The guys at the bar, lit in bleak blacks and whites, face the camera mournfully.
“Does this make my butt look big?” murmurs one, twisting on his barstool for a peek. “I hope not.”
“I have my mother’s thighs,” another confesses. “I have to accept that.”
And, finally, the tagline, which reveals that this is a spot for the diet cereal Special K — “Men don’t worry about these things . . . why do we?”
Change the channel, and there’s the music of Louis Prima, and exuberant dancers in tank-tops and Gap chinos swing-dancing in stop-motion.
Click again, and you’ve got the Budweiser lizards, hanging out in the swamp . . . the Taco Bell chihuahua, leading peasants in a fast-food revolution . . . Morgan Fairchild and Joan Collins, spoofing themselves cheerfully on an Old Navy ad . . . and a soft-drink logo that’s burst off the bottle and is menacing a made-for-TV family. “Run, kids!” the mother screams, as the happy little sunburst-turned-stalker prattles on about vitamins and minerals, and a voiceover delivers the punch line: soft-drink ads are silly, drink Sprite.
Sure, it’s summer, and the airwaves are a vast wasteland of “Suddenly Susan” reruns and six-hour golf tournaments. But don’t let them tell you there’s nothing good on TV. There’s plenty to look at that’s funny or strange, innovative and exciting, even surreal. Thing is, it’s not the shows themselves but the 30-second spots in between them.
This isn’t the first time in tube history that ads have been worth watching. Alka-Seltzer commercials, circa 1969, brought sly humor to stomach upset, with an actor repeatedly blowing his “That’s a spicy meatball!” line, and needing the antacid to get him through.
In 1981, AT&T’s “Joey Called” spot had us all misty at a mother weeping over a son who picked up the phone “just ’cause I love you.” In 1982, MCI bit back, with its own aged parent in tears — this time, over her high phone bill.
In 1984, interest in the ads that Michael Jackson made for Pepsi was so high that the soft-drink giant ran ads telling viewers when they could tune in to see them (of course, the fact that the singer’s hair caught on fire during the making of the commercials probably had something to do with that interest). In 1986, Claymation raisins danced off a lunchbox and into pop-culture eternity, to the strains of Marvin Gaye’s “Heard it Through the Grapevine” (the dried fruit even had its own fan club).
And last year, the Emmys raised eyebrows, and some critical ire, by handing out the first-ever award for a commercial. Spots for Levi’s, Nike, HBO and General Motors were nominated. The eventual winner was the HBO spot featuring chimps reciting famous movie lines. (This year’s nominees are American Express, Apple Computer, AT&T, Hallmark and Pella Windows.)
This summer, though, creativity seems especially high, and not just because the shows they bracket are even more vapid the second time around. The reasons have to do with TV economics, artistic aspirations (now that they’re handing out Emmys for ads, the creative minds behind the latest campaign for drain de-clogger or douche can legitimately say they’re serving Art as well as Commerce), and competition. With dozens of channels to choose from, and remote controls at the ready, viewers have more control than ever over what spots they’ll sit through, and what they’ll click off.
“How many channels do you have on your dial?” asks Bob Garfield, the ad critic for Advertising Age.
Ads have been forced to improve in a climate where there are more channel choices — and also, more ads than there have ever been before.
In 1996, the major broadcast and 25 basic cable networks showed more than 2.4 million minutes of commercials. In 1997, they showed more than 2.5 million — a 3.5 percent increase.
The average cost of a 30-second spot in prime-time on the Big Four networks costs between $125,000 and $150,000.
So, with more ads on the tube, and with advertisers paying more money than ever to get their ads seen, the pressure is on to produce ads that stand out from the pack, ads that excel.
“Advertisers can spend as much on a 60- or even 30-second commercial than the cost of the entire program it appears on,” says Chuck Ross, media reporter for Advertising Age. “They’re very highly produced, deliberately so. They want to get your attention. They want you to sit there, not leave, not click away.”
Sometimes smart images work. Sometimes, it’s hiring the hottest new hands to give products buzz. When Gap set out to do for khakis what it had done for denim jeans, the California clothing giant hired up-and-coming young directors to do their spots. The up-and-coming Josh and Jonas Pate (“Deceiver”) did the “Khakis Rock” spot, where skateboarders and in-line skaters do their thing to The Crystal Method’s music; photographer Matthew Rolston did the stop-action “Khakis Swing” ad.
There’s the Nissan chair ad, where an intrepid pooch sends his La-Z-Boy bound master speeding down a hill and straight to a Nissan showroom.
The Special K spot, with the guys in the bar lamenting their physiques, is another ad that uses humor to make a point. It’s intended to help women laugh at they way they obsess over every extra ounce and wrinkle, says Megan Towers, an account executive at Leo Burnett in Toronto, which did the spots. “Our playing field has always been in this looking-good arena,” Towers said (remember years of Special K ads with the woman in the white bathing suit getting out of the pool?) “We took a look at the weight-control environment in general, and how other people are talking to women about their bodies.” They did research and focus groups, and came to the conclusion that Kelloggs could either “be a part of all of that oppressive imagery women are bombarded with, or gently push back against the standards and stereotypes in a direction that resonated with women.”
They went with Option 2, and the result’s been a success — except, perhaps, among people who remember that earlier Special K ads were part of the reason women might have felt so lousy about their looks in the first place. “The ads are very good, very clever, but they make me angry,” says Advertising Age’s Garfield. “The evil this campaign purports to counteract is one that Special K’s tried to foist off on you for years.”
