advertising Archives - Page 5 of 12

Longer Than We Thought

In June 2024 Apple showed a more personal version of Siri at its developer event. Ads for the iPhone 16, launched that September, promoted the new features. In March 2025 Apple said: “It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features.” It pulled an ad starring the actor Bella Ramsey.

Buyers sued for false advertising. One suit said the phones offered “a significantly limited or entirely absent version of Apple Intelligence.” Apple agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class action over the delayed features, pending court approval. Apple maintains that it did nothing wrong.

The Super Bowl Ad Meter

Since 1989, USA Today has asked registered viewers to rate the Super Bowl commercials. Anyone who signs up as a panelist can vote. Nearly 150,000 panelists took part in 2022.

That year Coinbase ran a minimal ad built around a QR code. It received the lowest Ad Meter score. In June it won the Grand Prix for Direct at the Cannes Lions advertising festival. The next year an executive creative director at the Martin Agency said: “when it comes to the Super Bowl, the USA Today Ad Meter is the only list that really matters.”

Sell the Sizzle

In 1937 the sales trainer Elmer Wheeler published Tested Sentences That Sell. The title of its first chapter was “Don’t Sell the Steak—Sell the Sizzle!” Time magazine quoted the slogan, from a speaker for Wheeler’s firm, in August of that year. In 1938 The New Yorker quoted his explanation: “The sizzle has sold more steaks than the cow ever has, although the cow is, of course, mighty important.”

Americans also use the image as criticism. A person who is “all sizzle and no steak” seems able but gets little done. In July 2013 House Speaker John Boehner used the phrase about a speech by President Barack Obama.

It’s Ugly, But It Gets You There

From 1959, the New York agency Doyle Dane Bernbach advertised the Volkswagen Beetle in America. The ads did not pretend the car was beautiful. One tagline was “Ugly is only skin-deep.” A 1969 ad said: “It’s ugly, but it gets you there.”

Other ads sold what the car did. They praised its air-cooled engine and its easy-to-find spare parts. They also said the factory had more inspectors. In 1999 Advertising Age named it the best advertising campaign of the century.

Lucky Strike Leaves

In the fourth season of Mad Men, in the episode “Hands and Knees” (2010), Lee Garner Jr. of Lucky Strike tells Roger Sterling that the company plans to end its contract with the agency, after a 30-year history together.

In the next episode, “Chinese Wall,” word leaks that Lucky Strike has gone to the rival agency BBDO. Roger tells the partners it was part of American Tobacco’s “cost-saving consolidation of accounts.” The loss puts the financial security of the whole firm at risk.

Partners, Reduced

In April 2018 Procter & Gamble reported that it had cut the number of agencies it works with “from 6,000 to 2,500 partners.” Marc Pritchard said the number “could decrease by another 50%.”

The cuts had saved “$750m over the past three years” in agency fees and production costs. Pritchard called the new model “a joint value creation opportunity.”

Like a Good Neighbor

In 1971 Barry Manilow wrote the jingle “Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm” for the insurance company. He was paid $500. Manilow later called it “my greatest hit.”

On May 27, 2023, State Farm stopped accepting new applications for home insurance in California. It named construction costs, “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure” and reinsurance costs. In March 2024 it announced that it would not renew 72,000 property policies in the state.