Happiness is a warm television

Authentic. Genuine. Truthful. These are the qualities above all that modern advertising aspires to – or claims to aspire to. Consumers today are too savvy, too cynical, the thinking goes, to be beguiled by unrealistic depictions and unattainable expectations.

Yet despite this emphasis on realism, advertising largely remains an aspirational medium. Even the earthiest, unadorned people you see in ads still tend to be stylishly photographed and romanticized, still appealing to how we wish to see ourselves, even if that wish is a bit less lofty. 

So unlike the scrubbed, idealized images Madison Avenue sold us during the ‘50s and ‘60s. And that’s largely true – but when it comes to authenticity, nothing I’ve seen in recent years comes close to this mid-1960s campaign for Sony’s new concept of “portable” televisions.



Created by the celebrated “Think small”/”When you’re number two, you try harder” ad agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, these 1965 ads present something that's largely vanished from our current advertising culture – not just a recognition of blue collar, “average” Americans, but an affection for them. 
 
These are no romanticized factory workers, farmers, or ranch hands. Consider the guy in “Pee Wee Tee Vee.” Schlubby, Ralph Kramden clothes, smelly cigar in hand – and yet, pictured without an ounce of condescension or pity. 



The campaign’s art director, Len Sirowitz, explained their strategy as “using an exaggeration of the truth concerning the television-watching habits in America … The ability to take the set where you want it to go — not to have to go where the set is.”
 
All well and good – but even more, he and his copywriter partner, Ron Rosenfeld, understood what would really make the ads stand out: “We wanted warmth and humanity.”
 
And that’s what they gave us. Along with punchy, punny headlines, and believable product shots, we got a glimpse of people the way you rarely saw them in advertising back then. Or now. Sirowitz was referring to the (then) innovative layout style when he said, “You can spot them a mile off, they looked like no one else’s ads.” But I’d say that goes for the photo subjects as well.



The best advertising, it's been said, is aspirational.  Usually that means appealing to the desire to be something you're not. 

These ads, however, tell us that happiness is possible being just who you are.


This is an expansion of the very first post on this blog, back on January 2, 2008.

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