Mr.Roy Grace appointed "Hall of Fame" members(1/2/3/4)
For Grace, good advertising is achieved by cooperative effort between agency talent and clients with courage and intelligence.
Since advertising has to deliver a selling message to a disinterested audience, the industry has come to acknowledge the value of entertainment in communicating that message.
In much of advertising, the entertainment merely surrounds the message; in Grace's work, the two are inseparable.
The gorilla battering an American Tourister suitcase, for example, isn't bait to lure the viewer to the point of the commercial, it is the point of the commercial.
TV-CM for American Tourister
The comedly and the drama is never extraneous to the sales proposition, it is inextricable from it.
Grace's style does not allow him the luxury of drawing from an unlimited universe of references and illusions.
That he has managed to produce so varied and inventive a body of work within a limited context is evidence of the extraordinary imagination he brings to each product.
Grace's secret to success is the determination to excel, not an easy task considering that we are bombarded with four-to sixthousand messages and product images daily. Advertising uses up more ideas more rapidly than any other profession.
To stand out among the pick-and-choose clutter of impressions, the successful creative director must be willing to take risks.
Breakthroughs are achieved by commitment and by accident and by ignoring the rules.
In fact, Grace likes to point out that there should be only one rule in advertising and that is not to pay attention to the rules.
Grace has his own interpretation of the distinction between "hard sell" and "soft sell." For him all good advertising should be hard sell; not boring and dull sell, but able to grab attention while delivering a believable propositioin in a memorable way.
Hard sell is to stand out in the jungle of advertisers by reaching an audience who is at best, apathetic.
