Each of wears a
Halloween mask all year long.
We have to, to keep
our nerve endings hidden. To
keep our hopes, and needs, and
hangups, our fears and prides and
prejudices, our irrationalities
and our cry-buttons from hanging
out for everyone to stare at.
Or step on.
We wear those shells to work
to lunch, to meetings, and to church.
We always keep them handy for
when friends drop in. And adjust
them for which friends drop in.
It's this shell, whether it
be button-down, Edwardian, or denim,
that confuses a lot of us in advertising.
If we're not careful, we find ourselves
writing to the mannequin, insead of
the man inside, which often makes our
ad cute but not convincing, beautiful
but not believable, "swinging"
but without substance.
Shell-talk forgets that inside each
of us, no matter how old or how young we are, is
a person who is worried about his money,
his age, his looks, his health, his happiness,
his family, and whether people like him.
Or hate him. Or worse, simply ignore him.
The secret of advertising, then, is to crack
the shell, to talk to the man inside the man.
Simple it is, but easy it isn't.
It takes an uncommon understanding of
people, great sensitivity and skill, and the
discipline to use them every single time.
But it means the difference between an ad
someone skips over and an ad someone reads
all the way to the end

Harvey Bailey