I'm leaving my family. But just for the weekend.
The girls and I will be in Bethesda drinking too much wine, gossiping about high school classmates and giggling like we're back in junior high. Terence will be home having a boys weekend with Brendan.
I'm not sure if it's solely the impending daddy time that made this PSA tickle my funny bone, but I have a feeling anyone, parent or no would find this funny. The casting is absolutely perfect.
Did you know that advertising is one of the most reviled professions in the world? Right behind lawyers? Are you pretending to be surprised? It's ok. I don't take it personally. We are, after all, the people trying to convince your children that they need sugar cereal. And the little snipets of film that show you the softer side of Philip Morris? Yep. That's us.
I am here to tell you, however, that we do not use subliminal messaging to brain wash you. I'm always asked if we do. Perhaps people are ashamed to admit they are indeed persuaded by the shamefully blatant pleas we bombard you with. They wish to believe there is a greater force at work. One against which they are powerless. Sorry, dude. You plunked down 60 Gs for that Hummer because the ad said it might make you appear more powerful. By the way, feeling powerful at $4+ a gallon?*
Anyway, I've never believed in the effectiveness of subliminal messaging or brainwashing, until I pondered the potential connectedness of recent events through the rear view mirror.
Event One:
As you all know, we embarked on a kitchen renovation toward the end of the third trimester of my pregnancy. It turned our apartment upside down and left us largely confined to our bedroom. We watched a lot of Law & Order SVU marathons.
Event Two:
I don't believe in revealing names under consideration for unborn children. It invites unwanted opinions on an entirely subjective topic. The only votes that count are the mom and dad's (well, let's face it - really only mom's counts). Once you announce the name, no one is going to tell you they don't like it. But now I can tell you, after reading through the entire "100,000 Baby Names" book and months of consideration with a painstaking process involving post it notes, we narrowed girl names down to Alexandra and Olivia. (In case there is another Baby Voltz someday, no negative comments please).
Subliminal Connection?
Only later did I realize the names of the two lead females on SVU...
It's been a while since I posted an obit, but here's one that affected me.
Advertising is a business full of larger than life legends, and this past weekend we lost one of our most revered. I met Mr. Dusenberry in an airport once - introduced by a mutual colleague - and was totally star-struck. Even if you've never heard of him before, no doubt, you've been in contact with his award-winning work.
His obituary as reported in AdAge:
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Phil Dusenberry, the famed BBDO creative known for campaigns such as GE's "We Bring Good Things to Life" and Pepsi's "The Choice of a New Generation," died at his Manhattan home Saturday, Dec. 29, after a battle with lung cancer. He was 71 years old.
The son of a cab driver, Philip B. Dusenberry attended Emory & Henry College, Virginia, on an athletic scholarship. He left after the athletic program was canceled and dabbled in radio before landing at BBDO in 1962, where he launched a career as a creative.
After his initial seven-year stint as a copywriter, Mr. Dusenberry left BBDO to start his own shop, Dusenberry Ruriani & Kornhauser. The business didn't take off with the gusto he had hoped, and Mr. Dusenberry rejoined BBDO in 1977 as an associate creative director. Within the next decade, he was promoted to chairman-chief creative officer of the network's flagship New York office. He was also named vice chairman of BBDO Worldwide and later chairman of BBDO North America, a role he retained until his 2002 retirement from the Omnicom Group agency.
'A gentleman in every respect'
"He was a great person to work for, to work with, and a great friend," recalled Ted Sann, former chairman and chief creative officer at BBDO, New York. "It's really a loss to everybody who knew him, and to the business."
Allen Rosenshine, former chairman-CEO, BBDO Worldwide, remembers Mr. Dusenberry as a consummate gentleman. "He rarely if ever raised his voice in anger, and you never heard a profanity coming from his lips," he said. "Phil was always well-groomed and immaculately dressed. He was a gentleman in every respect.
"Although he was a hard taskmaster in getting the creative product to be as good as it could be, he always shared credit with the people who did the work, and he always celebrated the success of the work," added Mr. Rosenshine. "Being his partner was one of the things I really loved most about being in the business."
Selling with celebrities
With his ability to reel in the most famous names of the day -- Michael J. Fox, Madonna and Michael Jackson among them -- for his clients' ads, Mr. Dusenberry helped set the trend for marketers' inking of lucrative celebrity-endorsement deals. "He pioneered the use of celebrities not just for the sake of having a celebrity, but choosing a celebrity that had relevance ... and that had some emotional attachment to the brand, and was believable as a user of a brand," Mr. Rosenshine said.
He's also credited with changing the creative direction of the agency behemoth, and under his leadership, BBDO was named "Agency of the Year" numerous times by trade publications. Mr. Dusenberry also was known for the role he played on the famed Tuesday Team, whose "Morning in America" commercials helped Ronald Reagan get re-elected in 1984.
Mr. Dusenberry -- named by Advertising Age as one of the century's top 100 advertising people -- published a memoir in 2005: "One Great Insight Is Worth A Thousand Good Ideas." Among the numerous awards and achievements earned over a career spanning five decades, he was a 2003 American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame inductee and in 2007 was inducted into The One Club's Hall of Fame.
Putting Pepsi in popular culture
In an October interview with Ad Age on the eve of his One Club induction, he reminisced about his days on Madison Avenue, saying he was proudest of his work for Pepsi, GE and FedEx. "Those were the accounts I was probably closest to and enjoyed the most."
"Working with Phil produced some of the most enjoyable and rewarding moments in my years at PepsiCo," said Roger Enrico, former chairman-CEO of PepsiCo. "The advertising he did for our brands helped make them icons of popular culture and added significantly to the growth of the PepsiCo enterprise. He was a great ad man and a dear friend."
Until the end, Mr. Dusenberry remained a believer in the holding-company model, citing the "smorgasbord of services" that large marketing organizations can offer as a feature of the business that many clients will always find appealing over smaller, independent shops.
Making 'The Natural'; becoming a legend
His talents ranged far beyond advertising, too. The Brooklyn native and lifelong Yankee fan's screenwriting credits include "The Natural," the classic baseball film starring Robert Redford. His 18-minute documentary film, "Final Journey" became a permanent addition to the Reagan Presidential Library.
"Our industry has lost a legend. BBDO has lost an inspiration. And many of us have lost a friend," said Andrew Robertson, president-CEO, BBDO Worldwide, in a statement. "Those of us who were lucky enough to work with him knew he always wanted more time to make it better. Sadly, he didn't get it this time."
Mr. Dusenberry is survived by wife, Susan; stepson, Ben Procter; daughter-in-law, Ilana Sparrow; brother Harry, and his wife Marcy; brother Joseph; sister, Jean Driscoll, and her husband, Jack; and a large extended family.
A wake will be held Thursday, Jan. 3, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., and Friday, Jan. 4, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home, 1076 Madison Avenue at 81st Street in Manhattan. A funeral Mass will be held Saturday, Jan. 5, at 1 p.m. at St. Ignatius Loyola, at 980 Park Avenue at 84th Street in Manhattan.
Donations may be made in Mr. Dusenberry's name to the Coalition for the Homeless, 129 Fulton St., New York, NY, 10038, or the St. Jude Children's Cancer Research Hospital, 501 St. Jude Place, Memphis, TN, 38105.
AdWeek Obituary
Lunchtime diversion...
My Agency did an amazing video called Evolution for Dove last year that won all kinds of industry awards, received unbelievable media attention and was passed around the web like crazy. It placed Dove firmly at the leadership front of the beauty debate in the US - an important discussion to be having in this age of obsession with "perfect" anorexic celebutantes.
The follow up, Onslaught, was just launched and has already been getting unbelievable buzz in the media. I think it's great work. Enjoy...
A couple of years ago, while working on the financial services division of American Express (since spun off and now called Ameriprise), we shot a series of TV spots and my producer coincidentally booked one of our locations in the town across the bay from my hometown. She chose the spot because it had expansive grounds with multiple structures on the property, and we could make it look like 5 locations as opposed to just one. Very efficient.
The house was in Kings Point, which is in Great Neck - just a stone's throw from where I grew up. I had learned in my 9th grade American Lit course that the "Sands Point" section of my town and its across-the-bay-sister- peninsula, Kings Point, were East and West Egg, respectively, of Great Gatsby infamy (important note: I am from the other side of the tracks). Drawn to glamor at an early age, it became a favorite novel.
So it was a thrill to turn up the day of the shoot and find out that indeed, F. Scott Fitzgerald had summered at one of the cottages on the very same property. It was believed to be during that summer he wrote the fantastically fabulous - yet ultimately tortured - great American novel.
The grounds and houses still belonged to the original family, yet in touring the property it was clear to see why they had offered it up for commercial shoots. They needed the money! It was quite down at the heel and its better days were long behind it. Still, it was obvious those better days had been pretty grand.
Speaking of grand, the family Grand Dame was poking around with one of h
er sons at her side throughout the day. She was frail, yet she still had a twinkle in her eye, and she was clearly tickled at the frenzied activity happening all over her property. I had a chat with her at the Craft Services table over coffee. When she heard I was from Port Washington, she was very excited to tell me she had long been a member at the Manhasset Bay Yacht Club there. I told her that was where I had held my wedding reception. She seemed to approve (although I didn't mention I still hadn't ordered pictures).
Fast forward to this morning. I sauntered through the New York Times while drinking my morning latte and stumbled across this article about that very same house and that very same family. It gave more insight to the scene that unfolded that day. Apparently this clan has seen their share of drama and tragedy.
People always use stories like this to make themselves feel better about not being rich. "Yes, they have all that money, but are they happy?" Let me tell you something, I could be very happy living on 21 acres overlooking the Long Island Sound. And no matter who picked a fight with me, I wouldn't let them take my money, and I would keep that house looking Gatsby-level-fabulous.
Someone asked me to post more ads.
These are not funny, but I think they are great. Of course, I'm completely biased because I was part of the team that created them some years back. We got written up in Communication Arts and won all kinds of awards including ADDYs and even a Gold Effie (all a big deal in my line of work. Very thrilling).
We hired madman, Tony Kaye to shoot these and he was brilliant. (I know not everyone has had a good experience working with him. He is infamous for many reasons. One of the craziest stories I've heard is the time he had a disagreement with the Agency team at McCann about the ending scene of a spot and left the set without shooting it the way they wanted. He then paid all the actors in the spot to fly to an undisclosed location for a while so McCann couldn't reshoot the ending with another director. Nice.)
Some of these have been airing lately - I know they like to run them around Mother's and Father's Day - and they make me smile every time I see them. I think "Frogs" is my favorite. It really was the first time that little boy had seen a frog and it was just hilarious and adorable. But even better, we got it on film.
Enjoy.
Johnson & Johnson Corporate Campaign
Update: Some have reported issues with the link. If you can't see them from the above, try this one. You'll have to individually click on the "Having a Baby Changes Everything" links from this page.
http://www.jnj.com/our_company/our_videos/index.htm#baby
I would have LOVED to have been involved in the production of this spot. Hilarious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UH7VsywKvw
Did you catch this ad in Sunday's New York Times? Way to go, Weiden (and Rutgers, of course).
If you can't see the copy, it says:
"Thank you, ignorance.
Thank you for starting the conversation.
Thank you for making an entire nation listen to the Rutger's team story.
And for making us wonder what other great stories we've missed.
Thank you for reminding us to think before we speak.
Thank you for showing us how strong and poised 18 and 20-year-old women can be.
Thank you for reminding us that another basketball tournament goes on in March.
Thank you for showing us that sport includes more than the time spent on the court.
Thank you for unintentionally moving women's sport forward.
And thank you for making all of us realize that we still have a long way to go.
Next season starts 11.16.07."
Read the full article in Adage:
