Hey Whipple, Squeeze This!

This guide to advertising creativity is written by Luke Sullivan, a veteran copywriter. The book covers the full arc of a creative career, from understanding advertising's history and mastering the craft of concepting, or generating advertising ideas, to navigating digital platforms, presenting work to clients, and building a portfolio.

Sullivan opens with a tongue-in-cheek fantasy about gunning down irritating advertising mascots, establishing his central argument: Most advertising is terrible, and the industry can do better. He traces this conviction to Mr. Whipple, the fictional grocer from Procter & Gamble's Charmin toilet paper commercials, which aired in 504 versions from 1964 to 1990. The campaign sold billions of rolls and made Whipple the second-most-recognized face in America in 1975, yet it was consistently ranked among the most disliked commercials. Sullivan uses Whipple to examine a deeper tension between what sells and what is worthy of the craft.

To explain how the industry arrived at this tension, Sullivan charts advertising's evolution. In the 1950s, adman Rosser Reeves coined the unique selling proposition, a strategy built on communicating a single product benefit the competition could not match. As products reached parity and advertising clutter grew, consumers erected what Sullivan calls "the wall," a perceptual filter against marketing messages. William Bernbach and his agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB), launched the Creative Revolution of the 1960s with groundbreaking campaigns for Volkswagen and Alka-Seltzer, proving advertising could be witty, intelligent, and still effective. Economic anxiety in the 1970s empowered research-driven managers, ushering in the positioning era, a framework articulated by marketing strategists Al Ries and Jack Trout that focused on shaping a brand's place in consumers' minds relative to competitors. Sullivan argues positioning failed to move products consistently without strong creative execution. He recounts his own entry into advertising, hired by Tom McElligott at Bozell & Jacobs in Minneapolis in 1979, and declares his allegiance to the Bernbach school of creative excellence.

Sullivan demystifies the creative process, describing daily agency life as mostly sitting with feet up, staring at a partner's shoes, and talking about movies until an idea arrives. He introduces James Webb Young, a copywriter from the 1940s, and his five-step method for generating ideas: gather information, attack the problem, drop it and let the subconscious work, experience the eureka moment, then implement. A key concept is that a brand should equal one adjective (Volvo equals safe, Porsche equals fast), and that draconian simplicity is the only antidote to clutter.

The book's strategic foundation rests on truth and authenticity. Sullivan traces the collapse of the "Voice of Authority," the authoritative tone that once allowed advertisers to make unverified claims, arguing that decades of scandals produced a nation of skeptics. He identifies two dimensions of authenticity: brand authenticity (being true to what the brand stands for) and audience authenticity (presenting the message in a way that respects the audience). Rather than starting with product facts, Sullivan advocates starting with a central human truth. He cites the agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners' got milk? campaign: Instead of the fact that milk builds strong bones, strategist John Steele identified the truth that consumers buy milk because it goes with things like cereal, cookies, and sandwiches. Sullivan also introduces the concept of "Embracing the Suck," admitting a product weakness to accentuate its main strength, as Buckley's cough syrup did with the tagline "It tastes awful. It works."

With strategy established, Sullivan turns to concepting, using the print ad as a foundational exercise. He advises writing flat statements first, creating word and image lists, and digging shallow holes everywhere rather than committing too early. Techniques include comparison, metaphor, exaggeration, omission, inversion, and using the medium itself. On building campaigns, he describes cycling between convergent thinking (grouping ideas to find patterns) and divergent thinking (pulling new ideas out of a core concept).

The chapter on copywriting argues that the word "clever" perfectly describes the best advertising work. Sullivan introduces a Venn diagram of CLEAR and CLEVER, arguing the sweet spot where clarity and cleverness overlap produces effective advertising. He explains the concept of "a smile in the mind," the pleasurable mental click when a viewer decodes an idea, and identifies two sentence structures that produce this effect: the paraprosdokian, where the ending reframes the beginning, and the parallelism, where opposition creates a one-two punch.

Sullivan's chapter on simplicity introduces the "Speed of the Get," the time it takes a viewer to understand an idea. He walks through a demonstration by copywriter Neil French, who systematically removed elements from an ad until only one essential element remained, illustrating that every addition reduces the importance of everything else. He extends this principle to out-of-home advertising, recommending no more than seven words on a billboard and citing a digital British Airways billboard by the agency Ogilvy London as a masterpiece of the medium.

The book's treatment of storytelling centers on conflict. Sullivan contends that most clients want to show only the happy ending, which short-circuits narrative power. He distinguishes campaigns from brand platforms, worlds with their own rules that generate many stories, and presents the formula TRUTH + CONFLICTS = possible platform. He illustrates with Crispin Porter + Bogusky's Coke Zero "Taste Infringement" platform, where the rules of the legal world generated spin-off stories across multiple media.

For making big creative leaps, Sullivan advocates problem-finding over problem-solving, arguing the best work rarely comes from a creative brief. He introduces ideation techniques by Tom Monahan, author of The Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy, including "Ask a Better Question," which challenges each answer with progressively more probing questions until arriving at one that requires a creative leap, and "Intergalactic Thinking," which forces connections between brand-related words and unrelated subjects.

The chapter on going viral argues for what Sullivan calls "Rong," ideas that go 180 degrees against common sense. His primary example is Burger King's "Moldy Whopper," which filmed a Whopper rotting over 35 days with the line "The beauty of no artificial preservatives." He also describes the "Idea-as-Press-Release" process developed by the agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which tests whether an idea is newsworthy enough to earn free media coverage.

Sullivan then addresses the shift from traditional to digital advertising, describing paradigm shifts from messaging to content, from what brands say to what they do, and from talking at customers to talking with them. He traces branded content to the agency Fallon's The Hire series for BMW, short films that became the first massive branded content success. On social media, Sullivan introduces the "Pitch, Play, Plunge" framework: Most content should be for immediate consumption, some for interactive engagement, and a smaller portion for immersive experiences. The book also discusses the role of creative technologists and digital developers, arguing that traditional creatives should become "T-shaped" professionals with proficiency across disciplines.

Sullivan's advice on television and video emphasizes that simplicity, storytelling, and visual thinking apply regardless of medium. He advises letting imagery do the work when possible and solving the last five seconds of a spot first. On managing the creative mind, he argues multitasking is a myth, advocates turning off all devices during work sessions, and offers strategies for getting unstuck.

The chapter on presenting work opens with the observation that 20 percent of time is spent thinking up ideas and 80 percent protecting them. Sullivan advises basing defenses on strategy rather than emotion and devotes significant attention to the problems of focus-group testing, arguing that testing rewards derivative work and punishes the new and unusual. He counsels persistence as the ultimate weapon.

The book's final instructional chapter provides career advice, emphasizing that the portfolio website is the most important piece of work in a creative's career. Sullivan frames the job search as "World War III," advising candidates to compile a list of 100 target agencies, customize outreach, and network aggressively. He addresses ethical dimensions, citing Crispin Porter + Bogusky's truth anti-tobacco campaign as a model and urging creatives to choose agencies whose values align with their own.

Sullivan closes by celebrating advertising as a uniquely powerful creative profession, arguing it is "the world's most powerful art form" and citing campaigns that created the orange juice market, put computers in homes, and transformed American fitness culture. His final counsel is to stay humble.