The Fourth Name on the Billboard

Ralph Lauren, Perry Ellis, Calvin Klein—and Tommy Hilfiger. In George Lois’s advertisement, the names appeared as a puzzle: initials, blank spaces, four places on a list of great American menswear designers. Readers were expected to know three answers. They were being asked to remember the fourth.

This is the device at the center of one of American Dreamer’s most revealing episodes about introducing a brand. The newcomer takes his place beside established designers before the reader has even seen his clothes. What the advertisement offers first is a frame of comparison: this name belongs in a conversation you already care about.

Hilfiger had approached Lois with a conventional idea: a handsome man on a beach, an untucked shirt, a casual pose. The advertising man responded with a test rather than a better photograph. He showed Hilfiger other designers’ advertisements with the names and logos removed and asked him to identify them. Hilfiger, who prided himself on knowing the industry, could not.

That small failure matters more than the billboard’s subsequent notoriety. An image could communicate a desirable way of life without making one particular seller more recognizable. Another beach photograph might encourage someone to want those clothes without explaining why they should look for them at Hilfiger’s store.

Lois changed the task. Instead of showing readers another attractive image, he invited them to supply a name in their heads. Familiar designers made the puzzle easier and established the intended company. The blanks in the fourth name left something for readers to do; the copy supplied a hint. The advertisement itself called Hilfiger the least known of the four. It did not have to pretend that he already possessed their reputations.

The Ad’s Author and the Memoir’s Protagonist

It would be easy to retell this as a lesson in entrepreneurial audacity: place yourself beside the best and the market will agree. But the book distributes the decision among several people. Lois brings the idea. Hilfiger’s partners support it. Hilfiger himself fears ridicule and rejection by designers he admires. Before agreeing, he discusses the risk with his wife.

Remove those participants and a different story emerges: a fearless founder supposedly invents his own route to fame. In the memoir, he instead allows someone else’s professional judgment to put him in an uncomfortable position. For a reader working with a designer or advertising specialist, that is more useful than an instruction to believe in yourself. Can a client accept an approach that works differently from the one they initially imagined?

After the advertisement appeared in magazines and on a Times Square billboard, Hilfiger recalls, the phone began ringing and arguments followed. Attention arrived alongside contempt from people in the industry. It was not unanimous recognition.

There is a less spectacular detail, too. Before the campaign, the business was already selling clothes but still had quality and shipment problems. Hilfiger also explicitly acknowledges that momentum had started before the advertisement. His account therefore cannot assign all later success to the billboard or establish its precise effect on sales.

Toward the end of the episode, his partner Joel Horowitz redirects his attention to the next collection, stores, fit and prices. Advertising brought people to look. The business then had to provide a reason to buy—and the means to deliver the purchase.

Questions for Your Own Advertisement

For a small brand, the useful starting point is not another list of celebrities but Lois’s initial test. Remove your name from an advertisement: does anything distinguish your particular offer? If not, a more beautiful photograph might simply advertise the whole category more effectively.

A second question follows once attention has been won: what will people find when they arrive? For Hilfiger, clothes, prices, stores and deliveries had to supply the answer. Another business will have different concrete work to do, none of which an ingenious line of copy can perform on its behalf.