Book Review

AdMedia,  Sep 17, 2003  by Vaughn Davis

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

By Luke Sullivan

RRP $29.05

Reviewed by Vaughn Davis

Atlanta-based copywriter Luke Sullivan is kind of famous (here in Auckland at least) for having been the international celebrity judge at the ACP Leaf Award a couple of years back. What he's best known for though, is a little paperback he wrote back in 1998 that set out to explain why advertising should be better than most of the crap we see on the TV, and how to go about making it that way.

Hey Whipple, Squeeze This* was an excellent read, and I know I'm not alone in rating it as one of the best books on advertising, ever.

So how do you follow an act like that? By updating it a little here and there, it seems. Sure, it would have been great for Sullivan to come out with a completely new book, but when you read the original you get the idea it's the sum of everything he's learnt in his whole time in advertising. Compared to waiting another 30 years, a quick freshen-up isn't such a bad thing, and can't hurt Whipple's chances of staying on ad schools' recommended reading lists in the face of more contemporary competition.

'Original' or 'New and Improved', Whipple deserves its icon status, and if you haven't read it yet this new edition is a great place to start. Luke Sullivan is funny. He writes well, he knows his ads and he really, truly loves working in the ad business. Whipple captures that love and distils it into a book that's part manifesto, part textbook, part memoir and a wholly brilliant read.

Like its subtitle claims, yes, on one level this book is a Guide to Creating Great Ads. If you're a tips and techniques kind of guy or girl, you'll find plenty here, and most of them probably work. (I'd love to try "staring at your art director's shoes across the desk for a fortnight then going to a movie" some time.) An especially nice bit takes us step by step through the process Sullivan went through trying to come up with a direction for a bourbon brief he once worked on. It's encouraging, in a schadenfreude kind of way, to see that even a guy with 20+ One Show gongs on the mantelpiece has to write 99 crap lines before finding one that works.

Yeah, some of the tips are at the Advertising 101 level, but they're well illustrated and nicely put. The one where he suggests heading to a Gary Larson annual when you're stuck for ideas is pretty funny too.

So much for the tips and tricks. What sets Whipple apart, and makes it worth going back to even without a "new and improved" version, are its insights into the industry in general. There might be a few differences in scale and budgets between the US agencies Sullivan writes about and the ones we work in (a short deadline for him seems to be measured in weeks) but the big picture's the same and he paints it in a way that makes you just want to keep on reading.

If you've already got a copy of Whipple sitting around somewhere, you'll be wondering what's actually new and improved in the 2003 edition. Well, not all that much that I could see. Unfortunately, there's no "Preface to the 2nd Edition" to point out what's been added, so short of sitting down with the two books side by side it's down to guesswork. (I noticed a couple of sections had had more up to date illustrations added to them and that bourbon brief has been joined by one for an airline introducing Boeing 777s.) So if you've already got a Whipple sitting around somewhere you won't want to shell out for this one, but if you've never read it, or if some scabby placement team borrowed your copy and never gave it back (are you guys reading this?) you really should buy this book.

*Who's Whipple? Mr Whipple was the central character from a long- running US TV campaign for Charmin toilet paper. His one and only gag was to apprehend housewives squeezing the Charmin in his grocery store, only to take a sly squeeze himself as soon as they'd moved on to the next aisle.

c 2003 Profile Publishing Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand, and can not be used without prior permission of the publisher.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.