Oh, the desperation there must be in the corridors of adland today.
The parade of highly paid honchos masquerading as pitchmen in TV commercials is accelerating faster than the nation’s corporate directors can execute their boardroom coups.
Following in the tradition of macho Chrysler Corp. Chairman Lee Iacocca, middle-age men, and a few women, who should stay in the executive suite find themselves fussed over by makeup artists and hairdressers, get their hands held by patient directors and see their images broadcast to tens of millions of American households in prime time. If only their ad agency had read Leo Burnett’s admonition.
From chickenman Frank Perdue to bankruptcy trustee Martin Shugrue (remember him? Hard as nails, telling anxious Eastern Airlines employees the carrier would “build to profitability?”), these executives are presented as symbols of their companies. Who can forget Leona Helmsley, presented in magazine ads as queen of the Helmsley Palace, supervising the hard-working staff? And Victor Kiam shouting about liking the razor so much he bought the darn company? Being the company namesake also gave legal eagle Joel Hyatt and popcorn king Orville Redenbacher the right to become TV personalities.
When it’s the right combination of personality and sales message, the technique can sell a lot of hotel rooms, cars or hamburgers. But when it’s not, the phenomenon can produce that universal feeling of discomfort that Nina DiSesa, executive creative director at J. Walter Thompson U.S.A., calls “the cringe factor.”
Taking over for Iacocca as TV’s most ubiquitous honcho hucksters is the cuddly curmudgeon from Dublin, Ohio, Wendy’s R. David Thomas, known to the world as Dave.
Thomas and his entourage from the New York ad agency Backer Spielvogel Bates freely admit that his ad stardom was born of the desperation Leo Burnett was talking about. Four years ago, Thomas, who is Wendy’s founder and largest stockholder (the chain is named for his daughter) hated the advertising coming from the agency, as did Wendy’s CEO Jim Near.
“I went to New York to talk to Carl (Spielvogel), and I told him: `You don’t know our business. And you better find out about it if you want to keep the account,’ ” Thomas said recently in an interview in Chicago, where he was to speak at a luncheon of the Chicago Advertising Federation.
`Oy gevalt!’
Spielvogel persuaded Thomas to sit down with the ad agency’s creative team and give them a personal lesson in the hamburger business. Six hours later, Bob Lenz, one of the agency’s top creative directors who had earned his stripes with the ex-jocks of Lite beer from Miller, decided that putting Thomas on TV to say the same things he’d been telling the staff might be the way to keep the account.
“Those first commercials, oy gevalt!” said Jim McKennan, senior vice president-group creative director at the agency, who has become Thomas’ personal writer. “We didn’t spend enough time with him,” learning about the way Thomas really talked. They tried to put words into his mouth that wouldn’t come out right.
Thomas, despite his huge diamond ring, a life spent in limos and the immense fortune he has made owning Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises and then launching Wendy’s, still talks like the grillman he was when he got his start. He mixes up his verbs and comes up with words that can’t be found in any dictionary. His face gets red when someone says “burgers” instead of hamburgers. “I don’t talk that New York slang,” he said. And one of the hardest things for him to do on camera is “talk, walk and open a door,” all at the same time.
McKennan and his team have built on Thomas’ real personality for the 100-plus commercials they’ve done over the last few years, just replacing his malaprops with real words and cleaning up the grammar. In a spot showing Thomas traveling the world and craving a Wendy’s double instead of the haute cuisine in Paris, the scenario is true to life. “He hates long dinners in nice restaurants,” McKennan said. “Dinner with Dave is 45 minutes, tops.”
“My favorite gourmet meal is a double cheeseburger with mustard, pickles and onion, fries, a bowl of chili, Coke and a big Frosty,” Thomas said, and looking at his round midsection, you believe him.
The Wendy’s founder said he was responsible for persuading another fast-food legend, Col. Harland Sanders, to get himself on TV to promote Kentucky Fried Chicken. And he seems to be modeling his own success as a spokesman on the nationwide recognition the Colonel won with his string ties and bleached white beard. Thomas can’t make it to the men’s room in a restaurant without being approached by a dozen people who recognize him from TV. But turning the founder into the corporate symbol has boosted Wendy’s sales to record highs.
“Food is a personal thing, and it’s tied closely to family life,” Thomas wrote in his book, “Dave’s Way.” “People want to know the values of the person ladling out the goods.”
Bathrobes all around
But when a company founder and the product he’s selling have no organic bond, allowing the honcho to force his way onto the TV screen can get those cringes going around the country. The latest example comes from Chanhassen, Minn., where an entrepreneur named Tom Redmond runs a hair-care company selling the Aussie product line. Redmond started the company in 1979 after a trip to Australia, where he found botanical formulas for shampoos and conditioners.
Over the last seven years, Redmond and his family have appeared in Glamour, People and Seventeen magazines in ads where they’re dressed in their bathrobes. When it came time to expand to TV, it seems Webber ad agency president Charlie Webber couldn’t talk his client out of the bathrobes.
Just a few weeks ago, Redmond and his bathrobe-clad family, along with a few hundred employees, began parading onto TV screens in major markets with this strange message: “Some people think all we wear is robes. But when you use Aussie, your hair looks so terrific, it doesn’t matter what you wear.”
“A corporate spokesman has to compete for attention on television with the best actors and musicians,” said Fred Senn, a partner in Minneapolis ad agency Fallon McElligott. “Using an executive depends on how he relates to the brand and relates to the customer base.”
Senn’s agency went to Germany to persuade Ferdinand Porsche to appear in American TV commericials for the sports-car company he founded. The creative team spent months immersed in the Porsche archives, finding all the designer’s memos and other writing, and built their scripts from Porsche’s own words, Senn said.
From the breakfast-nook table in his Stuttgart home, Porsche speaks in halting English about the search for the perfect sports car that led him to build a Porsche. His subdued reminiscences are cut with scenes of vintage Porsches speeding around tracks and cruising through beautiful European villages. The result is a personal, moving way to establish a bond with the specialized audience that is the Porsche buyer.
Masters of the car lot
But not every car pitch has to be so artful. Take those masters of the car lot, Nick Celozzi and Maury Ettleson. The Elmhurst duo has been on the air for almost 25 years, and they’ve got it to the point where “we can do four commercials in four hours,” Celozzi said.
“We both came from another dealership, Jim Moran, `the Courtesy Man,’ who did his own commericals,” Celozzi said. “People like to see the guy who’s on TV in the showroom. It makes them think they can count on somebody if the owner has enough guts to go on TV.”
Ettleson’s cousin in California is the director, and the Chevy salesmen write their own lines. Apparently this performance thing runs in the family. Celozzi’s son Nicky is an actor in Los Angeles.
There is another style in car dealer ads that, amazingly enough, is winning creative awards in the industry’s biggest shows. Don Foss, a dealer with seven lots in the Detroit area, has something many of the honcho huckers seem to lack: a sense of humor.
Foss appears in a special kind of advertisng: commercials tailored for women only or for men only.
Seated before a blazing marble fireplace wearing a soft blue sweater, Foss can barely keep from turning teary as he tells women that he understands their special needs. “So please, when you need a used car, let me be there for you,” he says.
But when he’s talking to the guys, Foss puts on a flannel shirt and leather vest and moves to a wood-paneled den. “When I’m not out white-water rafting or putting out oil-rig blazes, there’s nothing I like better than selling used cars to real men,” he says. “Just between us guys, I’ve got some cars that are real babe-magnets.”
`Love K mart!’
Making fun of the company chief works perfectly for Foss’ dealership, but it’s an unintentional byproduct of advertising for another Detroit company, K mart.
Since K mart began remodeling its stores in 1991, the newly installed company CEO, Joe Antonini, has been charging though the chain’s commercials, wearing his expensive-looking, double-breasted suits and pounding employees on the back. “Marvelous! That’s exciting!” he tells them when they’re unwrapping merchandise to put on the shelves. In the newest commercials, he parks his girth in a fancy office and tells customers he has given local store managers the authority to knock down prices to match the competition.
“He was involved in the new strategy and the new direction of the stores, and he wanted to be able to tell his story-`I want you to love K mart,’ ” said Jane Singer, executive vice president of Calet, Hirsch & Ferrel, K mart’s New York ad agency.
When the idea for putting the new boss on TV came up two years ago, shouldn’t Singer and her colleagues at the agency just have remembered that old Nancy Reagan line, “Just say no”?
Maybe not. According to Singer, consumer testing shows that viewers find Antonini “jovial, warm and gracious.”
“We wouldn’t do it if people didn’t like him,” she said.
