Although some might argue that it’s impossible to be creative about ordinary products, advertising professionals will retort, “Boring is no excuse!” Writer James Gorman takes nearly three magazine pages exploring the charm of the lowly pencil. In part, he writes:

Gorman adds that he called the Pencil Makers Association in Moorestown, New Jersey, and discovered “pencils are doing fine.”
U.S. companies make about 2 billion pencils each year, he learned. He also discovered pencils got their start in 1564, when a large graphite deposit was uncovered in England. Gradually, folks figured out what to put around the graphite, what to mix it with, and how to cook it to make it stronger and better for writing. Ernest Hemingway and Walt Whitman used pencils, not pens or typewriters (or computers). So did Vladimir Nabokov and Herbert Hoover. Henry Thoreau ran a family pencil-making business. Finally, Gorman learned “you could eat one every day without harming yourself,” mainly because the “lead” in a pencil is not lead but graphite.
If Gorman can take three full pages to entertain you about pencils, can you create a single advertisement to provide the pencil with a personality so appealing that readers will clamor for more pencils? Try it.