Friday, October 12, 2007

Leo Burnett (1891-1971) & the Power of Imagery


Born in St. Johns, Michigan, Leo Burnett studied journalism at the University of Michigan, becoming editor of the school newspaper. He also worked as a police reporter for the Peoria Journal and as an advertising manager with the Cadillac Motor Company in 1919.

Leo Burnett was not the ideal adman but his genius lies in the countless types of visual imageries we see in advertising today (see pixs).

He was famed for creating such icons as the Jolly Green Giant. Burnett resurrected a pagan harvest god to monumentalize "the bounty of the good earth" — and to sell peas. Other icons include Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger, Virginia Slims cigarette, United Airlines, Charlie the Tuna, the Keebler Elves, Gleem toothpaste, the Maytag Repairman, Dewar’s Profiles and Oldsmobile…

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Today was the last lesson of the 6 famous copywritter and I get to learn about Leo Burnett.

Leo Burnett started his career as a advertising manager with Cadillac Motor Company.When he started his agency,people teased him that he'll be selling apples on the streets.But he proved them wrong as some of his earliest ads earned him millions of dollar.Some of the million dollar ads is Michelin tyres,Kellog's cereal and Virginia Slims which put Leo Burnett to top the advertising industry during his time.What makes Leo Burnett a successful copywritter?

Leo Burnett believe in 'inherent drama' because he think it existed in every product and most of his advertisment showed love and respect to people.This make people to love his ads and feel comfortable with his ads.Other then that,Leo Burnett believed in philosophy of creating an image around the product instead of long text description and detailed arguements of the product.He is a smart guy who turns a product into a new friendly image which encourage people to try the product.Brand such as Michelin,Kellogs and Pillsbury Family Flour still famous in these day is because Leo Burnett stressed in finding the inherent drama in the product.Further more,those who work in Leo Burnett's agency work equally as everyone contribute idea and this shows team work and it is very important to success.For Leo Burnett,to make an interesting advertisment is to 'make it simple,make it memorable,make it inviting to look at and make it fun to read'.He too believed that brand building is a long term job and it required him to find the trigger word to keep a brand going on.

What I get to learn from Leo Burnett is not to see things only in the reality way but to imagine as it make things wonderful and to be a successful copywritter,we need to find the trigger word and search for the inherent drama in the product to create a outstanding advertisment.

-lawrence-

Anonymous said...

Leo Burnett developed a variety of advertising concepts,including the influential idea of "searching for the inherent drama" of the product.So,his idea of creating ad is the power of inherent drama.The power of inherent drama is create an image for the product instead of long bodycopy,headline,describtion or argument.This because mostly people see the image more than the bodycopy.So the image must be strong enough to tell the story to people.The power of inherent drama also means that finding the USP in each product by creating a strong,simple instinctive imagery.Leo enable to make the ad simple,memorable and fun to look at.He tooks a big challenge by making a "red on red" and used raw meat in his advertisement.This is something that every advertiser should not and dare not to do,but he broke this rules.He successfully turns the product into an image which gives the feeling of friendly and happy.These brands are The Jolly Green Giant,Michelin,Kelloggs and Pillsbury Family Flour.His conclusion of creating an ad is find the inherent drama in the product,brand building is a long term job,keep the campaign fresh,get the team involved and reach for the stars!

Anonymous said...

Leo Burnett, one of my most favourite copywriter, has created a magical world from a dead product and made it alive! He believed in "inherent drama". One of his most famous creation of cute character is the Pillsbury Doughboy. I like this character very much and it is so recognizable, and it gives people a feeling of comfortable and kind. It attracts the public, family and kids. The character that created for the product can also make more money for the brand. If the character is well-liked, they can produce a series of product from that character, it can be accessories like bag, watch or more. People will buy that product even it's not the original product itself if they like the character very much. Some people will even collect a series of collection of that character.

I get attracted by the Leo's logo at the first sight, it is so cute and with hand that are trying to reach the stars, and sooner I found that the logo was attached with a meaningful and attractive slogan:" When you reach for the stars, you might not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either." This slogan touched my heart and delivered me a message. We must always be confident to ourselves and try our best until the last minute even we know we could not be the best. It is just like when we did the line sculpture, our design final presentation, I've seen other group's sculpture and when I looked back to our group's, quite disappointed and was thinking to give up because I believed we can't beat them. This slogan tells me, if we never try we never know. Finally we get a satisfy result and I found this slogan helps.

Zyen

Anonymous said...

Everyone love Leo Burnett and his advertisement because of his advertisement showed love and respect for people. All the cute cartoon critters of Kellogg, The Pillsbury Doughboy, Charlie the Tuna and many more are created by Leo Burnett. His advertisement all used the cute and friendly character to contact with consumers. His advertisement showed love and respect for people. The mascot he created look cute and friendly that make consumer happy by looking his advertisement. He found the USP in each product by creating a strong and simple shape mascot to represent the product. People easier to accept his happy and cute advertisement than Rosser Reeves's advertisement which is keep repeat the same words. I like Leo Burnett's advertisement because most of his advertisement give the feeling of happy and the cute mascot will be memorable. Leo Burnett's advertisement are easy to understand and simple. He did not use the hard sell approach that give an offer. The story of the apples remind me that don't easily change our hope and dream when people say you cannot do it.

shu wan

Anonymous said...

Everyone love Leo Burnett and his advertisement because of his advertisement showed love and respect for people. All the cute cartoon critters of Kellogg, The Pillsbury Doughboy, Charlie the Tuna and many more are created by Leo Burnett. His advertisement all used the cute and friendly character to contact with consumers. His advertisement showed love and respect for people. The mascot he created look cute and friendly that make consumer happy by looking his advertisement. He found the USP in each product by creating a strong and simple shape mascot to represent the product. People easier to accept his happy and cute advertisement than Rosser Reeves's advertisement which is keep repeat the same words. I like Leo Burnett's advertisement because most of his advertisement give the feeling of happy and the cute mascot will be memorable. Leo Burnett's advertisement are easy to understand and simple. He did not use the hard sell approach that give an offer. The story of the apples remind me that don't easily change our hope and dream when people say you cannot do it.

Anonymous said...

Leo Burnett was a genius who brought new and creative ideas to the world. He was an advertising leader who is responsible for bringing big changes in the way advertising was done in America. He is my most love advertiser. He believed in ‘inherent drama’. He believed it existed in almost every product or service. His ‘Chicago-style’ advertising showed love and respect for people. It felt homegrown and authentic.

His agency can grow into one of the largest in the world. The main reason is the friendly strength, teamwork, hardworking, and their long-term campaign. These make his agency stands till now.

~*+ sU! +*~

Anonymous said...

Leo burnett,he was building an agency in Chicago.When he started his agency,people looked down to him and told him that he'll be selling apples on the street.but finally he succeed.and he put a bowl of apples on the lobby to tell us the story of apple.i loved this copywriter because he created many icons,cartoon character for the product.it makes him special than others copy writer.he created many chracter to represent the product.for example the pillsbury Doughboy,which i like the most.He's cute,lovely and chubby.Burnett concentrated on style, creating icons as a symbol of the product. He stressed that the creator of an ad needed to somehow capture and reflect what he called the "inherent drama" of the product.

065149

Anonymous said...

Leo Burnett's slogan which states, "When you reach for the stars, you might not quite get one but you won't come up with a handful of mud either," would be very true to me. When you aim for a very high goal, you might not be able to reach it but you won't get a very horrible results either.

Leo believe that every product have a "inherent drama" and by finding this inherent drama, people will learn to love and respect the ads as much as he do for the ads he made.

He believe more in visual than with just description headlines or wordings to tell people the benefits. His ads focuses on the image to grab people attention easily and slowly let them know the ads main content with few wordings or headlines which is pretty direct and can be easily understood.

As we all have known, normal consumers love imaginations and thus, I think Leo inserted our common consumers imaginations on a product and slowly developed from there to create a very good ad with a very attracting visual and not to forget, benefits of course =)

In the current generation, I believe a lot of people now easily get attracted to ads that contains a very attractive image or visual (Because I like beautiful and attracting images) and from there people will be able to know more about the ads.

Leo Bunett's good ad must contain this few elements,"make it simple,make it memorable,make it inviting to look at and make it fun to read" which is quite true. We all like simple and memorable things because people prefer to know the purpose of the ad directly instead of turning one big round to tell the purpose of the ad.

Anonymous said...

It is the last copywriter of the 6 famous copywriters that we had learned from the last lesson, Leo Burnett. A guy that believed in “inherent drama”, and turns a product into an image that to give the feeling of friendly and also let the audience feels comfortable and close. Like “The Jolly Green Giant, The Pillsbury Doughboy, Michelin, Kellogg…” He is smart, he use the image that he created to encourage the audience to try on the product. Leo Burnett is also always make an ad into a “make it simple, make it memorable, make it inviting to look at, make it fun to read” way.


CHUA 065150 CD065-3

Anonymous said...

Leo Burnett is one of my favourite advertiser from all of the other five because his ads are cute and interesting. I like Leo Burnett’s idea of creating an icon or a mascot for a certain brand. He created it to make the product/service look more alive and also more presentable. And there's also a story for each product that he created. His ads are always workable that will kept the viewer continue to read the ad. So as we all can see now, even though we now live in a technology world, the advertisers still followed Leo Burnett's style to grab people's attentions.

Anonymous said...

Everyone love Leo Burnett and his advertisement because of his advertisement showed love and respect for people. All the cute cartoon critters of Kellogg, The Pillsbury Doughboy, Charlie the Tuna and many more are created by Leo Burnett. His advertisement all used the cute and friendly character to contact with consumers. His advertisement showed love and respect for people. The mascot he created look cute and friendly that make consumer happy by looking his advertisement. He found the USP in each product by creating a strong and simple shape mascot to represent the product. People easier to accept his happy and cute advertisement than Rosser Reeves's advertisement that keep repeat the same words. I like Leo Burnett's advertisement because most of his advertisements give the feeling of happy and the cute mascot will be memorable. Leo Burnett's advertisement are easy to understand and simple. He did not use the hard sell approach means give an offer. The story of the apples is reminds me that don't easily change our hope and dream when people say you cannot do it.

sv leong

Anonymous said...

Leo Burnett, a man everybody love and care about. The thing I like about him is what he says “When you reach for the stars, you might not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either. “ This motivates me to do better in anything I do so that I won’t get mud. Leo Burnett believed in “inherent drama.” He believed it existed in almost all of the product or service. By using a character and tell a story behind the brand , he create a long-term advertising form almost all of his client ‘s brand or service .One of them is the Pillsbury Doughboy that he created for Pillsbury Dough .He even made it look 3d and cute to attract costumers attention , and everybody love it . The agency that Leo Burnett creates is base on “inherent drama” itself and now it’s still standing as one of the top ad agency in the world. He has major accounts such as Ronald McDonald that is also Leo’s creation, the Green Giant Peas , Kellogg’s Tony the tiger ,and many more .Leo Burnett ‘ s secret to success is his agency teamwork , account and creative people work as a team and equally , client partnership , the agency operated as a dedicated business partner , long-term campaigns , Burnett know how to stick with an idea and use it as a long -term campaign , and hard work , the people in Burnett work very hard to get what they want . These are the secret that Burnett uses to build his agency and make it one of the best ad agencies.

-C.Z.L-

Anonymous said...

Chang Sook Han

068069

CD068-3


COMMUNICATION SKILL (Copywriting): Leo Burnett

Leo Burnett always made unremitting efforts and never gives up. The Apple Story has explain how he approve his success. Leo’s Logo, it is a meaningful and attractive logo: always try the best and never give up. This idea is needed possess to all the people nowadays.

He created an inherent story appeal a personality to the products. This make customers know more about the product and feel want to buy it. “Red On Red”, he portray uncooked meat in advertisement, it is unique and different with other. He adv is unique but creating a simple and memorable instinctive imagery, like Marlboro.

He turn the brand into icon, it gives the feeling of friendly and fresh. The character that created by him is interesting and creative: Tony The Tigger, Mc Donald, The Pillsbury Doughboy that is cute and memorable. Many advertiser follow his way, like KFC, Energizer...