Rosser Reeves (10 September 1910 – 24 January 1984) was an American advertising

executive and pioneer of television advertising; Reeves generated millions for his
clients. The Ted Bates agency, where he rose to chairman, exists today as Bates CHI
& Partners.

Contents
1 Early life and start in advertising
2 Advertising style
3 Later Years
4 Published works
5 References
6 Further reading
7 External links
Early life and start in advertising
Reeves was born in Virginia to a Methodist preacher, and briefly attended the
University of Virginia until he was expelled for drunkenly crashing a friend's car
during the Prohibition era. Luckily, he had just won one hundred dollars as a prize
for a state-wide chemistry contest that served as his final exam for first year
Chem 101. While other students wrote novel chemical formulae as their submission,
Reeves, by virtue of not knowing anything about chemistry having spent the semester
drinking, dancing and gambling, blithely submitted an essay titled "Better Living
Through Chemistry". He would later use this title for DuPont Corporation campaign.
The one hundred dollars was enough money to move to Richmond where he was hired at
a new bank that was hiring young contest winners. Finding that he was a poor
accountant but verbally gifted, he began writing advertisements. He soon moved to
New York City to found Ted Bates & Co with Ted Bates.

Advertising style
Reeves believed the purpose of advertising is to sell. He insisted that an
advertisement or commercial should show off the value or unique selling
proposition, (or USP) of a product, not the cleverness or humor of a copywriter.
His most typical ad is probably that for Anacin, a headache medicine. The ad was
considered grating and annoying by almost all viewers but it was remarkably
successful, tripling the product's sales. In 7 years the 59-second commercial made
more money than the movie Gone With The Wind had in a quarter-century.[citation
needed]

His ads were focused around what he coined the unique selling proposition, the one
reason the product needed to be bought or was better than its competitors. These
often took the form of slogans — Reeves oversaw the introduction of dozens, some
that still exist to this day, such as M&M's "melts in your mouth, not in your
hand." He argued that advertising campaigns should be unchanging with a single
slogan for each product. His commercials for Bic pens, Minute Maid orange juice,
M&M's candies, Colgate toothpaste and other products used similar methods, often
making dramatic demonstrations.[citation needed]

Reeves pointed out that to work, advertising had to be honest. He insisted the
product being sold actually be superior, and argued that no amount of advertising
could move inferior goods. He also disagreed that advertising was able to create
demand where it did not exist. Successful advertising for a flawed product would
only increase the number of people who tried the product and became dissatisfied
with it. If advertising is effective enough and a product flawed enough, the
advertising will accelerate the destruction of the brand. Similarly, Reeves
believed it was a waste of money to claim uniqueness that doesn't exist, because
consumers will soon find out, and they won't come back to the brand. This is
important because historically fortunes are made from repeat business. Money would
be better spent building some kind of meaningful advantage into a product before
launching a costly advertising campaign to promote it.[citation needed]
Reeves advised clients to be wary of brand image advertising which is less likely
to be successful than his claim-based strategy.[citation needed] This is because
when communication relies on an image, the claim is not articulated. An image can
almost always be interpreted different ways, many if not most of which won't do a
product any good. The message that a viewer takes away from an image is often very
different from what the advertiser had intended.

Or to put it another way: practically every product has a number of benefits that
might be claimed. Commonly one of the benefits is more popular than the others,
even more popular than the others combined. Therefore, it's imperative to do
everything to make people understand the most important benefit, to achieve
credibility and to avoid distractions. The aim is to have as high a percentage of
people as possible take out of an advertisement what the advertiser intends to put
into it. This is most likely to be achieved if a claim is articulated and proven
with credible evidence—in a brief commercial, some kind of dramatic demonstration.

Reeves is also notable for creating Dwight Eisenhower's presidential ads for the
1952 election. He packaged Eisenhower as a forthright, strong, yet friendly leader.
The commercials all included a regular person asking a question to the upper right
of the screen. They would cut to Eisenhower, not wearing glasses to look stronger,
looking to the lower left and then turning to the camera and responding. They were
created by letting Eisenhower speak for a number of hours. Then questions were
crafted later that best fit his answers.[citation needed]

Later Years
In the 1960s Reeves' techniques began to fail.[citation needed] Consumers became
more savvy and learned to tune out uninteresting commercials, and within the
advertising industry itself the Creative Revolution, exemplified by Doyle Dane
Bernbach's "Think Small" campaign for the Volkswagen Beetle. The Creative
Revolution rejected many of his precepts though some might argue that the "Think
Small" does conform to the rules set out in Reeves' book Reality in Advertising
because it highlights what is most unusual about the Beetle, namely its small size
and distinct shape. Reeves retired at age 55. He declared that he had always
planned to retire at that age, but many of his competitors felt it was because of
the decline in his influence.[citation needed]

He came out of retirement in 1967 to form the Tiderock Corporation, which he

described as a "think tank" for corporate business.[1] One of its projects was a
promotion in 1968 of a pro-smoking article by Stanley Frank published in True
magazine. The promotion was paid for by the Tobacco Institute, who also paid Frank
to write the article. [2] This was common practice among advertising men of the
time and wholly unremarkable from the perspective of 1960's business ethics. Reeves
died of a heart attack on January 24, 1984 at his home in Chapel Hill, North
Carolina. He was 73 years old. [3]

In the late 1950s, Rosser Reeves bought the 138.72-carat star ruby, the largest
star ruby ever. It is said that he carried the ruby around with him and that he
considered it as his good luck charm. Mined in Sri Lanka, the original 140 carat
ruby was cut down slightly to improve the star pattern in it. In 1965 Reeves
donated the star ruby to the Smithsonian where it is currently on display in the
Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.

Published works
Reeves expressed his views in his 1961 book, Reality in Advertising (Knopf) which
is still taught at Harvard Business School. An interview with Reeves was included
in The Art of Writing Advertising (1965). His greatest contributions were to
express more clearly than anyone else the philosophy of a claim and to show how the
philosophy could be applied to commercials that involve severe time constraints.
Reeves wrote a well received novel, Popo (Knopf) about a poet who leaves a life of
material wealth to move to Greenwich Village in New York City, to pursue his
poetry.

Reeves co-authored The 99 Critical Shots in Pool with Ray Martin to explain both
Euclid and Sir Isaac Newtons' geometric proofs. [4]

Rosser Reeves' poem E=MC2 appeared in "The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction,
Tenth Series" in 1961. The editors commented:

"The author is chairman of the board of a large corporation, and we confess we find
it intriguing and comforting to know that a man whose workday is devoted to the
harsh realities of multi-million-dollar profit and loss has in him that good old-
fashioned sense of wonder."

References
Dougherty, Philip H. (1967-08-04). "Advertising: Rosser Reeves Is Back Again". New
York Times. p. F44.
"The truth about...True's Article on Smoking". Consumer Reports: 336–339. June
1968. Retrieved 2008-08-07.
"ROSSER REEVES, 73, AD EXECUTIVE DIES". New York Times. 1984-01-25. p. A18.
Reeves, Rosser (1993). The 99 Critical Shots in Pool: Everything You Need to Know
in Order to Master the Game. Random House, Inc. New York. ISBN 0812922417.
Further reading
Johnston, Laurie (January 25, 1984). Rosser Reeves, 73, Ad Executive Dies. New York
Times
Powell, Jim (October 21, 1979). Madison Avenue's Rosser Reeves. New York Times
Reeves, Rosser (1961). Reality in Advertising. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. LCCN
61007118.
External links
A collection of Reeve's Eisenhower ads
"Project X" episode 5 of The Last Archive by Jill Lepore (premiered 11 June 2020;
especially from 16:50 to 28:30)
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/25/obituaries/rosser-reeves-73-ad-executive-
dies.html#:~:text=Rosser%20Reeves%2C%20who%20as%20the,He%20was%2073%20years%20old.