Yes, It Is Possible ...

Having worked in the Retail Automotive Advertising Industry for many years I've seen, written and produced just about every kind of television and radio spot that you've loved and loathed.
Let's face it, eighty percent of the work I've done even I don't like.
Twenty years ago automobile dealers, especially domestic dealers like Chevy and Ford, only wanted one thing: bodies in the door.  
So the Ad agencies came up with all kinds of gimmicks to lure the people to those stores by inventing or utilizing phrases that are now the mainstay of the entire retail advertising world. 
Creating Urgency:

Now Through Saturday Only!

It's The One-Day Sale!

Hurry!  Once These Vehicles Are Gone, The Sale Is Over!

You get the idea.  But it wasn't just the words or phrases they used, it was the method used to deliver the words.  The radio and television spots were loud!  The Announcers used were of two types:  Deep Bass or Mid-Range Baritone.  Both shouting into the microphone at the top of their lungs at a speed no normal human could match.  Once taped the words were tweaked and enhanced with echo or reverb for emphasis with sound effects like hammers banging on anvils, explosions and even screeching tires!  With all that there was one thing missing needed to drive the potential buyer into the showroom.  The Sale. 
Here are a few with their caveats or conditions for the sale.  These disclaimers were usually shown in tiny ant-sized type in the print ads or television or spoken at the end of the radio commercials at a much lower volume and at twice the speed.

• $88 Down, $88 A Month
• With approved credit.  $88 down payment and $88 for the first 3 months at which point the customer makes the regular payment which could be anything the dealer decides. 
• We'll Get You Approved No Matter How Bad Your Credit Is
• Must have down payment of $9000 or 30% of vehicle value whichever is higher, prove a verifiable and steady income, stable residence and a co-signee with acceptable credit standing
• The Lowest Lease Payments ... Ever!
• 36 Month Leases. Limit 12,000 miles per year. $2,895 cash and/or trade down payment plus tax, tag and $489 dealer fee.  Credit must be approved.  See dealer for additional details.

But having said all that, it is possible these days to sell a store without screaming.  Please take a look.

Retail Advertising's Bad Reputation

And it does have one, doesn't it?  But why?  And how?  At it's core, Retail Advertising is really the grandaddy of all advertising.  When I was a young junior copywriter at Young & Rubicam, one of the stars of the agency once said to me that the basis of a good ad is to:  "Say it, say you said it and then say it again."  He meant that was the formula no matter whether it was print, radio or television.  Of course, on a billboard, you can only say it once ... unless you're one of the geniuses who developed the road-side campaigns for Burma Shave.  Those ads began in 1927 or so and ran until about 1963.  Four or five signs spaced for easy reading mostly pitching the product in pithy sayings always (except for a couple of exceptions) ending with the product name.  I've read them all and there are hundreds. My favorite is:

Past  /  Schoolhouses  /  Take it slow  /  Let the little  /  Shavers grow  /  Burma-Shave

Needless to say, 'Burma-Shaving' became and still is used by many small stores, strip malls and bars around the country and oddly, by local political campaigners as well.
In my mind this repetitious kind of advertising could be said to be one of the first cases of branding.  But it was retail all the way.  And far from what that senior copywriter was trying to instill in me.
Because those ads did what advertising and real retail advertising is supposed to do.  They engaged the reader.  They made the reader think and most of all, they posed the problem, offered a solution and they named the solution. They did it over and over again.  People looked for the signs just as we, as advertisers should be looking for the signs all around us.
I have been appalled by the lack of writing skill copywriters are exhibiting these days.  And why should they try to write great prose when so few people actually read?  Which is why most of the print ads are actually written by the art director or the client.  
Which leads me to my title point.  Retail Advertising lost it's punch and it's stamina when, after decades of the same products pointing their logos in our faces, the great idea of a campaign was replaced by the stellar execution of a non-idea agreed upon by a series of focus groups.  When the great idea was replaced by the MBA slouch who said:  "Let's get (insert name of sports figure here)!"
We will never again see anything as evocative as the words:
"Crest has been shown to be an effective decay preventative dentifrice when used in a consciously applied program of daily oral hygiene and regular professional care."
We have instead:
"If an erection lasts for more than four hours please seek medical attention immediately."
Retail advertising got it's bad reputation because those writers/art directors/creative people who were not good enough to do the real job of finding and promoting that one product attribute which made their product better and more promotable than that of their main competitor.  I'm sorry but "Tastes great - Less filling" is a slogan for a diet product, not a beer.  "Lite"is not a word.
Informercials tore retail down another notch or two as did cheap ad time on cable when it first hit the airwaves.  Although the local television stations had begun to fill their interstitial air-time with pitches from local car dealers, carpet mavens, plumbers and anyone with a few bucks and a beta camera.  Radio was worse.  And both broadcast media tore Retail a new one when they started offering air time at a discounted rate ... "And we can write and produce your ads for you ... no charge!"  The final products pushed at us was the perfect example of you get what your pay for.
When, after twenty years of working the generic marketing side of the fence,  I took a position at a so-called prestigious Automotive Retail Advertising Agency I learned that there were two things to learn:
1) A sixty second radio was lousy if it contained more than 165 spoken words.
2) People who buy cars are the most ignorant people on the planet (they were dubbed "Mr. & Mrs.  Johnny Lunch-bucket) you can tell them anything as long as the message is 'urgent-sounding' which is short hand for loud.
And from the early '90s after the four or five Retail Auto agencies took over, the Retail Advertising Reputation spun into a death spiral.
Another two decades has passed and now the old guard has passed as well.  You don't hear car dealers or their spokespeople screaming at the top of their lungs some incomprehensible offer written specifically to get you into the show room door where the deal is neither available or non existant. Some guy like me (or was it me?!) had been saying since his first day in the Automotive Retail Ad Biz these words:  " ... the Lunch-buckets will stop buying cars and people, young people smarter than us with more access to more information, will not be buying the same brands as their parents and grandparents. They will want something that will last longer, cost less and they will not be brow-beaten into something else, in fact they will probably be buying a used vehicle as a first car ..."  and on and on like that.
I know every good writer who makes their living writing and producing car dealer commercials these days ... sadly, there are only 5 of us in the whole country - each one of us painstakingly craft our scripts and create spots that are the couches for real, honest offers provided by the manufacturers and most times sweetened by the dealer in some real way or another.  Don't get me wrong, we are not (John, Jeff,  Jason, Carl nor I) - individually or collectively - saving the rep of retail. I just want you to know ... we know ... but you can't blame it on us.    

Super Stars as Trademarks ... Where Are We Going?

It didn't start with the Marlboro Man or the Hathaway Man, the Maytag Man or even Mr. Whimple.
They weren't even famous before their ads began to run.
It didn't start with Mean Joe Green or even when O.J. ran through the airport on his way to his SUV.
Celebrity spokespeople have been with us for so long they have become the brand.  Which seems to me why people like Beyonce are trademarking their newborns ... just in case.
But what happens when those famous people turn the corner and their names no longer register as "positive" with those advertisers who have spent millions for their endorsements?

The Super Bowl Spot Chrysler wasted Ad Dollars On...

A lot of hoopla has been made over the Chrysler commercial that aired last night during the Super Bowl.

This genre of commercial terrifies me.
We as an advertising community are not required to make public statements about the "State Of The Union" or about the "State Of The American Mind Set".  

We, as advertisers are here to do one thing and one thing only.  Sell our product.
Having said that, I must add that I like Mr. Eastwood and like his work.
The delivery was powerful although the writing was callous and rather weak. 
The production was just OK but having spent your whole budget on talent what else can you do but paste a bunch of store-bought shots together and convince us that this is a an "Ansel Adams / Diane Arbus Moment".  

This is what is known as borrowed interest of the worst possible sort and what my mentor at Y&R Hanley Norins told us over and over to never use.  

This spot panders to the lowest common denominator and by that I mean it demeans us and talks down to us as if we were 5 years old.   
The Super Bowl is not the time to make us scared about who we are and where we are and what we do not have ... we already know all of that. 
This spot is American Cheese which we all know is mostly not even cheese. 

It is the wrong kind of advertising on every level in my estimation.
Chrysler, to its credit, has endeavored to create a good product lately. 
The line: Imported from Detroit is solid.
This spot detracts from the good work that has come before it simply because it refuses to do its job: Sell the product.
If they wanted to make a PSA they should have never shown any product and never tagged it with their corporate name.

... But who's counting ...

From what I remember, somebody once said: “Don’t get a job, choose a career and whatever it is, do the best you can.”
I’m glad I followed that advice.
Because those words have motivated me throughout my career.
I looked up today and it dawned on me that I am in my fourth decade of professional Word Smithing!
From the IBM Model D, the Selectric models that followed and even the old word processor I used to pound out scripts at 212 Fifth Avenue, technology has come a long way but to me only one thing remains: The idea has to come before the execution.
Next time you look at a spot, see if you think somebody came up with that commercial with a solution to the client's problem first instead of an animation house they've been wanting to work with 'like forever'.
Or: (my favorite lately!) "I've got an idea! Let's use that song, you know the one, my Dad used to love it. The lyrics are ... you know ... let me Google it!"
And lo and behold; the client's Dad used to love that song, too. A $5,000,000 spot is born.
It doesn't matter that Ad Week and Advertising Age pan the crap out of the spot because it wins a Lion - for most money ever spent on a :30 spot not appearing in the Super Bowl - and the lazy creative guy who came up with the spot (such as it was because all he did download the mp3 and email it to the agency producer who emailed it to the animation house and they did all the heavy lifting) gets a big raise and a promotion.
The animation house is richer, the long-suffering, one-hit wonder of an artist gets a much needed big payday and because the media buy is so huge he/she gets to make the rounds of morning news shows so we can see how much they've aged and ask ourselves why we ever liked the song in the first place ... the song is revived and is covered by Enya or somebody like that and iTunes® reports record download sales and on and on so much so that Oprah doesn't give up her show, stages a huge comeback and buys the rights to the screen play about the life and loves of the creative guy who came up with the spot who by now, one year later, is also making the rounds of the morning shows and the various late night shows touting his best-selling autobiography and never forgets to tell us over and over that it was all because of his Dad who liked this song.
Because I am driven by what can only be called an old fashioned work ethic and the need for my work to stand apart from others, I should probably mention that yes, I have done what I call 'borrowed interest' work. But I have always been dragged kicking and screaming out of those meetings when such creative decisions were made and I had to write them. I generally worked harder than I should've on those spots.
That's because I always want to be proud of my work.
And because I mostly feel lucky that I got to choose my vocation. I chose to be a writer, but I know because of those important 16 words, it wouldn’t matter what had I chosen to do, because I would be working just as hard at that as I do at this.
Now I'm not hating.
I don't hate people who don't have careers.
I don't hate people who didn't have the opportunity to pick their current work.
I don't even hate people who hate what they do to earn their paychecks even though many make so much money I wonder how dare they not like it and how dare they complain about going every day to get that money and how double dare they not do a good job while they are there getting all that money.
I truly do believe that if we as Americans start to choose our careers instead of just taking jobs we will be a happier more productive people.
And for goodness sakes, why can't "a job" be a career?
A doorman, a butler, a wait person, a bus driver, a cabbie, a dish washer or whatever. People used to do those kinds of things and took their jobs seriously and made good money for their service.
If we were brave enough (and not so stupidly narcissistic!) to wash toilets or change bedding in a hotel or pick up after and baby sit other people’s children, or pump gas, mow grass or any other of what we now consider menial jobs, then we wouldn’t have other people coming in from the four corners of the earth to do those jobs.
And then:
We would not have people hating those other people for doing what they refuse to consider good, hard and honest work. From what I know of history, the Roman Empire was destroyed by it’s own refusal to see it’s inner workings not working. Over the past sixty years we’ve managed to whittle away that great can do attitude that helped us produce an infrastructure that at one time completely marveled the rest of the world.
Now most of the world kind of hides behind their hands as they laugh at our puny little 4G networks.
The International Advertising World certainly does laugh at our puny attempts at sophistication.
"Silly Puritans." They remark upon viewing the latest promotion for some Vegas Casino.
Silly indeed. We need to work on that. Less sophomoronic, please.
I was always asked: “How do you do it?” after writing and producing as many as seventeen to twenty radio and television commercials in a single week.
I don't know. I didn't think about it. I didn't count I just did.
Forty years. And I'm still not counting.

The Sky Is Falling! The Sky Is Falling!

So do you think that the new marketing ploy is to just scare everyone into submission? I do. The pharma companies have been at it for a while. Their magazine ads which look so pretty and promise so much (with headlines and design apparently by art directors!) but when you turn the page there is the advertising equivalent of Revelations staring at you.
I generally shudder whenever I see an agency looking for writers to work on Pharma stuff.
The discalimers for those ads are usually about 5,000 words in 6pt type warning you that to ingest their product would be as harmful as smoking cigarettes or sprinkling salt on your food, or eating butter, or drinking whole milk, or eating anything that doesn't have "lite" in it's name or in general doing anything that your Grandparents did. And didn't they live to be like 90 years old without all these pills and diets and such?
What I'm saying is that if you want to cure yourself from burping, there's a pill for that.
But, as you may have heard in their TV spots, there are some side effects associated with such drugs.
I've seen and heard these spots so many times I can almost do the voice over (although the FDA makes them put the words on the screen, too) from memory.
It starts with scary in the form of: constipation; diarrhea; headache; nausea; pain, swelling, or redness as well as additional stomach pain.
But wait, there's more! Here's where it's gets even scarier! You can suffer from: Severe allergic reactions like rash; hives; itching; difficulty breathing; tightness in the chest; swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue; unusual hoarseness when talking. Then there's bone pain; chest pain; fast or irregular heartbeat; fever, chills, or sore throat; red, swollen, blistered, or peeling skin; seizures; unusual bruising or bleeding; unusual tiredness; vision changes.
"Vision changes? Does that mean you can lose your sight?
Plus at no extra charge, you can lose bone density and sudden weight gain.
What!? Both!?
And here's my favorite (and I got this from the web site http://www.drugs.com/sfx/prevacid-side-effects.html) Bloody or black, tarry stools; change in the amount of urine produced.
All of which isn't too bad - especially if you go blind from taking the stuff that's causing all this other stuff to happen.
And just to reiterate: All the above is what could happen to you if you take some medicine to relieve your heartburn. Hey, I'm just going to burp and forget about it like my Grandparents did.
And I don't know what my Grandfather did to keep my Grandmother happy all those years they were together (there are certain things you don't talk about with your Grands, you know!) but I'm sure he wasn't taking those little blue pills that make that guy on TV so smiley and wavey.
Dude! If your pee-pee isn't working like you think it should maybe you should have a lower expectation of it instead of having a cab on stand-by in case that four hour thing happens.
Which gets me to the reason I'm having this little 'watch-out-what-you-wish-for-because-that-genie-in-the-bottle-is-way-smarter-than-you!' rant.
We've gotten so used to getting scared out of our wits that this whole May 21st End of The World Is Coming is getting very little notice. Not here in New York, anyway. We're kind of used to the End Of the World being just around the corner here in the Big City.
But why haven't any of the retail outlets and stores taken advantage of this wacky opportunity?
Can they not see a weekend one day sale for what it's worth?
May 21st is Saturday.
Go shopping!
It's your chance to save like there's no tomorrow!

Piggy-Back Marketing - Bringin Home the Creative Bacon

To the folks at Madision Square Garden.
I am directing this to the Marketing Department and addressing those responsible for the new campaign for The Knicks.
People, as an advertising copywriter who has had a hand in marketing the fledgling Florida Pathers and even the Dolphins while I was in Florida, you are doing yourselves a disservice.
Your current Knick campaign (as I have studied on my daily subway ride) is missing the mark by miles.
Not that the "FROM - TO" thing is a bad idea, mind you ... I can clearly see how the idea got approved in the first place ...
but as to the execution;
Not to bash anyone in particular, but I've played the game and I have never heard of a shot called "JUMPS HOOKS"
That was just a typo that got away, right?
The rhyme thing is a pretty good way to go, too. But did somebody get lost in the FROM going for the TO? Doesn't anyone there have anything like a rhyming dictionary or access to a computer?
And just as an aside, who picked the voice over for the TV spots? It was free, right? Somebody's best friend or kid brother?
The production value overall is just not even mediore.
The audio is flat and the video does not exude the excitement of a basketball game at all.
Just a hint: a :30 TV spot for a playoff bound Knicks should contain all the punch of a tied game during the last seconds of overtime play.
The team deserves at least that much - even if you're not thinking of the fans.
Yeah, I'm a writer who is looking for work and all I'm saying is that I would l have done more homework on this campaign ... looked for many more archive shots for, instance ... worked in more names from the old teams for another thing ... and as a real marketing person I would have done what many second tier advertisers do.
As a reminder; tier two advertising is designed to do one thing. For a car dealer it's to sell cars ie. get the people in the door. For a gaming arena it's to get the butts in the seats. You don't have to sell the brand - in your case the the Knicks are doing quite well selling themselves.
Which is why I would have worked off the powerful NOW campaign the Knicks have going ... as in:
"THEN - NOW"
Same idea as you've got going but with more synergy as a tie in with the team.
What you are currently failing to do is remind people that what the Knicks had then they have now and that now is the time to see it happen.
Oh yeah - you've got no call to action. As in: "Get your tickets, NOW!"
I'm just saying that you can take your advertising team to the level that The Garden deserves.
It seems to me that you are spending way too much money to get such an off the rack product.
I think the fans deserve better, too.
BTW, the above idea ("THEN - NOW") Literally came to me on my subway trip in this morning. How many people do you have who do their creative thinking while they're not inside the building?
You could have at least one ... I'm out here ... put me in, coach!