Sponsor (Oct-Dec 1963)

COMMERCIAL CRITIQUE Trends, techniques new styles in radio/tv commercials are evaluated b> industr> leaders DOWN WITH THE SUPER JAMES N. HARVEY president and creative director Richard K. Manoff, Inc. JAMES N. HARVEY joined Richard K. Manoff in 1959 after service with McCann-Erickson and earlier with Young & Rubicam. Primarily a packafied-Roods agency, Manoff bills twelve million dollars annually, the bulk of it in television THERE is a new breed of television commercial flashing across the home screens these days, and its technique is enough to make an old-time copywriter reverse polarity in his grave. I speak of the ultra soft sell announcement, in which the sell has become so soft as to be no sell at all. In fact, the result is no longer even a commercial. It is a non-commercial, and I suspect it was written by a nonwriter. The type is easily recognized. In one, a little boy wanders through a forest glen, sun dappling his brow and breeze stirring his locks, while the music is wistful and the announcer talks like Mark Twain recalling the joys of childhood past. The scene is fraught witli realism, as the kid yawns and stvnnbles along, picking his tiny nose endearingly. At the close there is a (^uick shot of a box of cookies and a quiet, rather embarrassed mumbling of the brand name. If the viewer was able to brush the tear from his eye and cock an ear toward the set in time, he might even know what product he was expected to rush out and bu\ . And if he missed that part, so wliat? It's art. isn't it? Maybe. But it isn't a commercial. Another features humor. Natural1\ it's animated, so that ever>bod\ will know it s funn\ . The principals are a pair of formless cretins who exchange hilarious witticisms for awhile (a long while, it seems), and then there is an incidental reference to a brand of beer. Knd of spot. Or joke. The variations are endless, appearing in what seems an openended contest whose object is to sechow far awa\' a commercial can get from that unspeakable subject, the product, or even more revolting, the business of selling it. I refer \-ou to paragraph one. The new breed of coinnicrcial. tlie non commercial, is the ott-spring of tin new breed of writer — the non writer. And of the non art-directo and the non-producer. It would ap pear that these are people to when advertising is a crass occupatioi with which they are only temporari ly associated while on their way t' writing the great American novel o directing a Broadway smash. S' while they are with this grubb business, they can at least sho\ their contempt for it, and at th same time help to purge it of it materialistic aspects. What has gi\en rise to these non advertising people in the advertis ing business? There are two princ pal factors, I believe. The first i that many clients have become s sensitive to adverse criticism of paj abuses that they are willing to ben over backward to be inoffensivt and in the bending become ineffec tual as well. The second is that th non-advertising people reproduc themselves, like amoebae. They e^ change kudos, applaud each other genius, and build the cult th. judges the qualitx of advertisin only b\' its ability to charm, t amuse, or to entertain, avoiding lik dengue fever the question > whether it is effective. Does all this mean that I fa\> the shouting pitch, or endless repi tition of the proposition, or a ulcer's eye-\iew of the inside > somebod\'s stomach? It does nc But I do beliexe that it is not onl possible but highly desirable t make ct)mmercials that combine f; \()rable emotional impact with sound, persuasive selling idea commercials that bring forth smile or a chuckle or a warm glc just as quickh as the \apid kirn but also leave the audience with cogent reason to buy the produc These commercials not onl\ \vi friends but win sales too. And th« — except for non-ad\ertisers — the point of the game. ^ 18 SPONSOR 1 1 OCTOBER 196