Looking through the anatomy of the best advertiser is even harder than looking for Superman’s weakest body part for several reasons. One, we don’t call ourselves advertisers. That noun is so lame… advertiser. It sucks.

We call ourselves by our names first and then by our job titles, Art Director, Accounts/Suit, Media Planner, etc. But since I need a sweeping common noun, I will call us “ad guys” which is not exactly cool but a little better. So the title should be Anatomy of an Effective Ad Guy.

Next, even Bernbach, Doyle, Dane and other guys who are considered to be the great ones in advertising would be the ones to tell you that there really is no formula for greatness in advertising. I have not been around as long as they have been and my talent (if I have any) can never be compared to theirs (Just the thought of it makes me shiver to the bones. Feels like I’m disrespecting them or something). Given that, what I will be talking about is only based on my world, my experience, my observations and my time.

Anatomy of The Best Advertiser: Passion

To many small business owners, advertising is all about selling their product. They do it because they need to convince consumers to buy their product. We do it for the same reasons… and more. We sell in a different way. We work into making the brand a part of someone’s life. We work on selling an idea and making consumers live the idea.

Many have succeeded. You may not be aware of it but many of the things you buy, habit that you developed and decisions you make were and are motivated by advertising campaigns. You really think iPod is better than any other MP3 players? You really think True Religion is better than Levi’s? You really think it makes you a better athlete just because you’re wearing Nike or Adidas? You really think wearing Quicksilver will make you a hardcore-daredevil-alternative kind of a guy?

Even who you vote for in the elections was, is and will continue to be affected by people like us. You think Obama would have won without a strategist thinking about how to package him? You think the “Change” mantra came from Obama? No. It came from writers and strategists. The guy had barely ten years in the political scene and he was running to become the President of the United States, he needed a miracle. He found it.

Advertising baby, it can put a guy to the White House

That’s what we do. We take a product, we package it, we figure out what to tell you to make you think you need the product. That is how we sell.

Your are Cool but also losers… but cool

We kinda think we’re cool but we’re really losers. A little of both actually. Most of us are into geeky, nerdy, losers stuff that the jocks in high school will never be caught alive liking like comics or toys or weird pens or legos or voodoo dolls. Some people call these weird, crazy, insane, losers, etc. Through the years, through our own doing too, we have managed to make these geeky things become cool.

It is the ability to create a world completely isolated form the one we are living in that gives us the ability to create a reality whenever we need to for our clients.

Do you ever notice that most of the time, the successful ones in school aren’t always the ones that make it in life? The losers, the bullied, the outcast, the ones that went through some or great amount of trauma are the ones that develop the ability to exert their energy into something else, that something else happens to be the one thing that makes them successful in life. We belong to that group. We were losers, one way or another, the coolness came afterwards.

Anatomy of The Best Advertiser: We’re vain… in a different way

Hearing someone say the words that you thought of, adapt the ideas that you initiated, and use the products you sell, it’s the ego trip of a lifetime. It’s almost as cool as the feeling singers get when they hear people sing their songs or actors watch their movies.

You create things… things that people like and it’s a great feeling. And to be paid for doing it… awesome. Some people get paid for balancing the sheets and others for building a house… we get paid to influence culture.

I love NY campaign has sold over $2 Billion products. Finger lickin’ good has been parodied so many times even when KFC has given it up, it continues to be used by the public.

We are never contented with people buying the product we advertise or praising the commercial we conceptualize, we want them to live it. As I’ve said, we’re vain, only worse.

Read part 2 here Anatomy of The Best Advertiser