Until I arrived at Y&R I had never written a T V commercial. Of necessity I was strictly a writer of print advertising. Print presented a neat package of headline, sub headline, an illustration designed to capture the attention of the reader, body copy where most of the sell took place, and a logo and theme line at ad bottom that identified the sponsor. Print advertising filled the sample book that helped get me the job at Y&R. At the time TV commercials, while not in their infancy, were still black and white and 60 seconds in length and on a path to overtake print as the dominant advertising medium of many large advertisers.
The idea of creating TV spots intimidated me. What is this stuff: dissolve, match dissolve, cut, CU and ECU, super? I didn’t understand this lingo so how would I ever create commercials containing those production directions. On the verge of panic, a terrific veteran copywriter named Bob Higbee took me aside and told me to forget the technical mumbo jumbo and to just write down how I visualized the commercial and the words that went with it. That good advice freed me up to jump into TV commercials and create some pretty good ones over the years. But I never lost my love of print even as it seems to be on a course to oblivion..
Following are some of the highlights of my years at Y&R. Most advertising is the result of teamwork. You might get the initial idea for an ad but it cannot be produced in a vacuum. A team of assorted specialists contribute to the finished ad: art directors, designers, photographers, actors, directors, producers, editors, and the crews who work on commercials. It takes almost as many people to film a TV commercial as it does to produce a feature film.
As mentioned previously, Jell-O offered the opportunity to produce imaginative, eye catching work that became a passport to success and promotion at Y&R. I made the most of the opportunity.
Jell-O Cheesecake, the no bake cheesecake. Simple set up. Husband and wife. And two of the most talented actors in film and theater: Louise Lasser, famous for the series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and Josh Shelly, a veteran featured player in Hollywood, who had no lines in this commercial but just continued to eat and enjoy the cheesecake, oblivious to his wife’s delivery of the copy points. Finally getting no response to her question, "Do you like it?", she self answers it with a last line, "He likes it." A simple spot that won a Clio , presented at the awards ceremony by Woody Allen, married to Louise Lasser at the time.
A campaign for Jell-O Pudding and Pie Filling featuring Paul Lynde as the presenter. Lynde who was gay was not an easy sale to the uptight conservative culture at General Foods. Lynde’s fey style turned the commercials into comic gems, but not at the expense of the selling points. Such lines as "If I’m not telling you the truth my nose will grow longer." and interacting with a horse at a farm, "Treacherous beast." delivered by Paul Lynde made people laugh much as they did when he responded to loaded questions on the popular show, Hollywood Squares. Turned out that the lynde commercials got the highest memorability scores in copy testing and sold a lot of Jell-O Pudding and Pie Filling. Only then did General Foods retain him for another season.
"There's Always Room for Jell-o" was one of the most renowned of all Jell-O campaigns. The ads featured ethnic family feasts : Italian, Jewish, Greek, etc. These were large cast commercials showing guests enjoying the various courses, followed at the end of the meal by the only desert there was room for, J E L L- O. This campaign was a classic example of product as hero and a cinch winner of the Clio awards for best of package goods commercials.
Vote For Your Favorite Jell-O Flavor in the GREAT BIG JELL-O ELECTION. Each flavor had its campaign slogan displayed in a two page rendering of campaigners parading with signs touting their favorites. The big ad ran in Sunday magazine sections. Buttons featuring the slogans were distributed nationwide "Sweet on Strawberry", "I'm for Lime", "Ape for Grape", "Cheers for Cherry","Lemon's my Squeeze", "Orange has the Juice" Nothing to buy. All you had to do was select your favorite on the coupon in the ad. Hundreds of thousands voted. Strawberry won in a landslide. This idea was way ahead of its time. It was ideally suited to be a promotion on the Internet many years later. Cherry demanded a recount.
No sooner did General Foods sign with Warner Bros. for the use of Bugs Bunny as spokesman for Tang, the instant breakfast drink, then I headed west to meet with Chuck Jones. From the forward to "Chuck Amuck,The Life and Times of Chuck Jones,", Steven Speilberg wrote "With the creation of Pepe LePew, Coyote, and Road Runner and as part of the team that created Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and directed over fifty Bugs Bunny cartoons, Chuck broke away from those sweet preschool characters to whom Walt Disney had given eternal life." It did not soothe my nerves to know I would be working with the king of animated cartoonists. I discussed my idea for the commercial with Jones in his office. I envisioned Bugs Bunny in "Tangrila" He sparked to the idea and I silently sighed a "whew". We went off to the Warner Bros. commisary for lunch and Jones sketched the whole thing out on a place mat which I now have framed on my wall at home.
As newcomers to the Tang account, the creative team took a field trip to Battle Creek , Michigan to see how Tang was produced. The process was little more than a variety of powders moved from vats to a jar. For sanitary reasons we all had to don white paper hats. I thought, "If a hair ever got into Tang it would be the only natural ingredient in it.
Switching to print, I enjoyed an incredible run of Gulf advertising one three month period. For Gulfspray, an insecticide, the page was blank except for one dead bug on its back on the bottom and the line "Not Everyone Benefits From Gulf Research."
A Whitney Darrow cartoon depicting two kids talking through empty Gulf Oil cans connected by string and the line, "The Best Way an Oil Company Talks to Its Customers is Through Its Products"
The photo showed the contents of a woman's handbag strewn about the page and a Gulf Credit Card prominently featured. The line, " A Woman Doesn't Get Very Far Without Certain Basic Necessities."
Harry MacMahan who wrote a column for Advertising Age titled, "The Month's Ten Best" included each of the above ads three months in a row.
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