Hegarty on Advertising: John Hegarty

"If the future is going to be creative, then Hegarty on Advertising points you in the right direction." John Hegarty has been in advertising for fifty years and has worked with many large brands such as Google, Audi, and Nike. The book is broken into two parts. Part One contains chapters mainly discussing concepts like Ideas, Agencies, Pitches, and more. Part two focuses on Hagerty's experience within the advertising industry and how it shaped him and his work throughout his several decades in the business. This book will offer a lot of insight to me, as a large majority of the work I did for Chegg involved advertisements and ad design.

Hegarty’s experience and knowledge are impeccable and extremely beneficial to anyone wanting to gain experience in how to sell a product. The two main sects of the book each offer a unique aspect of Hegarty’s expertise. The first section consists of eight chapters and is more of an overview of advertising basics and principles. Examples include “Ideas,” “Brands and Audiences,” and “Pitches,” each chapter provides highly beneficial information and breaks down each of these concepts into understandable terms for both novices and experts. In particular, I put a lot of emphasis on Chapter 3: Agencies and Chapter 6: Pitches, as these two chapters provided me with a lot of critical information I would use during my pitches to my boss and co-workers and for designing the product(s) themselves. Agencies are the creative soul of a product/idea and are crucial for a company to understand its target audience and ultimately create a successful marketing sale. When working on the “World Cup Project,” I asked myself what could make this product effective and how it could translate to more Chegg users. I thought about how my concept would allow Chegg to gain an edge over the competition. The answer to my question, according to Hagerty, was not what I had anticipated, “There’s something else I really believe in, and this applies to clients as well as agencies: if you’re genuinely going to be better than your competitors, you’ve got to love what you produce above everything else. That is fundamental.” (Ch 3, pg 60). While parts of me at the time thought the idea would not be accepted well, I knew that my idea was something I was passionate about and something I could produce well. I was thrilled that my team at Chegg was accepting of my idea, and overall, the content I was able to produce was beneficial to both myself (being able to prove my worth at the company) and to Chegg itself. 

As mentioned beforehand, the second section focuses on Hargerty’s decades of work in advertising. While the first eight chapters emphasize advertising examples, the remaining nine chapters highlight Hegarty’s work as well as the hurdles and experiences he has faced throughout his career. Hegartys recounts his journey through his career in advertising, starting in the 60s as a designer for Benton & Bowles. While traveling through his career, you learn a lot about the “behind the scenes” of advertising and how the role fits into the rest of the company and ultimately fuels the company. Throughout Hargerty’s experiences within his tenure as an advertiser, you learn an immense amount of how to create quality content and produce meaningful advertisements while benefiting and assisting the brand succeed.