The Fifties

by David Halberstam

teach Reeves anything, Reeves replied, “If we ever get out of packaged goods and into luxury items, I’ll be glad to go sit at David’s feet and listen.” When his friends complained about the crude quality of his commercials, Reeves would go into their bathrooms, open up their medicine chests, and take out several brand-name products as evidence that his campaigns worked, even with them. One of his more genteel competitors, Fairfax Cone, said that Reeves delivered advertising “without subtlety, and without concern for anyone’s gentler feelings. He also proves that advertising works.” Reeves had admired Ted Bates, whose agency he eventually took over, because Bates had, in his words, “the most unconfused mind” he had ever seen. What he had learned from Bates more than anything else, he would say, was that a commercial should be cut to the essentials: Most commercials were too long and too repetitious, wasting viewer time (and goodwill) and advertiser money. Years later he looked back on the early television commercials as colossally wasteful. Sponsors would pick up an entire program, to do one long commercial at the beginning, one long one in the middle, and one at the end. Far more effective, he eventually decided, was the spot: in quick, out quick, and done. This new medium of television was so powerful that less could easily be more. He gradually evolved the principle of USP, or the unique selling proposition. Reeves had an uncanny ability to determine the essence of a pro...