PRINT ADVERTISING
In a lot of ways, social media and print advertising are fairly similar with each being a combination of words and pictures. But the classic print advertising that Berbach revolutionized in the 60s, Fallon mastered in the 80s and Goodby, Chiat, BBH, Weiden, Neil French and countless others built agencies on after them had a level of craft that social media posts don’t quite possess.
Generate a set of headlines from ChatGPT, A/B test a few and optimize to the one that works best. But Division of Labor is an advertising agency in San Francisco whose founders built their careers on the craft of writing and designing. So their A/B tests are built on 25 years of writing award-winning campaigns. So the As and Bs we test are 10X more compelling than the As and Bs some other agency is gonna test.
This Ambassador Scotch Campaign leaned into the vintage nature of the brand. Instead of talking about how long the brand had been around the old-world crafting of the product, Division of Labor created an advertising campaign focused on the mindset of the people who drink it. Old school? Yes. Politically incorrect? For sure. But the combination of quotes as headlines and images of people who lived amazing lives is hard to ignore. Thanks to Sandro Miller for the incredible photography.
Division of Labor is an advertising agency in San Francisco. And the founders of the agency met and worked at the San Francisco agency, Goodby Silverstein and partners, where writing, design and craft are still the cornerstone of the creative department.
“You Could Die” is an award-winning Nike ad created as part of this Nike Hiking campaign by the founders of Division of Labor when they were still at GS&P. Each set of copy tells a story based on the truth about hiking. Yes, people die hiking. Yes, hikes are long and laborious and unproductive. Yes, you will have difficult interactions with nature. Being self-deprecating and honest is a way to connect with people. Even the product copy is overtly honest as it lists features and admits that none of them will do you one bit of good if you’re canning fruit.
Every piece of design was thought through from the iconography to the varied backgrounds to the type treament to the photography by Steve Bonini.
This series for the Nike Alpha project took Nike’s most innovative shoes at the time from across multiple categories and brought them together into one campaign based on seemingly unrelated visual pairings. What other campaign brings together a sex doll, hot dog, woopie cushion, fish, ash tray, fly strip and pair of tightie-whities?
Welcome to your National Forest is the tagline for this Keystone Mountain campaign. The photography is by Raymond Meeks. Ray uses a large plate camera that shoots an oversized film. That’s how he gets these striking images that look like paintings. The headlines and copy are tributes to nature and America the beautiful and take a shot at the city of Pittsburgh, for no particular reason, but if you’re ever gonna contrast a natural forest with a city, Pittsburgh is a good choice.
If you can’t write long copy, you should not be a copywriter at an advertising agency. Write a whitepaper for a SaaS client. Write a website for a healthcare company. Write detail in a way that regular people can understand even though you were briefed by and engineer. Division of Labor is an advertising agency in San Francisco with writers who know how to write. ChatGPT is a wonderful tool and AI is helpful as hell and here to stay. But if you told ChatGPT to write an ad campaign announcing the opening of a new ballpark for the San Francisco Giants, you wouldn’t get this award-winning series.
