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HOW TO GET ATTENTION
6 marketing lessons I learned from the greatest advertisers of all time...
Niall Ratcliffe
September 28, 2025
In partnership with
Morning!
I’m sitting on a Northern Rail train on the way back to Burnley. The train is packed, my bank account is £9 lighter, and I’m already regretting not getting an Uber.
The person across from me has been scrolling TikTok ever since I sat down.
Scroll, scroll, scroll. Stop.
Scroll, scroll, scroll. Stop.
Scroll, scroll, scroll. Stop.
Every so often, you can see something catch his attention. His thumb stops for a second, his brain hooked and then back to scrolling.
It reminds me of a post I saw from Dave Trott this week…
20 years ago, people would sit on the train and flick through a newspaper.
Today, we have a little computer in our hands with endless feeds trained on a machine-learning algorithm that constantly feeds us videos at the swipe of a thumb.
Yet quite ironically, when it comes down to what gets attention in advertising. Nothing much has changed at all.
And sometimes I think we all need to take time to look back at some of the greatest headlines and ads of all time to remind us of the fundamentals of what gets attention.
I’ve got an hour left on this train. I’m gonna spend it trying to show you some of my favourite ads of all time and the fundamental attention-grabbing principle they use that you should be applying in your marketing.
THE ESSAY
Whenever I feel like I lose my touch with marketing. When I can’t quite get a headline right, or my ideas aren’t quite good enough. I always go back and look at old ads from 20+ years ago.
There’s something so clear about a print ad or a basic newspaper headline that allows you to remember the fundamentals that make marketing work.
It’s easy to get caught up in flashy tech, the visual hooks, and the clickbait you see on YouTube or TikTok. But humans (and marketing hasn’t changed as much as you think it has).
So let’s do a recap together. Here are some of the best (and my favourite) ads and headlines of all time + the lessons we can take from them.
Lesson 1: Being honest makes you more believable
Starting with one of my favourite ad campaigns of all time, Avis’ “We Try Harder” campaign - which is often credited to Bill Bernbach.
Bill Bernbach Ad
The premise of the campaign is simple:
Step 1: Admit something no other company would be willing to admit (e.g. We are not the most popular rental car company)
Step 2: Explain your USP (e.g. We try harder than all of those other brands)
We live in a world where it’s so easy to think that your advertising is meant to show your company as perfect. As if you never make mistakes, you never get things wrong, and you’re better than the entire competition.
The reality is, no person or company is perfect - and by admitting that, everything else you say has a lot more weight to it.
This Avis campaign proved that. Over the 4 years this campaign was live, Avis’ market share rose from 11% to 35%.
Lesson 2: Open loops make for great hooks
Humans have this weird innate desire to close loops in their brains.
ChatGPT tells me, it’s because “The brain sees unresolved things as uncertainty (a potential threat), and it keeps them active until they’re finished — closing the loop gives relief and a dopamine hit.”
It’s the reason we binge-watch seasons in a weekend and manage to watch 2 2-hour films from start to finish. And it’s also the reason why we consume many ads.
This Gary Halbert headline is a prime example:
What is it? How does it work? Which Hollywood star?
Open loop after open loop after open loop.
Halbert used this type of hook all of the time in his ad headlines, just take a look at these which do the same thing…
These all seem a little bit cliché when you first read them. It feels a little bit like advertising, and you can tell yourself it wouldn’t get you. But you are a little bit curious aren’t you? What was the Blackjack Secret?
These types of hooks are even more prevalent today than they were in Gary Halbert’s day. 99% of the ads you’ll see on TikTok or Instagram will have this “Open Loop” style hook. Pay attention to them and you’ll notice they follow the same style and structure.
It’s all about curiosity and making your brain want to close the loop.
Lesson 3: Just Say Who You’re Targetting
People say that Claude Hopkins invented modern-day advertising and I think it’s simple concepts like this that really show that.
Claude Hopkins Ad
There are so many different ways to write a headline, so many clever tricks you can use. But sometimes the best headline you can write is the one that addresses who you want to talk to.
Nowadays, I see this all the time, where the first line of the ad is. “If you’re a business owner who XYZ…”
Ironically, the companies that aren’t able to write a hook or headline like this are often the ones that haven’t put in the work to understand their ICP.
Lesson 4: Say the most interesting fact first
In the 1980s, Sainsbury’s was struggling to compete with Tesco.
For years, they had been pushing the tagline “Good food costs less at Sainsbury’s”, but their ads were much more “costs less” than “good food”.
And that “costs less” marketing had left them in a brutal price war with their supermarket arch-rivals - Tesco.
That’s when Sainsbury’s reached out to David Abbott and his agency.
They needed a campaign that showed Sainsbury’s food to be better than Tesco’s. At this stage, most copywriters would:
Write some lavish words.
Use a bunch of adjectives.
Tell you how good the food is.
What did Abbott do?
He simply showed Sainsbury’s food was great with the most interesting fact.
This ad headline doesn’t:
Describe the mince.
Tell you about its quality.
Use any adjectives at all.
Instead, it shares an interesting fact that SHOWS you that their mince is high quality.
This is very similar to Ogilvy’s most famous ad of all time…
Neither ads tell you the product is great. They just share a fact that shows you it’s great.
Lesson 5: Offer Value, Then Offer Something
I’m not sure this next ad was written by David Ogilvy or not, but I first saw it in Ogilvy’s book, ‘On Advertising’.
If you’ve not read it, Ogilvy is a huge fan of advertising that educates. In the book, he shows this ad from Rinso:
Then explains that it worked so well because it was actually helpful.
He says:
Helpful information is read by 75% more people than copy which deals only with the product.
This ad told how Rinso gets out stains, and was read and remembered by more people than any detergent ad that had ever been researched.
That stat was obviously from 20+ years ago, but if I had to guess, I’d say it still stands true today.
Ads that are genuinely helpful get watched.
Lesson 6: Always Add Story Appeal
Let me leave you with my favourite lesson that I learned in all of the hours I spent studying David Ogilvy.
The ad below is one of the most famous (and successful) ads of all time:
It also happens to be an Ogilvy ad.
And if you’ve been staring at it for a second, there is something very peculiar about it isn’t there… the man has an eye patch on?
Why does he have an eye patch? Does he have no eye? Is he a pirate?
That, is what Ogilvy calls “Story appeal”.
Over the last decade, brands have loved to use perfect models or images in their marketing & advertising.
Ogilvy would claim this is an example of agencies turning their back on proven research. Because it has been shown that photographs with an element of story appeal attract far above-average attention.
So Ogilvy would find ways to add story appeal to every ad he ran.
Like the Hathaway example, the model had 2 perfectly working eyes, Ogilvy just added the eyepatch - and in doing so added a story.
Such a simple thing we should all be looking to add to every campaign we run.
Right, this has been fun but that’s all I’ve got for you today.
If you enjoyed this style of breakdown, let me know and I’ll write more of them.
Until next Sunday.
— Niall
P.S. Go and rate the essay below. Takes 2 seconds and is massively useful for me when thinking of what to write :)
WAIT… BEFORE YOU GO
Rate the essay - it helps a bunch :) |
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