Craig McNamara writes

From 1985, here's fashion designer Kenzo Takada...times three. Confident, relaxed, and, with with the d.i.y. ties and pocket squares, very much in the style of the '80s. And yet... When I look at the Kenzo ad, all it makes me think of is this eccentric fellow (times four) indulging his own brand of individuality three years later: But maybe it's just me. Or is it? Let's try swapping the images and see what we get: See what I mean?

From 1983, an ad for a video tape that's out to make itself famous for its inaccurate, garbled reproduction... Am I being too harsh on Maxell? After all, they're just having a little fun with an iconic movie and quote from Humphrey Bogart, right? Actually, it doesn't matter how many times you play that Maxell tape -- you're never going to hear Bogie say "Play it again, Sam," not even once. From Wikipedia : One of the lines most closely associated with the film ["Casablanca"] — "Play it again, Sam" — is a misquotation. When Ilsa first enters the Café Americain, she spots Sam and asks him to "Play it once, Sam, for old times' sake." When he feigns ignorance, she responds, "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By'." Later that night, alone with Sam, Rick says, "You played it for her and you can play it for me," and "If she can stand it, I can! Play it!" Did the ad's writer know that? Or wo...

Running alongside an article on Mr. Sheen and his recent...happenings, I noticed this promotional image for his CBS sitcom. Look familiar: Yes, it's another example of that popular comedic image we were discussing just a couple weeks back, Bickering-Parties-On-Either-Side-Of-A-Door . I also stumbled on this other example recently... More proof that what the exposed brick wall is to comedians, the multi-paneled door is to comedies.

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...

Hawkeye Pierce is so last millennium. Back in 2008, I posited that Alan Alda's portrayal on the M*A*S*H series was the idealized image of how creative people in advertising view themselves: witty, irreverent, iconoclastic, hedonistic, slovenly and eccentric, but also capable and confident, dedicated and dependable, principled, tenacious, and when the chips were down, absolutely brilliant. But really, that was an image taken from an earlier era, when even flawed characters were always primarily defined by their inherent decency. The richer, more complex characters of television today provides an ever better template for those anguished souls battling for creative integrity in ad agencies: Meet Dr. House : Yes, another doctor (because don't we all view the creative process as a matter of life and death?) -- but while Hugh Laurie's Dr. House is as undeniably brilliant, intuitive and typically unshaven as Dr. Pierce, the similarities end there. Dr. Gregory House is impatien...

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...

Yes, hard liquor is most respectably consumed in the evening hours, but is there something more behind this 1972 Smirnoff ad's imploring headline? Is it a reference to the 1967 racially charged drama, " Hurry Sundown "? Or perhaps the spiritual made popular by folkies Peter, Paul and Mary in 1966? Actually, I'm guessing it's neither, and instead was just a clever intro into the ad's recipe for the "Vampire Gimlet," so dubbed, I suppose, for its eerie green hue and black olive. But that raises a new question, doesn't it? Why a vampire? This was, after all, decades before the romantic vampire imagery of '80s and '90s cinema and television. In fact, Ah, but the clue is in the ad's photo, the modern-but-still-vaguely-gothic appearance of the woman in the window. The drink, as well as the ad, seems calculated to appeal to the youth-adult audience that had helped catapult this unique ABC soap opera -- and its vampiric leading man, Barna...