I don’t know much about Puerto Rico except two things:
1) It gets regularly flattened by hurricanes
2) “International Man” Simon Black praises it as a good place to do business
Neither of those makes me really want to visit the place.
But I’m reading David Ogilvy’s “On Advertising” right now. Ogilvy is famous in copywriting circles for his Rolls-Royce ad:
“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”
Along with Rolls-Royce, Ogilvy also wrote copy for many other massive corporate accounts. American Express. Shell. IBM. But he didn’t do advertising for products and companies only.
Ogilvy also sold countries.
His advertising agency produced big tourism campaigns for England, France, and, most famously, Puerto Rico. As Ogilvy says in his book:
“The biggest obstacle to tourism in Puerto Rico was its image. Research showed that people believed it to be the dirtiest, poorest, most squalid island in the Caribbean. Nothing could have been further from the truth, and this I demonstrated in advertisements. Tourism increased by leaps and bounds.”
Ogilvy created ads for Puerto Rico that captured attention… overcame objections… told a story… and most important, created a vision.
Do you want to see how?
Then check out the following ad for Puerto Rico from 1958, and see how Ogilvy creates vision, both through copy and through the image (taken by famous penny-pinching photographer Elliott Erwitt):
