"I’m taking this phone booth to the office!”

Nowadays, everyone has a mobile phone, but a few decades ago, they didn’t exist. If someone needed to make a call, they had to go out to the street and find a phone booth. But what if there wasn’t one nearby? Well, the only option would be pretty drastic: rip a phone booth out of the ground and take it wherever you wanted—say, next to your house or your office. You might think I’m exaggerating, but believe it or not, there was a day when I actually took a phone booth to the office. Here’s the story…

I’ve always loved being innovative in my work (first as an advertiser and later as a journalist). Back when I was in advertising, creating campaigns across all kinds of media, I was constantly looking for ways to surprise potential clients—grabbing their attention first, then sparking their interest.
 
Among the various media commonly used at the time (the 1980s), phone booths stood out. They let you place your messages in strategic, high-traffic locations, choose specific towns, cities, or neighborhoods (especially if you planned well ahead, as I did), and they were incredibly cost-effective. But most companies advertising on them just stuck posters on the walls, which I found uninspired and not very eye-catching.
 
That’s when I decided phone booths shouldn’t just be a surface for posters—they should be part of the ad itself. How? By transforming them into a key element of the campaign, replacing the usual paper posters with transparent vinyl sheets printed with parts of the ad.
 
Here’s an example:
 
The product was 'Ferrozel,' an iron supplement designed to boost the vigor of crops (fruit trees, vegetables, citrus, vineyards, etc.), resulting in healthier fruits and, consequently, better harvests and higher profits for farmers. This opened the door to a metaphor: presenting 'Ferrozel' as a safe where farmers could 'store' their earnings—in this case, higher-quality, higher-value fruits. So, I turned phone booths into safes, with beautiful fruits visible inside alongside the product logo.
 
For such a bold idea, I needed to impress the company’s board of directors just as much. Instead of showing them slides or sketches, I figured the best way to present the campaign was to bring an entire phone booth right to the office door.
 
After discussing it with the folks at Cabitel (the Telefónica subsidiary managing phone booth advertising), they agreed to deliver a booth to the office on the scheduled day and time (which happened to be during a board meeting). When it was my turn to present the campaign, I told the board that I couldn’t do the presentation indoors—they’d have to come down to the street to see it. Skeptical but intrigued by my latest stunt, they all followed me downstairs, not knowing what to expect… and there it was: a phone booth transformed into a safe.
 
They could see how striking it was from the outside, but also from the inside. When someone stepped in to make a call, their face was visible through the glass, giving the illusion they were locked inside a safe. Fun fact: the law required that a person’s face always be visible inside a booth, so you couldn’t cover them completely. In this case, that worked perfectly—it added to the surprise of seeing someone 'trapped' in a booth-safe.
 
The campaign rolled out across Spain, with booth-safes popping up in key agricultural towns, and it was a huge success. What wasn’t quite as successful was the excitement it stirred among the neighborhood locals. They were thrilled to finally see a phone booth near their homes… only to discover it had no phone line and, a few hours later, was hauled away just as it had arrived."
 

A journey through the history of the pharmaceutical industry and one of its great laboratories that had its origins in Alfred Nobel...
“From Alfred Nobel to AstraZeneca” (Vicente Fisac, Amazon) is available in e-Book and print editions: https://a.co/d/9svRTuI

(1) Advertising: Advertising Campaigns

In one of my first meetings as Head of Advertising with the management team, I proposed a radical shift in the advertising policy they’d followed until then. I broke down what needed to be done and the mistakes they were making. My review went something like this:
 
1. Advertising Campaigns
 
To inform about our products, persuade potential customers to buy them, build a strong brand image, and encourage loyalty, we need advertising campaigns. These involve using multiple media channels with a unified message delivered simultaneously, along with repeating those messages. As experts know, “repetition is the fuel of advertising”—without it, the desired effect is unattainable.
 
Yet sales managers and salespeople tend to settle for one-off actions. For press, they think a single ad is enough; for radio, they believe 20 spots spread over a month across two stations suffice, and so on.
 
(To be continued…)
 

A journey through the history of the pharmaceutical industry and one of its great laboratories that had its origins in Alfred Nobel...

“From Alfred Nobel to AstraZeneca”: https://a.co/d/9svRTuI 

How an Advertising Manager can save money

On this occasion, I’m going to share a decision I made to save money when producing advertising brochures: Making it absolutely clear that the ownership of the brochures belongs to the company that paid the creatives (whether freelancers or an advertising agency) and the printers. Because what happens in almost every company? 

The company commissions an external designer or an agency to design a brochure… and pays them for it. Then, it hires a printer or the same agency that designed it to print the brochure… and pays for that too. After some time, the company needs more copies of the brochure, requiring a reprint. And what happens then? They ask the agency or the printer that handled it the first time to do the reprint. In doing so, the ownership of that brochure has effectively been left in the hands of the agency or the printer, and the company—if it wants a reprint later—has to go back to them for it, without the chance to request quotes from other printers. Perhaps, if they sought quotes from other printers for this second round, they’d find the reprint would be cheaper, but they can’t because they don’t have the necessary printing plates (photoliths) for the reprint—the original printer kept them after the first job. 

Therefore, it’s essential to make it clear to agencies and printers that, once they’ve been chosen to produce those brochures and the job is complete, they must hand over the printing plates to the company. If a reprint is needed later, it’s logical to request a quote from them, but not only from them. Isn’t it standard practice to always get three quotes for comparison? So why isn’t this done for reprints? Simply because the commissioning company hasn’t demanded that the printing plates be handed over once the job is finished. 

This way, every time we needed a new reprint, we requested quotes from three printers, and the job went to the one offering the lowest price on that occasion. 

And there’s even another advantage. Often, when deciding to create a new brochure, we reuse the cover, interior, or a specific page from a previous one. In this case, the designer or agency only needs to create the artwork for the new pages, because we already have the final artwork and printing plates for the repeated sections. We can then pass these along to the printer handling the new job. 

Of course, it’s more convenient for the Advertising Manager to have a single point of contact (the advertising agency) that takes care of everything, with the manager simply giving approvals along the way… but this is more expensive than if the Advertising Manager takes charge and oversees every step. 

And this doesn’t mean doing away with advertising agencies—do you know why? 
Because the savings achieved with this approach aren’t just “saved” money—they’re funds that can be reinvested into more advertising. And part of that money will end up back with the advertising agencies for other campaigns.

A journey through the history of the pharmaceutical industry and one of its great laboratories that had its origins in Alfred Nobel...
“From Alfred Nobel to AstraZeneca”: https://a.co/d/9svRTuI

Do something interesting every day

We often hear or read speakers, writers, and self-proclaimed clever individuals quoting famous authors. Those who rely on these quotes seem eager to prove their own erudition or to place themselves on the same level as the figures they cite. But if they’re quoting someone else, isn’t it the quoted person who’s truly cultured and renowned, rather than the one doing the quoting? How many times have you heard or read phrases like “As so-and-so once said…”? It feels like an attempt to borrow someone else’s ideas, as if the fame of the quoted figure somehow validates what the speaker is about to say.
 
I’m not opposed to quoting other authors, but there’s a difference between using quotes sparingly and overusing them. So, on this occasion, I’ll share a quote from a famous figure that perfectly captures my perspective. And since he’s well-known, you’ll probably pay more attention to him than to me:
 
“Fashion is the herd; the interesting thing is to do what you feel like doing.” – Luis Buñuel.
 
That’s exactly what I’ve just done: what I felt like doing. I wanted to say it, so I did, and it feels great. That’s what’s truly interesting in life: doing what you’re passionate about, what drives you.
 
Never forget that to make your life interesting, you must trust your imagination, your judgment, and your reasoning. Create something new, different, and inspiring every day.
 

A chance encounter will take him far away, on a thrilling adventure full of action and emotion that will change his life... but also the lives of everyone around him…
“Fleeing into silence”: https://a.co/d/7SUfVb3

Advertising Art: Who's in charge, Art or Sales?

I will never tire of emphasizing the need to remind graphic artists that the goal of a brochure is to clearly and easily communicate the advantages of a product to achieve a sale (or prescription, as was the case with pharmaceutical advertising). The fact is, many artists forget that sales are the priority and get carried away by their artistic impulses, resulting in visually appealing work that fails to clearly showcase the product's benefits. It's common for them to overlay text on background images, making it difficult to read, or to use an overload of colors that overshadow the product itself. This and it will continue to be, an ongoing struggle for the Advertising Manager when dealing with graphic artists.

In this regard, I recall how at many advertising film festivals, the most beautiful ads often win top awards... yet they fail to boost product sales. Conversely, other ads that have made their products market leaders often receive no recognition at these festivals. If advertising exists to sell, or to assist in sales, its objective should not be to win festival awards or earn the praise of artists, but something as prosaic and necessary as: SELLING. Don't forget.
 

A journey through the history of the pharmaceutical industry and one of its great laboratories that had its origins in Alfred Nobel...
“From Alfred Nobel to AstraZeneca” (Vicente Fisac, Amazon) is available in e-Book and print editions: https://a.co/d/9svRTuI

Our senses deceive us... even in Advertising

Our senses can deceive us, and advertising knows how to exploit this to capture the attention and interest of potential customers. A clear example of this are some brochures I designed for a dermatological cream. These brochures were the key tool for medical representatives during their commercial visits to healthcare professionals.

First execution:
 
The brochure's cover featured a drawing of burning logs. However, the flames visible on the cover were actually printed inside the brochure, visible through a die-cut in the shape of flames. The text on the cover, designed to grab the doctor's attention, read: "Natural heat can sometimes not be so."
 
Upon opening the brochure, it was revealed that the red color initially thought to represent the burning logs actually depicted the redness of a baby's bottom. With this, we introduced a diaper rash cream in an extremely original way.
 

Second execution:
 
In another element of the same campaign, the highlighted phrase on the cover was: "A natural color can sometimes not be so." Here, the red color visible through a die-cut on the cover appeared to be that of an apple. Upon opening the brochure, we discovered that this same red color did not belong to the fruit but once again to the redness caused by diaper rash on a baby's bottom.
 
Impact of originality in Advertising:
 
Creativity in advertising not only makes it easier to capture a client's attention and interest but also ensures that the commercial proposal is memorable and directly associated with the product being advertised. This clever approach not only highlights the product but also demonstrates how sensory perception can be used to effectively communicate the advertising message.
 

A journey through the history of the pharmaceutical industry and one of its great laboratories that had its origins in Alfred Nobel...
“From Alfred Nobel to AstraZeneca” (Vicente Fisac, Amazon) is available in e-Book and print editions: https://a.co/d/9svRTuI