www.chuckblore.com

Okay, Okay I Wrote the Book

Okay, what’s the message? Every good commercial has a message, right? I dunno, in spite of my four week intensive training, I was still having trouble believing there was any such thing as a good commercial. But, Ted said ... (Ted Factor, my advertising mentor and head of Doyle Dane Bernbach West) Ted said the challenge is to make the entire commercial about the sales message, while keeping the message itself well hidden. That is, it doesn’t stick out, with five lines of copy, for example, in the middle of a soft and sexy scene, suddenly becoming hard sell ...

EFFECT: ROMANTIC MUSIC IN BG THROUGHOUT:HE: (SOFTLY) Ooh baby. You know what I’m thinking?
SHE: I hope I do.
HE: Obvious isn’t it?
SHE: Mmm, I guess it is. Because I’m thinking the same thing. I think. I hope.
HE: Seduction?
SHE: Mmm Hmm. Seduction, by Loreal. And I got it on sale at Thrifty. Usually four ninety-nine. Today through Saturday, when you mention this ad, it’s only four twenty-nine. But, you have to hurry because supplies are limited.
Hey! Where you going?
HE: You kidding? I’m going to Thrifty. I’m gonna get some Seduction by Loreal for my wife!

Unhappily, thirty years later, that is still not that much of an exaggeration. Today, you can still say, without much fear of overstating, most radio commercials suck.

During those four four-hour sessions with Mr. Factor, something I didn’t realize till several years later, was that Ted was telling me what advertising was, in very idealistic terms. Not really what it was but what it could be ... what it should be.
But, to me, what I was hearing, were the rules ... this is how you do it. No two ways about it. So, because everything I knew about advertising was what I learned in those four sessions, those rules became the guidelines, the starting point for everything my company did ... everything from that moment on.

My first real professional assignment was to sell Rainier Ale. Copy claim; Rainier Ale is stronger than plain old beer. Target Audience; young black males.

Okay, I thought, a good radio commercial should be entertaining to it’s audience. If they like the ad, by osmosis, they’ll tend to like what it’s selling. To me, for the radio audience, entertaining meant musical or comedic. I played around with both approaches and couldn’t decide which was better. So, having sixty seconds to play with, I decided to do both; a thirty second comedy set up, into a thirty second song. My first rule to myself, NEVER write a jingle. Write short songs. I hated the word “jingle” and all the fluffy crap it represented. Still hear it today, hate it just as much.

So, comedy and music for a black male audience. Who could do both? I wrote the first couple of spots with Sammy Davis Jr. in mind. Second rule to myself; be aware of budget parameters when you’re writing these things. I took the scripts back to Ted. “Sammy Davis?” he said, “Great. But I seriously doubt that we can afford him.” As usual Ted was right. Sammy Davis was waaay out of reach ... for any price. His agent wouldn’t even ask him. Sammy doesn’t do commercials. Ted suggested I come up with a few alternates.

That night I was going through my LP collection. Nat Cole? Don’t even think about it. And then, wait a minute. Doesn’t really have to be a guy, does it? This thought was triggered by the LP I was holding in my hand. One of my favorites; “Pearl Bailey sings ‘So Tired’, and other Pearls.”

“Ted!” I was being more exuberant than I really had to be. “What about Pearl Bailey?” I had already re-written the spots to fit her. “I can’t think of anybody who can do both comedy and music better then Pearl Bailey.” I read one of the new spots to him. It was all about Pearl Bailey’s canary who was feelin low, “Mopin’ around his cage all day. That canary had the blues. So, I poured some Rainier Ale in his water cup. That canary tore the bars off his cage, chased the cat out of the house and came back in singin’ ...” and into the song. Ted loved it. We contacted Pearl Bailey’s agent. He loved it. She loved it. Her career was kind of on ‘pause’ at that moment. This was a couple of years before she re-wrote the rules for Broadway musicals with “Hello Dolly.” And so, at that moment, we could afford her.

What a fabulous day that was. Standing in the studio with one of the greatest talents of all time, listening to her read my words ... well, that’s not quite accurate ... those were now Pearl Bailey’s words... changed just enough to make the whole thing hers ...and that meant, to make the whole thing phenomenal. “Now listen, child.” she’d say to me, “What if Pearl did it this way...” I remember thinking she was making so much more out of this than what I’d written and the magic of what the right performance can do to make an ordinary commercial into something extraordinary was unforgettably forged into my brain. Ever since that day, I have never written anything without a particular performer or performance in mind. Even very straight announcer copy. Certainly Danny Dark would read it differently than Ernie Anderson. One of those two guys was the “pronouncer” on ninety percent of the spots I did during the first ten years of the commercials company.

Another thought I had working with Pearl Bailey that day was, maybe making commercials is not all that terrible after all. Especially working with Doyle Dane, the agency which at that time was re-writing the rules of advertising creativity in every medium, Billboards, TV, print and radio. And for awhile, that radio was me.

When I finished the Rainier spots, Ted gave me a print ad DDB had done for Bekins Moving and Storage Company. A picture of a very bored moving man sitting on a storage crate, gathering dust ... the man and the crate ...with a headline, The Moving Business Is Lousy This Time Of Year. The copy went on to say that “School is in so Movin’s out.” That was my new assignment.

During the eighteen months of obligatory non-competition, which meant non-broadcast work, I had tried my hand at writing a musical comedy. That was something I liked doing and when I saw that tough-guy looking Bekins Man in the ad, I thought he should be the star of a 60 second musical comedy.

A musical about ‘moving’ and ‘moving men’. I was playing around with synonyms for “moving’, one of which was motion. The ‘motion’ notion lead me to the phrase, “Poetry in motion.” That quickly became, “Poetry in moving.” and, almost at once, I had ... “Didja ever see a Bekins Man at work? That’s poetry in movin’.” The first musical comedy commercial was about to be born.

A very rough, tough-guy voice is heard:

THE MOVIN’ BUSINESS IS LOUSY THIS TIME O’ YEAR.”

The loud strong ticking of a clock forms a rhythm track behind the guy:

THE PHONE DON’T RING
THINGS DON’T SWING
AND BEKINS HAS ALL OF US MOVING MEN
SITTIN’ AROUND ... GATHERIN’ DUST.

The tough-guy is joined by three other macho voices.

WE ARE MOVIN’ ARTISTS
AND THE THING THAT IS THE HARDEST
FOR AN ARTIST
IS JUST TO SIT AROUND

SO BEKINS FIGGERED OUT A WAY
TO MAKE IT PAY
TO MOVE TODAY
BEKINS BRINGS THE MOVIN’ PRICES DOWN.

WE COST YOU LESS ‘CAUSE WE MOVE YOU FASTER
EVERY MAN IS A MOVIN’ MASTER
WE’RE THE BEST TRAINED MOVIN’ MEN AROUND

The solo tough guy voice:

Didja ever see a Bekins man at work?
That’s poetry in movin’.

IN THE MOVIN’ BUSINESS BEKINS MEN ARE PROS
AND PROS(E) MEANS POETRY
IN MOVING.

How successful was it? In less than six months all the Bekins trucks in Southern California had painted on their sides ... POETRY IN MOVING.

And I was hooked. I loved commercials.