Rosser Reeves

Luckily, he had just won one hundred dollars as a prize for a state-wide chemistry contest that served as his final exam for first year Chem 101.

He insisted that an advertisement or commercial should show off the value or unique selling proposition, (or USP) of a product, not the cleverness or humor of a copywriter.

These often took the form of slogans — Reeves oversaw the introduction of dozens, some that still exist to this day, such as M&M's "melts in your mouth, not in your hand."

His commercials for Bic pens, Minute Maid orange juice, M&M's candies, Colgate toothpaste and other products used similar methods, often making dramatic demonstrations.

Money would be better spent building some kind of meaningful advantage into a product before launching a costly advertising campaign to promote it.

[citation needed] Reeves advised clients to be wary of brand image advertising which is less likely to be successful than his claim-based strategy.

[citation needed] Consumers became more savvy and learned to tune out uninteresting commercials, and within the advertising industry itself the Creative Revolution, exemplified by Doyle Dane Bernbach's "Think Small" campaign for the Volkswagen Beetle.

Mined in Sri Lanka, the original 140 carat ruby was cut down slightly to improve the star pattern in it.

Reeves expressed his views in his 1961 book, Reality in Advertising (Knopf) which is still taught at Harvard Business School.

Reeves wrote a well received novel, Popo (Knopf) about a poet who leaves a life of material wealth to move to Greenwich Village in New York City, to pursue his poetry.

Reeves co-authored The 99 Critical Shots in Pool with Ray Martin to explain both Euclid and Sir Isaac Newtons' geometric proofs.

"The author is chairman of the board of a large corporation, and we confess we find it intriguing and comforting to know that a man whose workday is devoted to the harsh realities of multi-million-dollar profit and loss has in him that good old-fashioned sense of wonder."