Richard Loewy

Richard Loewy is probably not a person many people today have ever heard of. Nearly 100 years ago he traveled to the United States from France to start a new life. He had designs of  becoming some sort of electrical engineer. Eventually, he went on to become one of the nation's foremost industrial designers. One quick example of Loewy's influence is the current look of Air Force, the official plane of the President of the United States. Loewy is the one who came up with the plane's now-famous blue nose. Loewy recognized that people - consumers - did not necessarily want their favorite products to look the same year-in and year-out. They wanted the mechanics of their favorite products to be the same while at the same time were open to their having a new look, thus giving folks a feeling of advancement or upgrading.

As a student of human nature, Loewy was aware people struggled between being naturally curious about new things while at the same time preferred the comfort of what was familiar to them; curious about and fearful of the new at the same time. Such opposite dispositions can be found in how people often react to various communication efforts or strategies. Such time-old appeals as tugging at one's heart strings, fear mongering, bullying and taping into one's desire to fit-in with others continue to be as popular today as ever. At the same time, there are efforts to package them in ways that represent variations from what has been done in the past.

More than any other area of communication, advertising is one where professionals most often juggle the familiar with the new in terms of putting forth products or messages or motivating consumers to take certain action or adopt particular beliefs. Whether it pertains to the selling of new cars, introducing new clotheslines, promoting political candidates or even selling tickets to a new show, the dynamic between neophilia (curiosity of new things) versus neophobia (fear of anything new) rages on. It is, in a sense, a genre that remains time-tested yet under constant repackaging.