struggling airline and turned it into Braniff International, complete with colorful planes designed by artists. She proved advertising could be art.
Lesson: Don’t whisper. Shout something worth hearing.
Hal Riney, Tom McElligott, Jerry Della Femina, Lee Clow (1980s)
Hal Riney gave us emotional storytelling with his work for Reagan’s “Morning in America” campaign and Saturn cars. It was advertising that didn’t feel like advertising—it felt like America talking to itself.
Tom McElligott wrote headlines that made other copywriters jealous. “If this isn’t your idea of a good time, maybe you need a new idea of good time.”
Jerry Della Femina made advertising funny.
Lee Clow gave Apple its swagger, with the “1984” commercial that introduced the Macintosh to the world.
Lesson: Emotion sells. Humor sells. Story sells. Cool sells.
Dan Wieden, David Kennedy, Jeff Goodby, Rich Silverstein (1990s)
Dan Wieden coined “Just Do It” for Nike, turning sports into philosophy.
Goodby & Silverstein created “Got Milk?”, one of the most quoted taglines in advertising history. They sold absence—the anxiety of not having milk.
Lesson: It’s not the product. It’s the feeling around the product.
Then We Lost the Plot
By the 2000s, advertising stopped selling and started auditioning for Cannes.
The budgets got bigger, the technology got fancier, and suddenly, advertisers stopped worrying about what they were saying.
The focus shifted to how good the ad looked or how clever the targeting was—but the core question—“Is this the right message?”—started to die.
The result?
We live in an era of technically brilliant, beautifully produced, completely forgettable advertising.
It’s advertising with six layers of irony, zero layers of truth. It’s advertising that wins awards but doesn’t win customers. It’s advertising that costs millions and produces shrugs.
And that’s all before the 2010s and advertising’s new-found obsession with data mining. Which has produced, last I checked…
….zero good ad campaigns, and…
…an industry of click-farm fraudsters.
The Choice Now Is Clear
If you have the money, buy the repetition. Outspend everyone. Go loud. Go everywhere. No one can blame you for stick with old reliable repetition.
But if you don’t—you have to get sharper. Smarter. More dangerous. You have to get the message right.
Good advertising is never really about selling a product. Yes, that’s our purpose, but it’s not what it’s about. It’s about selling a truth. Something people can grab hold of, believe in, and remember.
Most advertisers won’t do this work.
Which is exactly why you should.