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By Robert Cherry
We are vain, shallow mercenaries stressed to the
brink of nervous exhaustion and yet we think everyone else is beneath
us—especially curmudgeonly clients and lemming-like consumers.
If you were to base your perceptions solely on
Hollywood movies, that is the image you would have of us, the men and
women working in the field of advertising. As with most Hollywood portrayals, the image, of course, is
way off base—in no way are we vain.
But if the unflattering stereotypes don’t apply,
perhaps we can find at least some useful fact among the fiction.
Here, we revisit the most entertaining portrayals of our industry
and, between laughs, search for a practical lesson in each
film—something we might actually apply in our day jobs… before they
cart us off for a long, long rest.
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Plot: Yuppie ad exec David Howard
(Albert Brooks) and his wife Linda (Julia Hagerty) quit their
high-paying jobs to drop out of society a la the antiheroes in
“Easy Rider.” Cue montage of the couple cruising down the highway
in a Winnebago to the sound of Steppenwolf’s “Born To Be Wild.”
Unfortunately, one of their first stops is Las Vegas, where Linda loses
their financial nest egg at the roulette table (“Say it! Say it!
Say, ‘I lost the nest egg!’”). The sudden downturn forces the
couple to take minimum-wage jobs (“We’re in hell. We’ve entered
hell!”).
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Classic
Quote: “As the boldest experiment in advertising history,
you give us our money back,” says David, pleading with the Desert
Inn’s casino manager.
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Lesson: Feeding your soul
outside of work brings renewed enthusiasm for the job. Or as a
small-town employment agent tells David, “You couldn’t change your
life on a hundred-thousand
a year?”
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Plot: Following a freak accident
involving a hair dryer and a bathtub, chauvinist art director Nick
Marshall (Mel Gibson) discovers he can hear women’s thoughts. He
uses his newfound ability to get in touch with the female
demographic (“and those cuckoo things they do”) and, ultimately,
his boss Darcy McGuire (Helen Hunt)—but only after he experiences
the pain of female primping first-hand.
Classic Quote: “I'm the man-eating bitch Darth
Vader of the ad world,” says Darcy.
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Lesson: Know your target
audience, even if it means walking a mile in their high-heeled
shoes after waxing your delicate regions (“…in one smooth motion,
pull strip in the opposite direction of
the growth…. ”)
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Plot: In this quirky romantic comedy
from German director Lars Kraume, geeky, young Viktor Vogel
(Alexander Scheer) bluffs his way into an ad meeting, charms the
client with an irreverent remark, and finds himself hired to
concept a car campaign. Seizing the moment, he dresses for his new
role in a camouflage-print suit and becomes the agency’s hot
creative director—but only after borrowing an idea from his arty
girlfriend. His scheme, of course, then begins to unravel.
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Classic
Quote: “Vogel? Viktor Vogel? Even the name sucks,” says
Vogel’s new boss and would-be partner.
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Lesson: Faking it ‘til you make
it only works if you have the talent to back it up—and haven’t
forged your resume… or stolen your ideas.
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Plot: Under pressure to create a slogan
for pimple cream, ad guy Denis Dimbleby Bagley (Richard E. Grant)
suffers a nervous breakdown. His crisis of faith is manifested as a
stress-induced boil on his shoulder, which ultimately grows into a
second head with the conscience of a Marxist. Arguments with the
boil ensue, with Bagley concluding that “the world is one
magnificent shop, and if it hasn't got a price tag, it isn't worth
having.”
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Classic
Quote: “[Consumers] are entitled to any innovation
technology brings, whether it's 10 percent more of it or 15 percent
off of it,” Bagley declares. “They're entitled to one of four
important new ingredients. Why should anyone have to clean their
teeth without important new ingredients?”
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Lesson: Always abide by a solid
code of ethics. Barring that, have a good therapist on hand. And/or
a dermatologist.
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Plot: Ad exec Jim Blandings (Cary
Grant), under duress from his social-climbing wife, Muriel (Irene
Dunne), decides to build his dream home in the suburbs. The ensuing
problems with the contractors (“So, you hit a spring, a bubbling
spring... right here, in our cellar…”) and grief from his wife (“I
refuse to endanger the lives of my children in a house with less
than four bathrooms!”) leave Blandings with creative block.
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Classic
Quote: Blandings’s maid, Gussie, inadvertently comes up
with the winning ad slogan, declaring: “If you ain't eatin' Wham,
you ain't eatin' ham!”
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Lesson: Bringing your work home
can yield better results than bringing your home life to work. But
ultimately, neither is recommended.
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Plot: This out-there British classic
opens with Andrew Quint (Oliver Reed) sauntering into his agency
with an axe slung over his shoulder and chopping his office
furniture into kindling while his shocked colleagues look on. When
he tells his boss, Jonathan Lute (played with camp reserve by Orson
Welles), that he’s going to find an honest job, Lute responds,
“Silly boy, there aren’t any.” It only gets stranger—and
darker—from there, including a great dream sequence in the form of
a period camera commercial.
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Classic
Quote: “Our nation gets the advertising it deserves,” says
Lute. “It’s all a lot of pretentious rubbish.”
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Lesson: Install an air hockey,
ping-pong or foosball table in your place of employment so
colleagues can work out their tensions in a civilized fashion. Oh,
and a metal detector….
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Plot: Just out of the service, Victor
Albee Norman (Clark Gable) lands a job at an ad firm, complete with
the archetypal Client From Hell, Beautee Soap baron Evan Llewellyn
Evans (Sydney Greenstreet). In an archetypal Meeting From Hell,
Evans bullies Norman to use an inappropriate print ad that he and
his staff of yes-men have created.
Classic Quote: Evans clears his throat, spits on
the conference table, and says, “Mr. Norman, you’ve just seen me do
a disgusting thing. But you’ll always remember what I just did. You
see, Mr. Norman, if nobody remembers your brand you aren’t going to
sell any soap!”
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Lesson: Don’t let the promise
of short-term results degrade your brand’s long-term equity. As
Norman tells the soap baron, “Beautee Soap is a clean product, and
your advertisement is not clean!”
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Plot: Nothing quite captures the
jet-setting glamour of the job like this John Hughes classic. When a
client deliberates over a campaign, Neil Page (Steve Martin) misses his
flight home for Thanksgiving and ends up with shower-ring salesman
Del Griffith (John Candy) as his traveling companion. Neil
eventually makes it home… three days, two pillows (“Those aren’t
pillows!”), and one incinerated rental car later (“We had a small
fire last night, officer, but we caught it in the nick of time”).
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Classic
Quote: Too many to list, really, but here’s a favorite… “Have mercy,” Neil says, pleading with a hotel clerk. “I've been
wearing the same underwear since Tuesday.”
“I can vouch for that,”
says Del.
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Lesson: When traveling, follow
Del’s lead—just go with the flow “like the twigs in a mighty long
stream.” And, please, pack any carry-on toiletries—only 3 oz. per
container—in a quart-size Ziploc bag et cetera.
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Plot: This edgy satire of white
corporate America and the then-burgeoning counter-culture still
raises eyebrows as well as laughs almost 40 years after its
release. When an African-American ad exec accidentally gains
control of a flagging agency, he promises he won’t rock the boat… he’ll
sink it. He subsequently replaces the otherwise all-white
staff with his militant friends—whom he then fires one by one, only
after they’ve come up with arty ad concepts he can claim as his
own.
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Classic
Quote: Putney spells out the ground rules for clients
clamoring to do business with the hot agency of the moment. “Give
us the name of your product, what it’s supposed to do, then take a
walk. We don’t need your ideas. We don’t need your advice. And we
don’t need lames in the hallway.”
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Lesson: Disrupting the staid
agency model can produce great results, but professional courtesy
and the spirit of collaboration still have a place.
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Plot: Ad exec Emory Leeson (Dudley
Moore) suffers, yep, a melt-down and finds himself in the nut
house. His career begins to flourish, however, with the help of his
fellow patients and a new strategy—brutally honest advertising.
Slogans generated with the new approach include: “This movie won't
just scare you, it will [expletive deleted] you up for
life" and “You may think phone service stinks since
deregulation, but don't mess with us, because we're all you've
got.”
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Classic
Quote: “We can't level, you crazy bastard, we're in
advertising!” says Emory’s boss, Stephen Bachman (Paul Reiser).
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Lesson: The so-called
professionals may not have the best answers. Always listen to the
consumer and keep your eyes and ears open for fresh ideas—no matter
how nutty they may at first appear.
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Robert Cherry is Senior Writer at Seed
Strategy. As a freelance journalist he has contributed to “Rolling
Stone,” “Guitar One” and Cleveland’s “The Plain Dealer.” Contact him
at rcherry@seedstrategy.com.
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