The '80s Ad Guys 3-Day Film Festival concludes

Time for just one more movie before hitting the backyard barbecue and fireworks.  Admittedly, Albert Brooks can be an acquired taste, but this is him at his whiny best: As a needy, desperate ex-ad man in "Lost In America":



Regular postings resume Monday. See you then!

The '80s Ad Guys 3-Day Film Festival continues!

Knock off work early today, hit the video store and find a copy of "How To Get A Head In Advertising."   

Here's a clip of Richard E. Grant in the throes of a nervous breakdown before the boil on his neck becomes a second head (and consummate ad man):


(There's a little harmless backside nudity on this clip, but consider yourself warned.)

The '80s Ad Guys 3-Day Film Festival Begins

Why the 1980s?  Why not?  Surprisingly, this maligned decade did manage to turn out a few decent pictures that touched on the Wacky World Of Advertising in one way or another.

Here's the 1986 comedy-drama, "Nothing In Common," starring Tom Hanks as an emotionally stunted Big Agency Creative Director, to get you started:

Another recommendation tomorrow!

Swiping Peanuts

Around 1959, amid the first wave of "Peanuts" merchandising (whose millions in profits would forever change how the business of comic strips), Ford came to creator Charles Schulz with a lucrative offer of an annual licensing fee in return for Charlie Brown and company to serve as "spokeskids" for their new Falcon model.  

Under Schulz's close supervision, Ford gave the Peanuts characters their first TV exposure in animated spots like this one from 1964:

The awkward, stilted dialogue is of course, a horrible fit with the cast, with none of the substance, easy verbosity and wit of future productions like "A Charlie Brown Christmas."  But it worked well enough to help the Falcon become a huge success for Ford.

When some newspaper industry professionals accused Schulz of excessive profiteering, he responded this way (as detailed in his recent biography):

"The duty of the comic strip is to bring readers to the newspaper as a whole... If that is not fulfilling an obligation, I don't know what is."

Apparently, however, there were limits to the type of products to which Schulz would be willing to lend his character's endorsements.  When Schulz refused an offer from Talon Zippers (maybe the punchline was just one indignity too many to inflict on poor Charlie Brown), the agency we ahead with the ad anyway, using photos instead of drawing and somehow sidestepping copyright infringement in the process:

(Click to enlarge)

Interestingly, the ad first ran just a few years before this play also brought the Peanuts gang into three dimensions:

Who knows?  Maybe composer/lyricist Clark Gesner saw the Talon ad and was inspired to write 1967's "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown."

Maidenform exposed

According to ad lore, Maidenform's "Dream" campaign was launched in 1949 in response to a study that found that women had "exhibitionist tendencies."  To say nothing of a pre-women's liberation desire for traditionally male-dominated occupations.  These women just never seemed to show up at church or the PTA meeting in their skivvies.

By the 1960s, the ads got more fanciful, more punny and even more less self-conscious:

These women weren't just dreaming about exposing themselves in public, now they were reveling in it.

The campaign went dormant in 1971, but eight years later, it returned, this time balancing the outrageousness of the scenario with a steely, no-nonsense woman.  It managed to turn what was previously a girlish fantasy into a bizarre statement of female empowerment.


...but one that just helped prepare us for this lady in the coming decade:

Yes, "I dreamed I was a world-famous, envelope-pushing pop star...in my underwear."

Context is everything

That's probably as good as explanation as any of why nobody remembers this Kotex ad from 1970:

But for those who were around in 1975, this is unforgettable:

(Quick remedial history lesson here, if you need it.)

Elsewhere:  Check out AdBroad for her answer to the inevitable question, "How can I work in advertising?"

Behind the Foster Grant campaign

In 1965, Foster Grant, then the leading U.S. marketer of moderately priced sunglasses, debuted the campaign that would earn it the 68th spot on Advertising Age's Top 100 Brands of the 20th century:

Although known as the "Who's That Behind The Foster Grants" campaign, that actually wasn't the headline that appeared in the ads:

No real mystery here, is it?  But if you read the copy, you'll see that surprise wasn't really the point:

"...our Foster Grant sunglasses have done it again.  They've given Raquel a new dimension.   Several in fact.   One moment she's capricious.  Then contented.  Now candid.  Even coy."

Captions under the photos are meant to exemplify her many moods; mostly they're just silly, but the one under Raquel in a bikini top seems prescient:

"Am I doomed, C.B., to play the sex symbol in an age of flower children?"

("C.B." seems to refer to Cecil B. DeMille, the producer/director known for his star-studded "spectacle" movies and whose initials briefly became synonymous with "Hollywood Big Shot."  The real C.B. died in 1959.)

Looking back at it, the Foster Grants campaign was like a Who's Who of young up-and-comers in '60s American pop culture, with ads featuring Anthony Quinn, Mia Farrow, Elke Sommer, Robert Goulet, Julie Christie, Vanessa Redgrave and Peter Sellers (as if he need sunglasses to change his personality).  Here's one featuring the not-yet-publicity-shy Woody Allen:

The campaign lasted in one form or another for nearly 20 years, until, spurred by falling sales, it was discontinued in 1984.  Three years later, a new campaign tried a more fashion-oriented appeal that proved no more successful at stopping the decline.

Years later, after the company changed hands a few times, the new owners of Foster Grant tried reviving the campaign in 1999, with current celebrities like the one below*.  The new versions finally used the headline as everyone always remembered it, and dropped the whole "many moods of me" thing in favor of a single glamour shot, but ultimately the revived campaign just didn't catch fire.  

Maybe in our celebrity-saturated culture there's just no longer any mystique about celebrity sightings, especially when they're so often caught in mundane moments and desperately hiding behind sunglasses.

Going back to the well once more, Foster Grant tried again in 2007 with new TV spots that featured people changing their personalities based on the sunglasses they wore and asked the (less memorable) question, “Who could you be?  Foregoing with celebrities sounds like a fresh take, but in spirit, it's pretty close to this 1972 commercial:

(*That's Cindy Crawford, if you haven't figured it out yet.)