Atlanta Copywriter,
David Freels.

This ad was just like the entire NS Railway campaign when I arrived at JWT/Atlanta.

Some background:

Norfolk Southern was created when Southern Railway merged with Norfolk & Western Railway. Over 70% of NS revenue came from hauling coal, seen as dirty and dusty and blue-collar.

Norfolk Southern wanted a new image for the new company, and JWT's “The Thoroughbred of Transportation” appealed emotionally to NS management, persuading them to punt redneck coal mining and reposition themselves as Virginia gentlemen horse farmers.

Translating the borrowed-interest of "The Thoroughbred" into clear and meaningful product benefits was always confusing.

Norfolk Southern's Thoroughbred is actually "critter advertising."

Sometimes critters work, particularly for packaged-goods products aimed at children.

Tony the Tiger makes Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes taste great.

Who cares about soggy, milk-saturated cereal if you've got Snap, Crackle, and Pop.

And moms know kids always love eating vegetables from The Jolly Green Giant.

The NS horse just confused rail customers. Norfolk Southern drives trains, not horses. Horses are animals, ancient forms of transportation, and highly inefficient compared to trains.

That's why the inorganic Iron Horse replaced the organic horse.

Even worse for advertising, Thoroughbreds are very dark-haired animals. Just to figure out what's on the page, readers needed details, which were impossible to see on a nearly-black horse, forcing Thoroughbred images to be very, very large.

This made every NS ad a big blob of horse-shaped black ink—just to sustain an ineffective and confusing metaphor.

There was a bigger story that needed to be told: The actual Norfolk Southern story.

Railroads are commodities. Customer service is the only thing that distinguishes one railway from another, but the horse ink directly interfered with the creation of meaningful and relevant advertising.

The new campaign visually placed The Thoroughbred in the background, making room for the story of Norfolk Southern's amazing customer service. Click anywhere to see those transformative ads.

Government accounts are the bread and butter of J. Walter Thompson/Atlanta.

The US Marines Corp. is a showcase client. FEMA Flood Insurance is another. Plus the US Mint. And for a time, the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was the largest account.

JWT/Atlanta brilliantly acquires millions of dollars in free air time by creating ad campaigns aimed specifically at persuading TV stations to run their government spots as Public Service Announcements (PSAs).

One morning an hour before the HUD team left to present "the PSA package", somebody realized there was no actual note or letter, no message of any kind in The Package for the TV stations.

A panicked account executive (AE) popped in my office and pleaded with me to please write a letter.

I dropped everything and knocked it out in about five minutes. There was no time for approval by a Creative Director. No AE read it either. Just 100 copies printed out on the HUD letterhead in time to catch a plane.

The AE called hours later from the hallway outside the meeting. She said a hushed silence fell across the room of about 100 HUD people as she read the letter aloud. Everything got quieter and quieter. Even after she finished, silence. She saw maybe two or three folks wipe at their eyes, like tears.

Then suddenly the room exploded with applause.

Next, a standing ovation.

Then the actual TV spot was presented, but she said there was no reaction.

Just silence.

No applause.

Nothing.

JWT lost the $200M+ HUD account maybe 6 months later.

Click here or on the image above to read the letter.

I've hesitated to include this case study, but it's an example of finding a marketing solution to a problem believed hopeless and impossible to solve. Click here to read a bigger chunk of the story.

Though brain injury occurs from lack of oxygen, it can be corrected just by breathing extra oxygen, i.e., Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT).

We proved it in court, though it took 12 years.

Hospital ICUs use SPECT scans to determine brain death. We did the same, and then gave Jimmy HBOT. After 21 HBOT treatments we repeated SPECT, creating objective proof brain tissue believed dead is actually viable and recoverable.

Neurologists ridicule HBOT, demanding proof by placebo-controlled studies, but there is no placebo for oxygen.

At the same time, nothing prescribed by neurologists is FDA-approved for pediatric use—because nothing has been proven effective via placebo-controlled studies in children—which makes everything neurologists prescribe for children is actually experimental and investigational.

What hypocrisy.

The solution? Leverage the power of the Internet to educate frustrated parents with the truth of this institutional hypocrisy. Raise them into an army. Next, give them the same legal weapons we used to force change.

Then start a fight.

Just picture the same intensity seen in Braveheart storming courtrooms and doctor's offices with scientific facts, armed with truth instead of swords.

The result? So far The MedicaidforHBOT Army has forced coverage in about 23 of 50 states, with still more cases starting in Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, and Washington state.

The stacked boxes in the picture may appear chaotic, but it’s actually carefully designed advertising and marketing. Read on.

An Atlanta-area Sam’s Club was one of the top 10 clubs nationally, yet Produce sales were among the lowest.

In-store ad campaigns failed since 90% of customers spoke no English. On-site, over 40 languages could be heard in the club at any given point in time.

Key fact: These Sam's customers emigrated from 3rd-World countries where they bought Produce in open-air markets.

Product freshness drives all sales in open-air markets, not variety of product selection or beauty of product presentation.

If it’s fresh, it sells.

Though Sam’s Produce is fresh, the profound language barriers prevented communicating that freshness. A chance observation led to the solution.

While a Produce worker stacked out 300+ fresh cantaloupes, a customer signaled he wanted one of 40 empty cantaloupe boxes.

There are pictures on every Produce box of whatever is inside the box, i.e., advertising.

After the empty cantaloupe box was given away, 7 or 8 customers saw the box's cantaloupe images and immediately entered the Produce section--looking for cantaloupes.

I then took the cantaloupe boxes up to the checkout area where they were crudely stacked about seven feet high. The first thing everybody saw when they walked in the front door were boxes and boxes and boxes covered with pictures of cantaloupes.

The boxes communicated FRESH CANTALOUPES NOW AVAILABLE.

Soon, folks walked around the store with fresh cantaloupes in their carts. This "word-of-mouth" endorsement created still more advertising, fueling even more interest. People shop Sam’s for deals. Soon, everybody wanted in on “the cantaloupe deal.”

Within an hour, over 75% of the 300 cantaloupes were gone.

Unlike grocery stores, Sam’s does not bag purchases for customers at check-out. Instead, boxes first used to ship product to the club are available for members to “bag” purchases--except for Produce boxes.

Even though ideal for this customer use, as they’re sturdy and have built-in handles, because of their extra weight, it’s more profitable for Sam’s corporate to sell crushed and bound Produce boxes to recyclers.

After the run on cantaloupes, all Produce boxes were taken to the check-out lanes, and within a week Produce sales at that Sam's jumped by nearly 30%.