Icons are like aces. You hold on to them for as long as you can.

George Lois, icon maker.

I was listening to an interview with famed art director, George Lois on AdAge.com. Among the many interesting things he said, one comment stood out. Lois was addressing the art of magazine covers, something he was famous for. The subject came around to which magazines he thought were doing covers right. Despite abhorring the New Yorker’s Barack & Michelle Obama cover for “unintentionally misleading a lot of dumb voters,” Lois spoke flatteringly of the magazine.

a notorious cover, an iconic format.

He recalled a recent conversation with its Editor-In-Chief, David Remnick. Remnick had asked him if maybe the New Yorker should move away from illustrated covers and explore photography. Aghast, Lois told him he’d better not. “You own the cartoon cover! Why on earth would you walk away from it?”

His comment stopped me because it reminded me of various examples in my career when some of my most famous clients wanted to walk away from the advertising campaigns that had made them so famous!

Heinz Ketchup (or do you say catsup?) for example. The iconic brand was seriously considering a departure from the “Anticipation” type advertising it had made for years. Who doesn’t remember the rework of Carly Simon’s huge hit? It turned the products biggest negative (takes too long to pour) into a monster benefit: slow equals best. With “Anticipation,” the brand’s eminence had reached its zenith.

And now Heinz wanted to change all that. They had some research saying teens were uninspired by the slow pour approach. Most of us at Burnett decried their passion for change. The debate became fear-driven. Do we walk away from what we know is the brand’s signature attribute or risk pissing off the client by sticking to our guns?

The solution became a gang-bang, in which all bases would be covered. Long story short, yours truly won this battle royal and, happily, Heinz stayed on point with a rework of the old cliché: Good Things Come to Those Who Wait. “Rooftop” was the signature spot in this campaign, and would get me my first Gold Lion at Cannes. It didn’t hurt Matt LeBlanc’s acting career either!

Ten years later, same agency, Maytag began questioning the efficacy of their long-running and beloved “Lonely Repairman.” They had research showing “dependability” was less relevant to today’s customer than style and performance.

Good God! I remember telling them that they could not create the Lonely Repairman today even if they wanted to. The message was too powerful. Implying their machines NEVER broke down would be illegal. That they wanted to move off this strategy was insane.

While mistakes were made, thankfully, Maytag held on to dependability and the Lonely Repairman.

same icon, new repairman.

We often talk about change in the ad game. With a new CMO comes change. With flat sales. With a new agency. Like in politics, change is always perceived as improvement.

But it’s not. Lois’s statement about the New Yorker is dead on. Hopefully, my examples are valid as well. How about you, Gentle Reader? Have you any examples to share?

Snagging. A vulgar way to catch fish or marketer’s fantasy?

Every October, a strange and gruesome spectacle takes place along the banks of the boat channel in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. Whether I’m riding into work via bike or car I can’t help but ogle the armies of bundled-up men “snagging” for salmon.

Snagging is a brutal (but legal) form of fishing, whereby the fisherman hoists a massive, weighted treble hook into the water and “rips” it back and forth trying to gaff a bewildered fish. From my car, it looks like the men are dragging for dead bodies.

Why is this vulgar form of fishing legal? Because the fish are doomed anyway. A sizable portion of Lake Michigan’s salmon is stocked by the DNR. Yet, these creatures are wired to swim upstream in the fall to spawn. Having no river to come home to, the fish choose the man-made channel instead. Only a half-mile long and a few feet deep, the waterway is a deathtrap. Even if eggs were produced, once dropped, the fish dies. Therefore, the city allows people to snag salmon until the run is over.

I understand it would be a shame to let these highly edible creatures die and rot but I still find “snagging” offensive. I love fishing. I must own 20 rods and reels. I have a cabin in Wisconsin. I grew up catching, cleaning and cooking Lake Michigan perch. On slow days, gouging the belly of an unsuspecting fish may have crossed my mind but we always considered it sleazy, something a tramp would do.

So, how does this all relate to advertising? Actually, very poetically. Think about it. Brand advertising in its highest form is like fly-fishing: sleek, urbane, wise. Think glorious anthems, the launch of new campaigns. Fishing with lures is one step down. It’s brand advertising, packaged and distilled. Though not a lavish opus, it still requires craftsmanship. Grinder TV, the churn and burn of most advertising, is like fishing with live bait –messy, very effective, yet still true fishing. And then you have snagging. Perhaps unfairly, direct marketing is accused of being equally vicious in terms of “catching” customers. Advocates will tell you, “Hell yes, we find swarms of consumers and hook boatloads!” It’s a good case. In fact, half my agency’s business is generated that way.

Even so, direct marketing still gives the consumer a choice to buy or to pass. Same as fishing with bait or lures.

Despite agency rhetoric about “proprietary tools” and “ROI” there is, as far as I know, no known form of marketing that can snag a customer from the general population. We still have to angle for consumers, attracting them with lures, hooking them with promises. That is why advertising, in its purist form, is an art, a lot like fly-fishing. Sadly, with a bleak holiday season inevitable for retailers I’m betting the snagging season seems like a wet dream.

Advertising your belief in God, or no God, that is the question.

Mother Mary or the St. Pauli Girl?

I ripped a blurb out from the Chicago Tribune this morning. (Yes, I still read the morning paper. Interfacing with a computer cannot replace coffee and the sports section… yet.) The story was about a slew of billboards going up in London (alas, none to show), produced by a group of well-moneyed atheists who, according to the Trib, “object to the favorable treatment given to religion in British society.” Some 30 buses will carry the slogan:

There’s probably no God.
Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.

As many of you know, I’ve got a novel out about God and advertising: The Happy Soul Industry. In it, God finds an advertising agency to market Heaven. The campaign they come up with features this headline:

These days everybody’s skipping prayer.
So, how’s everybody doing?

You can imagine my amusement, then, at the non-believer’s advertisement. Same tone but a very different message! My line suggests the world is fretting and could really benefit from communion with God. The other suggests that there is no God and just get on with it.

Interesting use of the word “probably” as opposed to “definitely.” Does that make them agnostic? Regardless, unequivocally denying God’s existence would only infuriate the many to get a chuckle from the few.

What I don’t like is the “stop worrying” declarative. Constructive worrying is not a bad thing. It leads to positive change. And Lord knows, we have PLENTY to worry about, in the UK as well as here. “Don’t worry, be happy” is not so much atheistic as it is ignorant.

One has to place the now-famous “God Speaks” campaign into this discussion. For many years, a Southern congregation has underwritten countless messages beseeching people to heed God. Especially provocative about this campaign is that it maintains God as the copywriter! I know for a fact He isn’t, but the conceit does provide the work with a unique and powerful voice.

Like a lot of sensible people, my religious views evolved over time. As a boy, I was ignorant of God. He was merely a concept. As a young man I was an atheist. Not only did I believe in the power of “Self” (Ayn Rand being a huge influence), I also bought into the dismissal of religion as opiate for the masses. When you’re 22 you feel immortal -what need have you of God? By the time I got into my thirties, I questioned everything. At 40, I understood the need for a power greater than myself. I could no longer fill the hole in my soul by intellectual or hedonistic means, which had been my previous defaults.

Apparently, a lot of people can live without a higher power, hence the campaign from Britain. Like it or not, the message will get noticed. To what aim, I’ve no idea. I am fascinated (and amused) by God’s infiltration into popular culture. After all, I wrote a book about it! He (or She) is EVERYWHERE. Including, even now, in advertising.

Me before God, or rather an ad about a book about God. (best price on Amazon)

Radio Dazed. Why I can’t stand advertising on the radio.

“Do you hate this as much as I do?”

I loathe radio advertising. As a teenager, vainly reluctant to turn the dial from my favorite station (The Loop), instead enduring the echoing screams from SMOKING U.S. DIRTY DRAGSTRIP. SMOKING! SMOKING! SMOKING! As a man, navigating between sports and talk, desperately trying to avoid the hard-up pitches for sexual enhancement.

Radio is like ditch weed. It makes you wince and gives you a headache. It’s cheap.

I know this sounds like sacrilege, coming from a copywriter. Believe me, I’ve heard the defenses. Radio is theater of the mind. It’s voices only we control. Pure prose. Copywriters are supposed to love the medium because it’s our words and little else. No art direction. No stage direction. No client interaction. But I don’t care; I hate it.

Start with the volume. Every spot seems to shout its message from the top of a radio tower. LOW INTEREST MORTGAGES! INTENSE SEXUAL EXPERIENCE! REAL MEN OF GENIUS! Yes, even the arguably brilliant Bud Light campaign resorts to loudness. It has to. It’s radio.

And the clichés. Knock. Knock. “Who’s there?” I know -a dumb ass character in a radio commercial. You’d think every conversation in the world took place on one’s doorstep. Why? Because it sets the stage damn fast: two people, with one having to state his or her cause. Plus doorbells and knocking are easy to create and recognize. And what about all the shrinks? “Tell me about your dreams,” starts the spot. The remaining character (patient) is then given a soapbox to rant and rave, a necessary evil when exposition is critical.

While TV commercials are guilty as well, nowhere are the STUPID HUSBAND and NAGGING WIFE more apparent than on radio. We know these people from their voices alone. The man is a clueless dope. The woman is a whiny bitch. Sometimes they make up and then we get my favorite cliché: using words no one ever uses anymore. When was the last time you called your wife “honey?” Certainly not in a conversation about reliable pain relief.

Writing radio has its charms. The author goes it alone, which has a certain poetic machismo. But it’s not worth the result, which is almost always terrible. I’ve written plenty of radio campaigns. So far I have liked only one of them: a series for Art.com featuring Peter Graves in his iconic “Biography” character. It was cute. The rest all sucked.

Radio doesn’t have a foothold anywhere in popular culture. No one talks about radio commercials around the water cooler. Not even ad people. Radio doesn’t have a forum like the Academy Awards or the Super Bowl.

Speaking of accolades, without exception, radio is the category NOBODY wants to judge at awards shows. Talk about purgatory. You’re in a room, staring at the walls, and expected to listen. And listen, and listen and listen. By the 15th commercial I’m ready to shove chopsticks in my ears. Unlike pizza (even when it’s bad it’s good), radio is the whine of a mosquito.

Look, I’ve chuckled at the occasional spot. I just don’t think those rare exceptions are worth the vast, remaining blitzkrieg. Do you?

Toyota’s “Saved by Zero” rates “less than zero.” Unless you consider inspiring hatred as building awareness.

This car commercial is driving me crazy. And like any good screw to the brain, it keeps turning and turning. Not since “Save Big Money at Menards” has an advertising jingle so infiltrated the mind space of my household. It is like flu, a cult even. My little girls gallop about our home singing of their savior Zero.

At first I laughed at this lunacy. Hearing my 7-year old humming the lyric while playing Legos, I couldn’t help but feel a sick pride about our industry’s raw power. (Just last week I’d blogged about my own ultra-crappy jingle cum phenomenon: Not your Father’s Oldsmobile.) Anyway, like most forms of pride it quickly deteriorated into something dire: This is an awful song in an awful commercial. Shut up, already!

Despite it’s ubiquity and cheapo-repetitive production values, the eye of this spot’s awfulness is, absolutely, its music. “Saved by Zero” is a crap re-recording of a crap hit from eighties new wave has-beens, The Fixx. I’ve no idea the song’s original meaning but it’s painfully obvious the current adaptation: zero percent financing on a new Toyota.

Our economy is a wreck. Of course good deals are what panicky car sellers will be shouting about. But this commercial was produced before the markets crashed. The serendipitous use of the word “saved” is merely coincidence and cannot redeem this commercial. Nor should it. For the most part regional/retail car advertising always blows. The agencies that make this chum are usually second and third tier shops, often at odds with the car maker’s higher profile brand agencies. Commercials like these are the closest thing to junk mail on TV.

While searching for an image or video, I discover that a colony of haters for this ultra-annoying spot exists on Facebook! Then I see Adrants ranting about the spot as well:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=31682248390&ref=mf
http://www.adrants.com/2008/10/saved-by-zero-makes-viewers-into.php

So this paltry commercial has its own cult of personality. And we are growing, for here I am, and so too the spot. Would you believe the thing ran while I was writing this, watching Game 7 of the ALCS? Sure ‘nuff.

Lord knows we have bigger problems than posed by this silly commercial. Besides, when Saved by Zero is kaput another odious paean to a numeral will replace it. “Five dollar foot long,” anyone?

A political advertising contest reveals more about our creative department than its politics.

Have you ever had to sell something you didn’t use, wouldn’t use, or, the product being so foul, you couldn’t get behind for love or money? I ask because a provocative contest has tested my creative department’s resolve.

By draw from a hat, participating agencies in Chicago were asked to create propaganda for either Barack Obama or John McCain. The Sun Times would then publish the ads and have an online vote. As fate would have it, Euro RSCG drew the Republican nominee. Relishing a good challenge, I briefed our entire creative department –some 60 souls- beseeching them to “let out their inner Republicans.” I knew few here supported the man for President, but I didn’t think that would stop most of them from participating in the contest.

Based on the turnout, I’m now certain Euro RSCG is not a Republican stronghold. Including me, a grand total of six employees made ads for John McCain.

Working at Leo Burnett, I got briefed to write copy for Phillip Morris. I believe the product was Benson & Hedges. I can’t recall if I still smoked but I knew, as we all did, that smoking cigarettes could kill you. I remember a slight disturbance from my conscience but nothing that prevented me from copywriting. If anything, I was more put off by the unlikelihood of creating good work. For starters, whatever we did was going to have a big honking warning from the Surgeon General (“cancer box”) plastered across it. In the end, we produced a handful of print ads, mostly bad.

But was the act of creating them bad? Should I have refrained from working on a delivery system for nicotine? Should my agency have done the same?

In an interview, Alex Bogusky recently claimed to be a mercenary. Despite using Apple, his agency took on Microsoft as a client. For reasons known only to him, Alex also penned a diet book, even though one of his biggest clients is Burger King. Moral conflict? That’s for pussies. Mercenaries follow the money. Yet, I wonder, would Crispin, Porter & Bogusky (co-creators of the much-ballyhooed anti-smoking “truth” campaign), be caught dead selling cigarettes?

What about Senator John McCain? You see the propaganda I made for him up top, a snide response to Obama’s global appeal. One of my writers called it despicable and offensive. I told her it was only a contest. Of course she’s right; the ad is offensive. Propaganda often is. For what it’s worth, I’m not likely to vote for Senator McCain. I think brand USA needs a more enlightened persona. But does doing the despicable poster make me a mercenary?

Below is the actual ad we submitted to the Chicago Sun Times. Credits: Regan Kline, Jason Tisser

The story of “not your father’s Oldsmobile.” Or how some really bad advertising changed the culture forever!

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6gxuk_william-shatner-daughter-for-oldsmo_shortfilms

Time for a story boys and girls. It’s a tale that requires we go back 20 years, before copywriters had Macs, before email, before I lost my hair. This story harkens back to a day when Oldsmobiles roamed the earth. And their commercials filled the airwaves. I should know; I made some of them. Including the campaign that served as Olds’ final and famous (infamous?) death gasp: “Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile.”

 Dad’s was better.

The line has become a pop culture catch phrase, in the same ilk –albeit attached to worse advertising-as “Got Milk?”  Both slogans have been co-opted literally hundreds of times, far outlasting their original intent. Try reading your morning paper and not finding a variation on either line. For example, about a candidate: “This is not your father’s Democrat.”  About a technological innovation: “This is not your mother’s sewing machine.” And so on. Sadly enough, more Americans are familiar with the Olds’ slogan than of Shakespeare’s finest sonnets. Way more.

A soft-spoken creative director by the name of Joel Machak wrote that famous line. I actually came up with the campaign’s tag: “The New Generation of Olds.” Both pieces were intended as lyrics. That’s right, a jingle! As a matter of fact, I was brought in to help Joel come up with the refrain. The piece went together as follows (sing along):

       This is not your father’s Oldsmobile…This is the new generation of Olds.

Pretty spiffy, eh? The word “generation” was key. If you recall, each commercial featured a celebrity and one of his or her offspring. This is why the campaign is so damn silly. Outside of a morbid fascination with ogling Ringo Starr’s purple-haired daughter or Dave Brubeck’s motley looking brothers, placing the kin of “B” and “C” celebrities on camera was pure folly. Though I will concede we anticipated Reality TV by 10 years! If you do nothing else today, go to the above link. Trust me.

Where’s my Cutlass Supreme?

The very first spot was for the “totally redesigned Cutlass Supreme.” The protagonist for this commercial was none other than William Shatner, appearing as; you guessed it, Captain Kirk! Riding shotgun was his lovely college-aged daughter, Melanie Shatner. A middling actress, she was pretty darn cute. She also was well endowed. And this became problematic given her wardrobe and where we were shooting. It gets damn cold in the Palm Desert at night. The diaphanous gown provided Melanie was meant to be futuristic a la Star Trek, but it did nothing to warm her up. Subsequently, her nipples went completely rigid, sticking up like Spock’s ears.

beam me up, Scotty!

While this may sound lurid and comical now, at the time (3 AM) it was a “situation.” Imagine the middle-aged suit from GM, replete in a satin Oldsmobile Racing Team jacket, making his way over to the director. “Excuse me, but we can see her nipples!”  Given we’d already shot scenes of Melanie in the gown, a wardrobe change was not possible. The solution? Duct tape. And thus her cleavage had a silver lining.

The other moment I’ll never forget was a captured piece of dialogue (unscripted) between William and his daughter. Between takes, they were side by side in the white Cutlass. Unbeknown to either, the mic was still on. Listening to Captain Kirk school his daughter about the virtues of pep and sleeping pills as a key to nighttime shooting was priceless. What a Dad. What a cad. In a way, it preceded his Emmy-winning turn as Danny Crane by some 20 years.

I know this is trifling gossip, and long past its vintage. But like everyone else, I’m beaten down from our grim economy and an evermore-depressing election. Not to mention the woes of Chicago’s sports franchises… When I was new I used to love listening to the old-timers tell bawdy stories from their shoots. Now that I have a few under my belt, I figured we could all use a respite.

Advertising disasters. How sensationalism in the news-media only makes it worse.

“The sky is falling! The Dow is too!”

Everyone is talking about the economy. Or should I say shrieking? Fueled by hysterical reportage, the topic has become another 9/11. While the credit crisis is real, I think the media has taken it too far. Cable news is downright ghoulish about it. “How low will it go?” bellows the reporter on CNN. Words like “disaster” and “catastrophe” are being tossed around so often they are losing all meaning.

It reminds me of the hurricane coverage on the Weather Channel. A storm brews in the tropics and the media responds accordingly. Reporters put on their raincoats. Experts materialize. We are captivated by the swirling tempest, hypnotized by its evil eye. The journalists and experts speak gravely of dire consequences but beneath the warnings, we can’t help but detect a sense of ghoulish anticipation. Dare I suggest it’s as if the experts and reporters are secretly hoping for the worst. Why? Because the nastier the storm the more people will watch it. We personify the hurricane: Hugo, Katrina. It’s personal now. The drama is real!

Is it not eerily similar to what we are witnessing right now, regarding the markets? Expert analysts, sleeves rolled up, are screaming about “bottoms” and “bailouts.” The women of CNN are genuinely concerned.  I heard one today liken the crashing markets to “a car racing down a huge hill without any brakes.” An apt metaphor, I suppose. But did the hill have to be “huge?” And is the car really “racing?”  Like kids at an auto race, are these journalists watching the markets, hoping for a crash?

In the face of epic bad news the media becomes more like an ad agency. The news is written as copy now, full of melodrama and pathos. They are selling these storms and crashing markets, making volcanoes out of mountains. The drama is real!

And so it is. But is the hyperbolic coverage becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy? My financial advisor said she wished they’d just be quiet, that enough was enough. We get it, already. She feared a “War of the Worlds” effect. That the American people were beginning to fear the worst, and that the worst was yet to come. And since no one (the experts, the Presidential candidates, Oprah) knows what to do, panic ensues. Panic begets chaos. The markets tumble further. The sky falls.

What’s the solution for America’s economic crisis? There’s always “integration.”

Integrate or die, America!

What to say about advertising when our free market system is in turmoil? Should we make others buy things when maybe they shouldn’t? Or is a national bout of consumerism just what this wretched economy needs? I don’t know. Moot points if your checking account is frozen like those belonging to my mother and grandmother.

Listening to the candidates during this evening’s Presidential debate, I don’t think either of them knew what to do. Not really. How could they? For months these two men have been practicing talking points. Coming up with phantom foes like the “media elite.” Mythical good guys like “Joe Six Pack” and “Hockey Mom.” They wrestle over the word “change,” pulling it apart like gristle. Don’t they realize every candidate has always talked about change, unless he was an incumbent? Sigh. In the end, they’re not bankers. And besides, even the bankers are at a loss.

We all are.

And what of our industry’s leaders? Do you think Martin Sorrel or Maurice Levy knows what to do –even within his own company? A few weeks ago it appeared the advertising holding companies were doing better. According to my financial adviser, advertising positions will never be the anchor of a good portfolio. But still, these stocks were trending upwards. Will these gains be defeated? No question.

Instead of answers, we get platitudes about “change.” The candidates for President act as if Washington were an Etch-A-Sketch. They’ll just shake it up and start over. Their squiggly lines won’t stink as much as the predecessors did.

In our business, we have our own fettered word for change: integration. When our clients became increasingly doubtful and scared (of us), we coined it.

Fear and ignorance breed limited vocabularies. In politics, we are given familiar sounding concepts (change and hope) and/or romantic fairy tales (heroes and evil doers). The last question posed to each candidate in the debate was “What don’t you know?” Of course neither of them answered it. Here’s what I would have liked to hear: “I’m going to seek counsel from the brightest people and then I’m going to try and do the next right thing.”

If and when my clients ask me for advise during these turbulent times, I hope I have the temerity to answer accordingly.

Winning for losing. My brief moment in the national spotlight.

The world’s biggest loser.

So, I’m sitting in my 7th row seat behind the home dugout watching the Chicago Cubs get their butts beat by the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 2 of the NLDS. Really, I’m spacing out. It’s nearly midnight and the game is out of reach. The Cubs are playing an untimely, terrible game of baseball. Earlier they’d made three errors in one inning. By now the crowd has thinned like my brow in the nineties. My buddy left me for a pretzel.

Suddenly, my pocket vibrates. At this hour I figure it’s spam so I ignore it. Moments later I feel the pulse again. Worrying about an emergency at home, I retrieve my phone. Three texts. One of them is titled OMG!

WTF, I wonder, opening the emails. The first message is from an account director at work. The second from an artist’s representative I had lunch with last week. And the third comes all the way from Europe, from my half brother. He writes: “You’re not gonna believe this, bro. It’s 6AM and I’m watching the telecast at a hotel bar in Amsterdam. Manny jacks a homer and TBS cut to YOU sitting all alone in the stands. They stayed on you for like forever!”

In reality, they stayed on me for less than ten seconds but those 7.5 were incredibly potent. Even as I’m reading his text, another one is coming in. Same thing. I’ve been seen on National TV. And that person is calling to tell me about it.

By the time my friend returns to our seat I’ve gotten a few more texts. The game has lost all meaning now. I’m the most important thing in Wrigley field! I tell him what’s up. He knows. His wife called.

The Cubs blow another scoring opportunity and we leave. Walking up Sheffield, a reveler spills out of a bar. Looking at me, he bellows: “Hey, dude, you were on TV!”

When I finally get home after midnight my wife is waiting up. “You’re not going to believe this,” she tells me…I finish her sentence. “You saw me on TV.”

The next day at work more of the same. Walking to the coffee station I’m accosted by “fans” of my performance last night. Half the people in my office saw me on TV and they tell me about it. One says he recorded the game and will forward me the segment.

Oh brother. I have not been this famous…ever. And all I had to do was… nothing. I was sitting and staring. I rubbed my face. So random was my television debut but even so… I’m kinda, sorta famous!

I have to wonder. Were those 7.5 seconds half my allotted quota of fame, as suggested by Andy Warhol? And an even deeper question: Does just being on TV make one a celebrity? I hate to say it but I felt all tingly being recognized, like I was somehow greater than I was before, or more dastardly, greater than other people! Depending on your definition of famous, maybe I am a celebrity! After all, people saw me on TV. And it excited them. Granted, I was being portrayed as a symbol of 100 years of futility, but I was ON TV.

We really do live in fame-obsessed time and place.

I’ve written two novels. I’ve created three children. I’ve had a blessed 20-year career in advertising. But this? This is my zenith. I mean those other so-called accomplishments didn’t get me recognized on Sheffield Avenue.