We see you! We see you! Sitting in that Muskoka chair in the sun on the dock with your Smirnoff Ice, with your Atlantic Monthly, and neatly inserted inside, your copy of the July 21 People Magazine!
Okay, with John-John and Carolyn on the cover, you claim you picked it up at the tuck shop for the American political historical interest, but you and I know it’s really just a big fat 136-prurient-page package of summer fun.
What’s that ad peeping over the edge of the Atlantic? The People back cover devoted to Jon Voigt’s little girl pitchin’ for milk, dressed – or make that undressed – in a black bikini, with something lethal strapped to her right arm!
She’s also wearing that milk moustache that came from Canada, eh? I’ve got to admit it foxes me the damn thing has survived all the research they’ve put it through. I’d have bet big money that teens would hate it as being terminally gross, but either I’m very much mistaken, or the distinctive impact of the image is sufficiently powerful to squish such minor negatives. Did I say MINOR? Jeez.
Of interest to all you co-op freaks out there, only slightly larger than the got milk? signature in the lower left corner is the Lara Croft Tomb Raider The Cradle of Life In Theatres July 25 plug in the lower right. I’d betcha the ad as a package sells more movie tickets than milk, but I was wrong once before.
Now I’ve been doing this column for like 10 years, since most of you were like 11, okay? And I’ve gotten into the habit of using People as kind of a look at what that big bunch of middle-of-the-road, middle-of-the-bell-curve, middle-of-America folks are doing and wanting at the moment, and – given that America’s ad agencies have the sense that God gave gravel – what kind of creative is supposed to be turning their cranks at the moment too.
In the past, this exercise would telegraph the notion that these people are mostly turned on by (a) junk food, (b) medication and (c) cars, or rather SUVs. And by way of communications, the fewer words the better.
Today, though, there’s a shift in the kind of creative People ads are using, and it’s kind of interesting to one who is so bloody old he still remembers who David Ogilvy was and that one of the 93 million rules he caused to be written in stone was The more you tell, the more you sell.
The exception to the fewer-words-the-better pendulum swing in People has always been the pharmaceutical ads, which take selling very seriously indeed. Their copy for happy pills or hair restoration preps always runs to Many, Many Words. Great Clouds of Words. Rivers of Words. Especially good reading has always been provided by the words used as disclaimers, often mocked in parodies as in may make you walk like a chicken, can cause bleeding from the eyes, if barking persists, call an exorcist, and suchlike.
But behold, the July 21 People’s inside front cover spread features that curious confessional GM ad I’ve brought to your attention previously, The longest road in the world is the road to redemption. Scads of copy!! (See Strategy, June 16/03, p. 12.)
Flip the page, and there’s another spread for Today’s Military. The power line is The qualities you acquire while in the Military are qualities that stay with you forever. Come on, that’s a longer power line than Jerry della Femina’s send-up-of-powerlines spoofing Japanese products, which you will recall read From those wonderful people who brought you Pearl Harbour.
This ad shows us a chick rock band performer on stage, with a Polaroid of legs wearing Army Boots where her legs should be. The copy says she’s Valerie Vigoda, that she’s an ex-Army ROTC chick, and that her band has suffered through long hours, bad food, bad weather and homesickness but has kept going with a few qualities that weren’t exactly listed in the course guide at Princeton. Like Stamina. Follow-through. And what she calls ‘the ability to play the hand you’re dealt.’ Nice stuff. Hey, maybe middle America can read after all. Probably it’s the e-mail boom.
Yeah, there’s still the cloying, cutesy Disney stuff (Hunny B’s Cookie Pieces invite you to feed your kid Eeyore, for God’s sake, who looks like that revolting piece of gum that won’t quit). And the cowboys corrallin’ a 20-foot high bottle of Wish-Bone Ranch-Up dressing. And the hot air balloon basket suspended from a giant Quaker Corn Ring snack.
But then you flip to another double-truck for Botox, in which a loving couple who can’t be a day over 38 say, We promised to grow old together, not look old together, with almost a page of smallish but readable copy which makes you want to do Botox or you got spit for blood. Hey, Branding Person, maybe it’s not so uncool to be seen ‘reading’ People after all!
Barry Base creates advertising campaigns for a living. He writes this column to blow off steam, and as a thinly disguised lure to attract clients who may imagine working with him could be a productive and amusing experience. Barry can be reached at (416) 924-5533, or faxed at (416) 960-5255, at the Toronto office of Barry Base & Partners.
