Sponsor (May-Aug 1958)

Commercial commentary continued . ft YOUR PRODUCTS AT tP1me WORL BOSTON offers 1. Surveys 2. Dealer Contacts 3. Dealer Letters, Cards, etc. 4. Grocery Store Displays 5. Drug Store Displays 6. Participation in WORL'S Housewives' Luncheons 7. Window Displays 8. Interviews 9. Editorials, 14 Newspapers 10. Ads In Leading New England Magazines 11. Full-Color Subway Posters Tell us your problem. We will help you devise a promotion tailored to suit your product's needs. All this, plus the powerful super salesmanship of our top-talent air personalities, and you will, at low cost, realize SALES RESULTS ON BOSTON'S "950 CLUB" STATION (Adult Music & News Programming) WORL bleats aboul P&G's "lack of artistic sensitivity" from bosomv night< lull entertainers whose artistic and cultural horizons are bounded on the east by Las Vegas. \n<l here in New York I've known fancy, high-priced copywriters who stalked awa\ into the literary night, muttering darkly that a "P&G account is a creative man's graveyard." But I don't hold with such loft) and aesthetic idealists. Nor is this criticism intended on their plane. The third point I want to make land quickly, before the wolves catch up with the sleigh I is that the only possible excuse for taking a poke at one company's commercials in a column such as this, is to poinl a moral or illustrate a lesson. And to me there's a clear lesson to be learned from studying P&G commercials. Advertisers like P&G have made tremendous gains in recent years, in research, media-buying and marketing. But I don't think these gains have been matched by corresponding gains in advertising creativeness. The creative side of advertising is lagging far behind the parade. Make your own critical test II you want to check this unorthodox, heretical theory, tr\ making your own small critical test of a few P&G announcements. You can easily get a fair smattering sample of them by watching such P&Gsponsored evening tv shows as, It Could Be You, Suspicion, and Phil Silvers. See if you don't notice, as I have, that many P&G commercials have a curious kind of synthetic, artificial quality. They look and sound as if highly experienced writers and producers were going through the motions without quite believing in what they are doing. The elements are all there — the slick camera work, the jingles, the theme songs, musical scores, close-ups and cute "ideas." But somehow they don't add up. They're not put together with the love and warmth that characterize the Kraft commercials, for instance. They seem forced, spurious, mechanical, contrived. As if, in the P&G scheme of things, commercials were a necessary but regrettable part of advertising. Another point that bothers me: P&G brands seem to have developed no clear-cut competitive story or identity. Commercials for Zest, for example, seem to want to overwhelm me with shrill soprano assurances that "for the first time in my life I'll be realh clean." Yet I don't gather what kind of a soap Zest is, or why it is different or better. Finally, and notice this carefully, many P&G announcements seem awkward, embarrassed, sub-human, when it comes to portraying people. For every Crest commercial with its gleeful "Look Mom. no cavities" reproduction of the Norman Rockwell scene, you get dozens of ponderous heavy-footed portrayals -f improbable housewives and frantic husbands who lack recognizable human traits. These things (if true) are very real weaknesses. So real, in fact, that I'm beginning to wonder if copy and creative work on man] other national accounts hasn't become alarmingly perfunctory in recent years. Is today's best advertising being done by the biggest advertisers? Frankly. I don't think it is, and I want to discuss this subject in my next column. Meanwhile, though I'll welcome comments, arguments, brickbats, and even sharp knives from interested, or apoplectic readers. ^ SPONSOR • 30 AUGUST 1958