The Ad with a Sensayuma
Working in advertising on television or the movies is hard. Darrin on Bewitched was in advertising. I recall one of his campaigns: insects walking into a bank with this tagline, “Even the little people matter at Bank Such and Such.” At eight, I knew this was a bad ad campaign. Insects are creepy, and the subtext of the message is patronizing at best. On Mad Men, Don Draper won an award for a commercial with a tiny chuck wagon. I assume this is based on the Chuck Wagon commercial from 1970: a little wagon with little cowboys speeds around a kitchen followed by a running dog. In the Doris Day and Rock Hudson movie, Lover Come Back, both are competitive ad executives who create campaigns for items like VIP, candy mints with the alcohol equivalent to one martini each.
I’m not in advertising and don’t pretend to be unless someone at a party is beyond confused as to what a graphic designer does. After the fifth, “I’m sorry, you design what?” I say, “it’s like advertising.”
For several years in our Communication Design 1 course, I discussed brand identity, strategy, typography, form, and ethics using some advertising as examples. I show a 1958 Edsel ad to explain a boring ad. It’s a photo of a car and the copy tells me it’s a wonderful car. Ok, got it; car/car or pizza/pizza.
.On the other end of the spectrum is a campaign like the Levy’s Rye Bread campaign from 1964. I see the product and the audience's reaction. but the copy asks me to do some work. It relies on the viewer’s cultural knowledge. It demystifies a product that might be considered exotic in 1964. And the final takeaway is a sense of humor and success. “Oh, I get it, the policeman must be Irish.” If you ad the fact that most ads in 1964 had a whole bunch of happy and impossibly flawless white people and nobody else, these are even more striking. It was a revolutionary precursor with diversity and representation to the Coca-Cola “I’d like to teach the world to sing,” commercial. (discussed here)
So, why now do I see current ads that show me a car and read, “This is a wonderful car.”?
