I know Brandon will be all over my shit for not posting the actual GOOD-LOOKING VS. ATTRACTIVE blog first, but frankly, I am so pissed at Dreamhost now, I can barely write straight*.

Besides, it’s too hot here in Ye Olde Time Los-Angeles-with-a-hard-”g” to think deeply. And I’m a former media maven. So I’m using my little corner of Le Web to crow about Liberty Mutual’s latest commercial—yes, COMMERCIAL—which makes me weep and soar and want to do everything including go back into copywriting (well, almost). Seriously.

I still haven’t figured out how to post goddam videos to my blog, but I’m posting the link to the YouTube upload here (and on the pic itself, natch).

Lovely, lovely, lovely. Almost makes up for that McDonald’s crime against humanity where Young Mom and her Lispy Daughter bond over their mutual fabulousness and a faux-healthy UnHappy Meal. Gack gack gack. Could we just dispense with everyone in advertising except the Liberty Mutual people and whoever does the VFX for the GAP and the geniuses behind the new GEICO campaign? Really. I’ll give up commercial acting; it’s a fair trade.

xxx
c

P.S. For the record, I could not disagree more vehemently with the board nerds who be hatin’ on the superfantabulous Charo/Bacharach/Little Richard ads. First time I’ve smiled at a GEICO spot since they stopped airing mine.

*And relax, Brando—it’s saved and ready for when I am. Before I leave for Parts North—I promise…

TOPICS: Advertising, commercials, Shameless plugs.

When you calibrate your afternoon
not by the subtle changes
in the play of light
through your office window
but by the shifting
of the shrill Judge Judy
into the ’shucks, ma’am’ sucker punch
or Dr. Phil…

When you feel your ire rise
as basket-base-football
cuts into The Simpsons
and back-to-back repeats
of King of the Hill…

When your evenings are filled
with the wall-to-wall hum
of America’s Next Top Apprentice to the Surviving Bachelor

When you have seen every episode of every Law & Order
in all three franchises
at least twice

When you can spot the new edits
to accommodate additional commercials
in Columbo
and the Quinn-Martin ouevre
and anything that used to be on HBO

When you let your sister
and your clients
and your best friend since high school
(in town for three days only)
go straight to voicemail
because Ryan is announcing the Bottom Three

When you cannot remember the last time
you spent a day
without television

Maybe it’s time
to spend a day
without television.

Maybe it’s time
to spend seven of them.

A whole week
doing something else
One day at a time. (With Bonnie Franklin and Valerie Bertinelli.)

Besides—
there’s always
TiVO…

xxx
c

TOPICS: Advertising, consumerism, National TV Turnoff Week, Poetry Thursday, Rants, Television.

Today I auditioned for a spot I’d really like to book. The part is funny, the casting director is smart (meaning, the spots he casts are low in cheese factor) and—imagine—I could use the money.

Casting directors often give a group explanation prior to a string of individual auditions to save time and so we don’t stink up their tapes with super-creative, actor-y input. Today, after reiterating his usual acting directive, “Very small, very real, very ‘film’”—a directive which I now hear in some form from nearly every casting director on nearly every call, leaving me to wonder why there is still so much bad, over-the-top acting in commercials—this casting director drove the point home by letting drop that the director of this particular spot also directed Junebug. The implication being, if you know Junebug, you know what we’re looking for and if you don’t, you’re going to give a bad, over-the-top performance which we will waste no time in erasing from our tape.

Now, I have not, in fact, seen Junebug, but I am familiar with the vernacular the CD was tossing out. You see, I like to keep up with my worlds colliding, so I happen to know that Junebug was directed by one Phil Morrison, with whom I worked on a series of Wheaties commercials which I wrote in my previous incarnation as an advertising copywriter.

Normally, this ain’t no big thang. That life was long, long ago, and most people’s memories don’t extend that far, especially when it comes to remembering the copywriter, who is slightly less important than an apple box on a commercial set. In fact, we’re seen as so inconsequential, we’re frequently not invited to the shoot at all: I wrote a Gatorade commercial shot by the notorious Joe Pytka, but was subsequently hired as an actor on a couple of his commercials. Of course, I was not in attendance at the former and saw no reason to bring up the connection at either of the latter, so it really didn’t take much to fly under the radar.

The Wheaties commercials, however, were a slightly bigger deal. There were lots of verbal shenanigans in my tricky little scripts, so I was actually consulted on this or that more than once. Plus the spots starred Michael Jordan! Michael Effin’* Jordan!!! This was a huge break for the then-very-young Phil, whom we found via some groovy interstitials he’d done for MTV. Plus…Michael Effin’ Jordan! Surely Phil would remember every minute detail of that week we spent together on a Chicago soundstage, I thought.

That is, I thought until I uncovered this commemorative photo of me**, MJ, and an assortment of client-side and agency dorks:

Now not only am I certain Phil Morrison will not know me from Adam, I am also sorely tempted to submit myself to that Oprah show where they’re looking for people who look better today than they did 10 years ago.

Because (a) I am pretty sure I’m fugly enough in my high-waisted, reverse-fit jeans to win a free trip back to Chicago and (b) if they give me two round-trip tickets, maybe I can convince The BF not to break up with me for revealing my shame…

xxx
c

*And if his middle name isn’t “effin’”, I’d like suggest right now that he change it; my god, could he have a more appropriate middle name?

**If you can’t find me in the group, I would be the one on second from the left, doing my impersonation of a really unattractive lesbian. Good at it, aren’t I?

UPDATE: Link to larger sizes of my fugliosity at Flickr, here.

TOPICS: acting, Advertising, celebrity, commercials, communicatrix, DDB Needham, Michael Jordan, Phil Morrison, Wheaties.

A couple of days ago, I read a brief article/interview with Tim Robbins in this month’s issue of Los Angeles magazine. Mostly it just reinforced my impression of Robbins as a smart, talented guy whose impressions of himself are exactly the same, only more so, but there was one item which caught my eye.

Despite the popularity of his 1992 political mockumentary, Bob Roberts, Robbins elected not to release a CD of the original songs created for the film for fear that they might one day be used out of context by the very people he was satirizing. I think of this very real possibility for artists every time I listen to (gulp) the Dr. Laura show on my local yak-radio station, KFI*. Because while some of the musicians whose songs her engineer plays as bumpers might be alright with the implicit endorsement of a rather inflexible if well-meant credo, others would likely be aghast.

I suppose there’s no way around it in radio land. I’m not familiar with fair use rules on commercial radio, but I’m guessing that if you or your station pays publishing clearinghouses ASCAP and BMI**, you’re allowed to bumper away.

In advertising land, of course, it’s a different story. When I started out as a copywriter in the early 1980s, the first uses of boomer pop as boomer bait were just turning up. Naive young pup that I was, I remember being surprised when some people actually took umbrage at the co-opting of “art” for commerce. Me? I figured if someone wanted to sell their shit, that was their own damned business.

I’m [of] divided opinion now. Obviously, for many years I’ve made my own livelihood has depended upon either shilling directly for The Man or, briefly, filing papers and designing PowerPoint™ presentations for him. I’ve written and acted in commercials for plenty of superfluous consumer crap products, and in my last day job, I designed the company’s greatest presentation ever for one of the most insidious marketing tacks it’s been my distaste to come across. On the other hand, I had my limits: I’ve always refused to work on tobacco products and feminine deoderant products, finding them equally morally reprehensible.

The new limit, it seems, is the Hummer.

While it’s unlikely that I’ll ever be asked shill for Hummer, plenty of musicians have been approached about it. Poor, struggling, indie musicians, whose tuneage has the gloss of rebel cool Hummer would like to co-opt for its ads. And apparently, they’re saying “no” in droves—even the starving ones. “We figured it was almost like giving music to the Army, or Exxon,” said one member of a D.C. group, Trans Am.

I’d chalk it up—some of it anyway—to political correctness, only the amounts that were being thrown around were too huge to dismiss, especially for starving artists. They start at about $50K; one went up to $180K. That’s a lot of scratch for anyone, but especially for people whose mode of transportation often doubles as their home.

My tolerance level for SUVs falls far short of the Hummer. After years of driving in steel canyons created by the piggy hugemobiles of the drivers surrounding me, I am over the high clearance vehicle, period. If you drive one, basically, you can go fuck yourself. (I make an exception for minivan drivers, who are actually choosing a responsible transportation option for hauling rugrats and for light truck drivers who actually use their truck beds to haul truck-appropriate items.) Tax ‘em, make ‘em park in the “c” lot ghetto, bar them from carpool lanes unless every seat in the motherfuckers are occupied.

On the other hand, I briefly dated someone who drove an SUV. I’ve never established a no-fly rule on SUVs with my agent. There are, fortunately, good men out there who still drive sedans (cf The BF) but as money gets harder and harder to make, will it get harder and harder for me to exercise my moral principles? It is one thing to be Tim Robbins and turn down the money; it’s another to be an indie rocker or someone with three kids to support or me, in transition, and do it.

I have an audition today for Philip Morris. That’s Philip Morris, not its parent company, Altria Group, which also manufactures various food brands. The client declined to give out specific information, a common practice with a new product. So when I got the call, I confirmed with the proviso that if it turned out to be a tobacco product, I was out. Unfortunately, I won’t find out what this mysterious new Philip Morris product is until I drive out to Santa Monica and sign the NDA to audition for it. Which means that I might drive 25 miles out of my way today for nothing.

Oh, well. At least I’ll be doing it in a Corolla.

xxx
c

*More on my love/hate of the strident, inflexible Laura Schlessinger later…

**Bonus little-known fact: I am actually a member of BMI, owing to a filthy little ditty I wrote with Ana Gasteyer about our twats.

UPDATE: The audition was not for a tobacco product, but an anti-tobacco message. I took it, still conflicted, but secure in the knowledge that (a) my getting it is a million-to-one shot; and (b) I’m heading to SXSW the day of the callback, turning that million-to-one shot into a billion-to-one shot.

Photo, “Opinion,” by Evan G. via Flickr.

TOPICS: Advertising, consumerism, Hummer, marketing, principles, selling out, values.

Back in the go-go ’80s, my art director and I made silk purses out of some serious sow’s-ear assignments and so were let into the inner sanctum: pitching spots for the second pool of a wildly successful TV campaign for the agency’s big, fat American car account.

The campaign was the first (yes, really) to use Boomer music to sell to Boomers. It was such a radical notion back then that many of the artists passed on the opportunity to score cash, either for fear of compromising their art or of tarnishing their image among their fanbase (i.e., diluting their own brand). Hell, it was such a new thing, maybe no one knew what to ask for. End result was the client had to pay scads of money for really expensive soundalikes for many, many executions.

Anyway.

Kate (art director) & I were pretty passionate about creating good work back then, and, in my Virgo-perfectionist-good girl way, I was even then concerned with adhering to Campaign Strategy, Brand Personality and Unique Selling Proposition. Not really a problem; to the contrary, I enjoy working within the confines of an assignment way more than blue-sky creativity. Blank pages make me panicky.

And we could be mostly honest! The cars had been restyled to look hipper. They had even re-engineered some stuff to make them…um…drive better and stuff. So we wrote spots to tell (boomer) America how these cars were made just for them, with (boomer) music and (boomer-relevant) stories to match. But for the client, there was always one thing missing: enough “branding.”

We puzzled and puzzled over this: the campaign had, we thought, successfully redefined the brand. People were talking about it (buzz), people were buying cars (sales)—what exactly was the problem here?

Our older, wiser creative director, a real Car Guy from the three-martini-lunch days, explained: frames on the storyboard that featured close-ups of the car brand doohickey affixed to the vehicle. Lots of them. So we added them, alternating them with driving shots, until there was an acceptable ratio. Which Kate, as an Advertising & Branding Specialist, would point out when she took the clients through the visuals: “Drive, drive, drive; branding, branding, branding.”

So the magical, mythical marketing tool of “branding” came down to this: two young women slapping more product shots on a storyboard so we could get this sucker in the hands of directors, producers and stylists who would do the real work of making this product seem meaningful to the consumer. And this was considered successful branding. By everyone. At least, everyone I came in contact with back then.

And in a way, it was. The process (of advertising, movies, film, etc) has become so transparent to consumers that even the hipper advertising of the 1970s, 1980s & 1990s seems quaint, if not outright camp. The emperor is buck naked; branding is dead. Hugh MacLeod speaks of it elegantly (and way more concisely) here. (He’ll also lead you to lots more great links on the topic because he’s good like that.)

I’ve no doubt that as the marketplace has shifted, the processes at agencies have gotten more sophisticated to try to adapt to the new reality. I doubt that our impertinent display of cynicism would be tolerated in a meeting—especially a client meeting—today.

But while I’ve been out of the development game for awhile, I’m still a consumer. And an employee: I act in these masterpieces of marketing that I then see on TV (as often as possible, I hope, if they’re airing National Network). And I gotta say, I think there are still a lot of marketing peeps out there more interested in ramming a USP down someone’s throat than they are in initiating a dialogue.

xxx
c

TOPICS: Advertising, branding, communicatrix, marketing.