Broadcasting Telecasting (Apr-Jun 1957)

from FAIRFAX CONE, -president, Foote, Cone & Belding WHAT'S REALLY WRONG WITH TV COMMERCIALS Fairfax M. Cone; b. San Francisco, Feb. 21, J 903: educ. U. of California. Joined San Francisco Examiner 1926; became copywriter and account executive. Lord & Thomas, San Francisco. 1929. With Emerson Foote and Don Belding organized Foote, Cone & Belding as successor to Lord & Thomas 1942. became chairman of board 1948. president 1951. headquartering in Chicago. One of most active leaders in agency advertising affairs, he was chairman of American Assn. of Advertising Agencies in 1950-51. CRITICIZING advertising has been a popular intellectual and professional exercise for as long as I can remember. More often than not this takes the form of blasting whatever is advertising's current favorite device or technique: or choosing a particular item of bad taste and calling this the standard of the industry. In the case of television, the ugliest use of the medium is pointed to by the critics as its norm. This is unfortunate. And it is also, obviously, unfair. What many of the critics are talking about, incidentally, is not the advertising so much as the products involved. Deodorants would be a fair example. But one must not generalize. The principal thing that is wrong with television commercials in 1957 is only that some of the people who make them have failed in 10 years or so to achieve a standard of excellence that has eluded so many of the makers of printed advertising and their sponsors for something over 50 years. We have the dull and the dreary in television commercials just as we have in printed advertising. And I think we may be disturbed by it a little more only because it is a little bit harder to get away from. The television advertising experience is a total experience, whereas advertising in newspapers and magazines usually occupies only a portion of the opened pages, and outdoor advertising is only a part of the scene. I have heard the complaint that too many television commercials are nothing more than radio commercials with pictures added. And it is true that if you turn off the sound sometimes the pictures fail to make any point at all. But this is only the same lack of creativity that keeps some printed advertising pictures from adding any more than decoration to the words that surround them. To be sure, this is too bad. A Ship Sails Empty But poor advertising is always too bad. For the opportunity that is wasted is gone forever. The contact has failed to materialize into anything of value for anyone and there is no salvage. It is like empty berths in a liner at sea. Certain commercials simply are ordered and made by people who will never be good advertising people in any medium: they have no imagination. Others still are made by and for individuals whose imagination is almost overpowering. In them the possibilities of sight and sound together induce a kind of delirium (which is at its worst when excited by French movie shorts). There also are the pitchmen for patent medicines and auto polishes and used cars and real estate and furniture and cloth ing and the other things that pitchmen have always sold. These. I must say. I kind of enjoy. I can see them and hear them without ever venturing into the seedier parts of the town. They remind me how lucky I am. The commercials that really bother me are something very different. These are the ones that waste not the opportunity, but rather the medium: the advertising that belongs somewhere else. It is simply not a fact that all advertising is more productive in television. What makes some seem to be is the matter of scheduling. Television, like radio in its heyday, demands continuity of the purchaser. He can't go in and out at will, as in the various printed media, and he becomes, perforce, a consistent advertiser. And usually a successful one. When some of the other media owners realize what consistency can do and insist upon it ( and make it attractive rate-wise) some of television's current users will abandon it for cheaper business cards and showcases. The Resort to Trickery When they do. the more interesting (and. I think, more legitimate) advertisers will fill the little screen with much more grace and greater effect. Just now we have a hodgepodge. And almost everyone is forced to trickery in order to be seen and heard. What with the scheduling of sponsor commercials and alternate sponsor commercials and spots and station identification breaks for all kinds of people on even," station in even" 30 minutes, the jumbling of advertising is not unlike what would occur if the advertising pages of Good Housekeeping. Field & Stream and Popular Mechanics were intermixed. One of these days many more advertisers will seek audiences instead of only audience. Television, somehow, will provide these. And advertising in the main will become more sharply and pointed and more thoughtfully prepared. Meanwhile, we have some patterns for excellent commercials, particularly the clear, quiet demonstrations for demonstrable products and the spirited minute-productions when no demonstration is possible, to point the way. These good commercials (and the ones that stick to their allotted time — without prologue and epilogue) are pretty wonderful. I think. Even so, most of the advertising people that I know will never be satisfied for long. Their respect for television and its viewers and their own good names is much too great. Techniques in television advertising wear out very fast. Broadcasting • Telecasting May 13, 1957 • Page 151