Most know O&M=Ogilvy & Mather. Many can tell DDB=Doyle Dane Bernbach. And BBDO? None.

Shocked?

No need. Because I only knew it 2 days ago. (And I'm pretty sure most ad practitioners today can't can't this right either.)

It's Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn.

Yet I used to be a Creative Director at BBDO, for around 4 years. The years of Triumph, to me and and my ex-partners.

-The campaign we made for a telecom client, SUNDAY, was a shock to the industry and the whole city;

- Every time when a SUNDAY ad was on air, it's for sure a talk of the town;

- People either hated it or loved it, never in between (Every time before an ad was run, a heated debate was sure to happen in the TV censorship bureau. So you can imagine how far we went.) ;

- One SUNDAY ad http://archive.adkungfu.com/longxi/sc/web/adsearch_details.php?id=899&JIANGXIANG=0 even initiated Epilepsy of a viewer at home (if the newspaper didn't exaggerate to boost sale);

- The BBDO by then was purely driven by creative;

- And it was the dream agency that every ambitious creative would die for.

Enough bragging. Yet our achievements are nothing compared to that of Bruce Barton, the second B of BBDO.

- Bruce Barton was so famous in his time in 1938 that every day there was a story on Barton - "Barton says, Barton suggests, Barton shakes hands, Barton laughs, Barton sneezes. Basically, it's Barton everywhere.";

- He was a visionary who predicted television before it was invented, a revolutionary who supported minority groups including Jews and blacks and women, an optimist who dreamed of prosperity during the Great Depression, a national leader who led America into a new modern era, and the original motivational speaker who created the genre;

- On top of being the first in the world to promote a presidential candidate, Calvin Coolidge, Barton himself was named as a possible candidate for the US presidency in 1932;

- It may sound weird to us nowadays, Barton was the one who truly believed business would save the world when the whole world believed business was corrupt;

- It's Barton who created the idea of TV sponsorship programmes;

- When everybody was selling burgers as burgers, Barton was the one who looked beyond the obvious. When he was handed the US Steel account, he could have written a relatively good ad with a line that read, "US Steel is the best in the business." Instead, he put, " Andrew Carnegie came to a land of wooden towns... and left a nation of steel." And this ad is now listed in The 100 Greatest Advertisements of All Time.

Genius.

And definitely more than a talent in advertising.

So, if you're asked to rank again 3 big names in advertising history in terms of greatness, what's your order?

For your information, my previous rank was 1) Bill Bernbach, 2) David Ogilvy. [And there was no third candidate on the list.]

Isn't it time to update yours?



-My big salutation to Bruce Barton (1886 - 1967). [And I was born in 1968...for Barton's incomplete mission?];

- Thanks to adkungfu.com for keeping my past works which I don't';

- If you want to know more about Bruce Barton, please read "The Seven Lost Secrets of Success" by Joe Vitale, published by Wiley.