Thinking small to make it big

In the award-winning TV series Mad Men, there is a scene in which the creative director of the ad agency Sterling Cooper, Don Draper, points to a page of The New York Times. The page contains a full-page ad for the car brand Volkswagen. "Guys, this is the future of advertising," Draper says. The ad to which he was referring had the pithy headline "Think Small". The car is shown in a tiny size in the corner of the ad. A large part of the ad is blank space.

- AMBI PARAMESWARAN

The ad contains a few lines of copy that explains the logic behind "Think Small". Advertising in the late 1950s and 1960s was full of big visuals and a lot of copy. Car ads were packed with claims extolling their great looks, excellence, turbo-drive and so on. And then comes an ad for Volkswagen that doesn't shout, it whispers. Don Draper was impressed at the bold stance taken by the ad agency Doyle Dane Bernback (DDB) and the client Volkswagen.

In fact, there are some funny stories about what a typical brand team could have done with that ad: Make the car size bigger; add adjectives such as "smart", "efficient", "great looks" to the headline; add a woman and a man... and you have a run-of-the-mill ad.

Instead of falling for the established tropes, the agency decided to do something different. The Volkswagen ad and the other campaigns that DDB churned out during its glory days unleashed a new term in advertising: Subtle persuasion. To sell, you don't need to shout. Howard Gossage, a legendary copywriter, said, "Nobody reads ads. People read what interests them. Sometimes it is an ad." DDB's advertising brought the reader into the body copy by its magical combination of art and copy. In fact, DDB was the first agency to make art directors and copywriters sit together and work together on campaigns.

What makes for persuasion?