Craig McNamara writes

It’s not unusual for a product to undergo rebranding. In fact, one of the most successful was covered on this very blog .    But in this case, the product in need of a new image wasn’t found on a store shelf. It was projected on the silver screen.   In 1973, United Artists released its movie,  The Long Goodbye  to theatres in Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Miami. The movie re-teamed director Robert Altman and star Elliot Gould of the box-office hit  M*A*S*H  three years earlier, in an adaptation of the Raymond Chandler noir novel.    “Nothing says goodbye like a bullet,” the movie poster announced, Elliot Gould brandishing a cigarette and pistol, looking as hard-boiled as Humphrey Bogart’s Marlowe in 1946’s  The Big Sleep.   And the audience stayed away in droves.    When the limited release ended, United Artists pulled the film from its next opening in New York and, baffled by the apathy of audiences (and the host...

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...

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...

What’s your favorite song by The Carpenters? That would seem to be a simple enough question – but when it comes to the ‘70s sister-and-brother duo, it can be a little more complicated. Because often, you don’t just have to choose a song, you have a choose a version. Richard Carpenter didn’t just sing harmony to his Karen’s lead vocals. As producer,  arranger, lyricist, and composer, he was deeply involved in the production of the tracks – and a bit of a perfectionist. So over the years, as their hits have been re-released, he’s used the opportunity to remix many tracks  to improve sound quality and add new instrumentation and flourishes – on songs like  Ticket to Ride ,  Top of the World , and  Superstar . And it hasn't been just Richard Carpenter re-doing works long after they’ve been completed. Think of Neil Sedaka, re-recording his 1962 bubblegum hit,  Breaking Up is Hard To Do  as a soulful piano ballad in 1975. Or the group Chicago, re-arranging t...

It’s not what you put into your ad, it’s what the audience takes away from it In his recent autobiography,  All About Me , writer, filmmaker, and occasional actor, Mel Brooks, talks about the one fight he had with Gene Wilder on the set of their 1974 movie,  Young Frankenstein . It was over the scene where Dr. Frankenstein introduces his creature to the medical community with an absurd song-and-dance to  Puttin’ on the Ritz .   “It was Gene’s idea and I told him I thought it was a great idea and very funny, but it was too far out … I insisted it was too silly and would tear the continuity of the movie to pieces. … we almost got into a fistfight because of it.”   Finally, Brooks agreed to film the scene and test it on a preview audience. When the audience loved it, Brooks happily conceded, “Gene, you were absolutely right. Not only does it work, but it may be one of the best things in the whole movie … it took the movie to another level. We left satire and made ...

My years in college coincided with the comedy boom of the early 1980s.  Back then, every kid who was a former class clown, or used laughter to deflect their insecurities, thought about spinning their jokes into gold. And I was one of them (the insecure ones).   Spurred on by the then-revolutionary countercultural satire of Saturday Night Live and the rise of comedy clubs and the stars they nurtured (Steve Martin, Rosanne Barr, Sam Kinison, Robin Williams, et al); suddenly every two-bit bar with a brick wall was laying a sheet of plywood over a base of plastic milk crates and hosting “standup nights.”    One of the first venues in Minneapolis to feature standups was Mickey Finn’s (now The Union), a dive bar in Northeast Minneapolis, probably best remembered (if at all) as the stage where Louie Anderson got started.    Eventually, the ubiquity of standup comedy (thanks, cable TV!) and way too many “open mike” comedy nights and their cattle calls of uncom...

"Greetings to all you shameless hucksters and flim-flam men!" So began the opening remarks by host of the 1987 awards show for Minneapolis advertising. As the writer for the ceremony, I was responsible for his script, as well as the introduction for his surprise appearance: We asked ourselves … what person exemplifies the prestige and high standard of excellence for which this show is renowned? What person was secure enough in his or her own fame to share the spotlight with a series of commercials and print ads? Finally, what person possesses both a sense of humor and a sophistication to make the presentation vibrant and entertaining, yet respectful of the advertising it honors? These were the questions we asked ourselves. Unfortunately, we couldn’t come up with any answers, so we asked a couple more questions: Who was available? And who could we afford? Ladies and gentlemen, join us now in welcoming our host for the evening … national celebrity … television star … and the an...

What's it like to create advertising for a living? What’s it like to work at an ad agency?  What’s to like – or not like – about certain ad campaigns?  What do I like in how advertising in portrayed in movies and TV?   Find out here, in essays, articles, podcast scripts, and blog posts – nothing too heavy and written with wit and style.  Like the writing on this blog?  It's like that, and more. $9.99 softcover – $4.99 ebook Read excerpts and order  here .

Yes, every summer now brings us a spate of formula movies that we all feel like we've already seen at least one time before. But now it seem that even the movie posters themselves are interchangeable. I've covered one of the more common motifs before here and here . But here are some of the more current poster layouts: The main action-hero character in front of an exploding fireball... The big X... The fragmented, David Hockneyesque photo collage... The mysterious movie-title-only-on-a-dramatic-black-background... The big intriguing closeup with the title stamped over it... The weird two-half-faces joined to make a single face... The action-hero looking battered but unbowed, weapon in hand... A guy slouching in a chair, legs splayed... The shoulder-to-shoulder heroes, with the bigger star out front... The sideways poster with black silhouette and steely blue sky... And finally, the whole gang, striding purposefully at camera... And that's just from a couple recent intern...

You combine with the loosening sexual mores of 1972 with the mainstreaming of the "male centerfold" (following movie star/sex symbol Burt Reynolds appearing au natural in Cosmopolitan that same year) and this -- unfortunately -- is what you get: Real socks appeal, fellas. Yes, what better way to show off your socks than by removing all those other distracting clothes? Or, more to the point, what better way to draw attention to your ad than by highlighting it in context of one of the most provocative images allowed in mainstream media of the era? (Showing women nude or with implied nudity had been fairly common in advertising since at least the '50s .) But back to the Cosmo influence: After some 80 years as a family magazine, then-new editor Helen Gurley Brown reoriented the magazine in the early 1970s, to a focus on the interests of sexually liberated young women. Women finally get equal rights to objectify the opposite sex. Probably nothing epitomized the magazine...

When the Drew Barrymore/Justin Long movie, " Going The Distance " came out last year, it seems the studio couldn't quite make up their mind on the right poster. Was it going to be Drew and Justin getting cozy against a brick wall, hugging under the Brooklyn Bridge, or a combination of the first two options? Well, it's safe to say that none of the options above did much to sell the picture, since it only grossed an anemic $40 million worldwide (versus a $32 million production budget and probably at least half that in marketing costs) during its run -- which is probably why the DVD sports a whole new image that seems to sell it as a more wacky comedy using one of the modern tropes of movie poster imagery... Yes, it's "the bickering people separated by a door" scenario, a setup that promises conflict, frustration, and lots and lots o' laughs (in theory, anyway). It's possible the studio remembered the graphics for 1996's Jamie Lee Curtis/Kevin...