My first ad with Tony Schwartz sold a conservative idea to a liberal state!

When I met Tony in his NYC brownstone, I thought I'd be walking into the presence of Satan himself. Tony had represented liberal presidents from LBJ to Jimmy Carter, and I'd just lost my congressional race as a conservative. I asked Tony if he had a problem running a tax-limitation initiative in the liberal state of Massachusetts. He laughed and said, "You're paying me $25,000; I'll be what you want me to be."

That broke the ice. Our research indicated that voter sentiment had us losing the campaign to limit taxes in "Taxachusetts" in a 60%-to-40% sweep. But Tony said, what better time is there to advertise saving money on car excise taxes than by talking to people while they were diving in their own cars?

Dick Morris, a friend of mine who has the unique position of making the cover of TIME MAGAZINE two weeks in a row (first as the brains behind Bill Clinton's victory and the next week disgraced from letting a prostitute listen to his private phone call with Clinton) introduced me to GUERRILLA WARFARE RHETORICAL WARGAMING. We tested the rhetoric of our campaign in voter surveys, and Morris predicted we'd win by that same 60-40 margin.

Turns out, we did, winning 60% of the vote to limit taxes in Massachusetts. Here's one of our radio ads.

Sincerely yours,
Rick Bennett
Ad Hit Man

 

Here's a Tony Schwartz political ad that still cracks me up

 

My guerrilla warfare mentor, the man who created the Daisy ad that destroyed Barry Goldwater in 1964, did an ad for a guy named Touhy who tried to unseat Erastus Corning for mayor of Albany, NY.

Remember, if you make people laugh, you put them into a state of mind to consider change. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.

That's me on the right and Tony on the left, in his NYC brownstone studio.

Sincerely yours,
Rick Bennett
Ad Hit Man

This is my model: THE GREATEST AD EVER CREATED

 

My guerrella warfare mentor created the greatest ad ever run, anytime, anywhere. The DAISY ad ran only once on one television network, and completely destroyed Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign. You see, no other network dared run it, but it became so newsworthy that all the news shows commented on it.

Hence my philosophy that "Any business problem can be solved with one ad, run one time, in one medium…if it's the right ad, at the right time, in the right media."

Tony and his wife are gone, now. And his son, Anton Schwartz, is a music prodigy who plays the saxaphone. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and I can't wait to see how Anton changes the world from another direction.

Sincerely yours,
Rick Bennett
Ad Hit Man

Back in 1976, I was on Alan Ludden's TV show TO TELL THE TRUTH.

 

I'd invented a voice stress analyzer that you could hook to your telephone and detect possible deception. PR insight: Get on one tv show, you'll become a celebrity and get on all of them. It's also great training for public appearances. I quit saying "Uh" in the middle of my public remarks.

Note also, that publicity generates a firestorm. Senator Birch Bayh introduced legislation to make covert voice stress analysis illegal. That experience paid off in spades when I created some Oracle ads that caused blowback. I conviced Larry Ellison that you always had to have a damage control plan. Things worked out well.

Sincerely yours,
Rick Bennett
Ad Hit Man

Here's an idea whose time is long past: "CLICK ME, I'M HUMAN"

 

My old buddy David Hsieh had a company called FaceTime (guess who bought that name from him?). Given the proliferation of complicated phone message chains and AI agents, what would you give to click and talk to a regular human being?

Interestingly, www.clickmeimhuman.com is available! My gift to some entrepreneur who wants to land big retail B2C accounts, like tiffany.clickmeimhuman.com, etc.

Sincerely yours,
Rick Bennett
Ad Hit Man