Craig McNamara writes

Although Santa Claus has been around in different forms for centuries, much of how we think of that Jolly Old Elf today was established in 1822 by Clement Clark Moore’s poem, “’Twas The Night Before Christmas.”   But what would Santa Claus be like if he was created today?  How would today’s culture shape his personality and modus operandi?   First, let’s consider Santa himself: an older, whiskered, rotund fellow.  This is never going to fly (so to speak). After all, ours is a society that worships youth and is obsessed with fitness. As for the facial hair, well, maybe if you’re Paul Bunyan, okay, but not for someone on whose lap we’re going to place little Dylan and Brittany. He’ll have to lose the beard, a few pounds and a lot of years.   And isn’t Santa just a little too much of goody two-shoes for today’s tastes?  Sure, we still want heroes, but we like them a bit less than pure. Makes them easier to relate to. So let’s give him a rough ex...

Yes, yes, I know, print advertising is dead, especially newspaper advertising – but ads still use space in other mediums, so apply these observations as you will.   Make the height of the ad part of the concept Look how this 1966 Mobil ad really sells the comparison of car collision at 80 mph with the impact of a car dropped from a ten-story building. You could have used a rooftop shot of the car going over; you could have shown a tighter shot of a car falling past a row of windows; you could have shown the crushed car at the base of the building; but Len Sirowitz of Doyle Dane Bernbach used the height of the newspaper space to show the full size of building, inviting us the imagine the long fall of the automobile and what happens when it hits the ground. And making a static photo feel as dramatic as the same demonstration in the accompanying TV commercial .    (The layout is even more brilliant when you consider that the ad was likely encountered by people reading the ne...

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 fr...

Bigger sizes and smaller prices for my two previous children's books – plus a new book also featuring fun animal illustrations by noted Hamm's Bear illustrator (and my father-in-law) Bill Stein.  Preview and order via craigmwriter.com or here .

A hoof banged on the bar. “Hit me again, Joe.”   “Don’t you think you’ve had enough for one night, pal?” the bartender replied coolly.  “I can smell the nut meg on your breath from here.”   “Hey, my nose always is always red,” Rudolph snorted back. “I can handle my egg nog.”   “Something bothering you, Rudy?”   The reindeer lowered his dewy eyes to the bar. “Sorry, Joe. It’s the holiday, you know? Sometimes, it just gets me down. All this rampant commercialism, the runaway materialism. I mean, where’s it going to end?"    “Isn’t your attitude a little hypocritical, Rudolph? You know, given where you came from.”   “What are you talking about?” the reindeer snorted. His nose momentarily flared bright red in the smoky dimness of the bar, as if inflamed by his annoyance.   The bartender considered his next words carefully. “You know about Montgomery Wards, right? The department store? Some copywriter there made you up for a giveaway booklet ...

Back in the late ‘80s, a Minneapolis screenwriters' group sponsored a couple of public readings for a movie script I’d written. It was small performance, for maybe 40 to 50 people, but it was professionally done, with local stage actors volunteering their time and talent to act out my words. And though the script never amounted to much beyond that, I still remember the thrill of hearing my characters come to life, hearing my jokes getting actual laughs.   I didn’t go on to become a screenwriter or TV writer, but last year, I started thinking about the possibility of again having something I wrote performed on stage, this time via those 10-minute play competitions that are popular with theatre groups. I had a story that I’d started to tell in a movie script 40 years ago, but never finished; I lifted a sequence from that screenplay, and through a lot of rewriting, turned it into ten-minute, two-person play.   Twenty-five submissions later, that play remains unproduced. But in th...

"How can outdoor advertising avoid clutter and visual pollution in public spaces?"  asked LinkedIn for a recent  collaborative article on their site. "Be creative and context-aware," they advised. "Find ways to integrate your ads with the environment, the culture, and the audience … make your ads more engaging, memorable, and respectful, while avoiding the risk of being intrusive or offensive. As one of the "select group of experts" who were invited to contribute, I added this to the discussion: By definition, you want your ad to be noticed; disrupting the environment is pretty much how it happens. Merging into the background means you’re not being seen. Yes, engaging viewers with a clever idea or visual can make the intrusiveness sting less.    But maybe the question we should be asking is how much the potential for attracting eyes justifies the potential for distracting drivers.    I was once tasked by a highway safety group to write outdoor messag...

Recently, I was re-reading  Wake Me When It’s Funny , 1  the 1995 memoir by Garry Marshall , famed sitcom creator/producer ( Happy Days ,  The Odd Couple ,  Mork & Mindy ) and movie director ( Pretty Woman ,  The Flamingo Kid ,  Beaches ). Along with anecdotes from shows and films throughout his career, Marshall dispenses little bits of pragmatic advice on working – and surviving – in show business.  But I’ve found his advice often applicable to working – and surviving – in advertising, too. Especially when it comes to recording voices for commercials and videos.   Tip #1:  "Host" the recording session “I want everyone to get along while they're working because I hate tension while I'm working,” Marshall wrote. “One way to do this is to make each person feel as if he's one of the most important players on the team.” That’s why Michael Eisner, former Paramount and Disney CEO, said that "Garry Marshall doesn't direct a movie. He hosts a mov...

During their 5 decades of performing together on radio and TV programs, Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding have portrayed befuddled newsmen, quirky interview subjects, didactic soap opera characters another media mainstays.  But of all the targets of their deadpan, underplayed style, one the best has been their commercial parodies.  Sure, that sounds like faint praise, what with the glut of commercial parodies all over TV and the internet these days, but Bob & Ray appropriated the language of advertising with an insightfulness that's easy to miss while you're laughing at their off-kilter dialogue. Their commercials for fictitious sponsor Monongahela Metal Foundry -- "Casting Steel Ingots With The Housewife In Mind"  -- make a mockery of advertisers' attempts at consumer relevance.    Their Einbinder Flypaper slogan -- "The Brand You've Gradually Grown To Trust Over The Course Of Three Generations" -- was a typical heritage-hyping appeal and yet resonat...

The story of this movie has a surprise ending, one that's more interesting the movie itself  – and was literally decades in the making. In 1974, as a ninth-grader enrolled in Film In The Cities, a filmmaking program of the St. Paul school system, I created an animated film starring my ersatz Spider-Man character, The Human Fly.  I had originally planned to draw it in traditional animation style, cell by cell, but when my instructor figured the cost of acetate sheets for even a short movie, it was suggested that I instead use cutout figures against drawn backgrounds.    After storyboarding a very simple story – the Human Fly breaks up a mugging – I set to work drawing the necessary figures and poses, and hinging their limbs with threads attached to the back of the cutouts.    Over a couple of months, I animated the figures, edited the film, and added a soundtrack of "action" music and sound effects. At my instructor's suggestion, I wrote and recorded a conve...

We all have someone we look up to, someone who inspires and awes you, who motivates and challenges you by their example.   Mine was my best friend.   I met Jeff Vlaming when we both worked in the advertising department of our college newspaper. We hit it off right from the start, and for the next 40 years, we kept each other laughing and endlessly discussing movies, TV shows, books, comics, and music.   I’ve never known anyone else like him, his talent bursting out in all directions at once.    Jeff sold his first TV script while still living in Minneapolis. When he and his wife, Kathy, made the move to California, he beat the odds by getting his first staff writer position on the critical favorite,  Northern Exposure . From there, he moved to  The X-Files  and began a long career writing and producing for many popular sci-fi and horror genre shows, including  Weird Science ;  Xena, Warrior Princess ;  Battlestar Galactica ;  R...