Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - Only In Advertising: Stories From The Front Lines (Encore)

Episode Date: February 18, 2023

This week, I ask my advertising colleagues for their most outrageous ad stories. The advertising business is a big money, high stress industry. And so much can go sideways. Sometimes film shoots go horribly wrong, sometimes clients make the most ridiculous demands, sometimes celebrities refuse to say their lines and sometimes even a James Bond campaign can go up in flames. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling.

Subscribe now, and don't miss a single beat. This is an apostrophe podcast production. Your teeth look whiter than no nose. You're not you when you're hungry. You're a good hand with all things. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. In World War II, the American Army had a very special, top-secret division. It was the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, also known as the Ghost Army.

There were 1,100 people in this special unit, but they weren't soldiers. They were artists, sound engineers, and set designers. Their mission? To persuade the German Army that there were big platoons of soldiers and equipment in strategic locations where there wasn't any at all. The Ghost Army was a mobile, self-contained deception unit capable of staging multimedia illusions on command. Using ingenuity, they could create the illusion that 30,000 troops

and hundreds of tanks and artillery were holding the line when in fact, the army wasn't there at all. The illusions were so good, they would persuade the Germans not to attack a weak spot or could draw German troops away

from where real American units were preparing an attack. The Ghost Army used three main strategies to fool the Nazis. The first was visual. Artists, architects, and designers created inflatable tanks, cannons, trucks, and aircraft.

They would look incredibly authentic from a distance, and the Ghost Army could set up hundreds of phantom tanks very quickly. The second tactic was to use sound. Using giant speakers that could be heard for 15 miles or 24 kilometers, they would blast sound effect recordings of tank brigades moving up a hill

or the sounds of thousands of soldiers arriving and setting up camp. The third tactic was radio. Skilled radio operators would create phony dispatches and bulletins and could perfectly mimic a telegraph operator's style. It was performance art of the highest level.

Occasionally, the inflatable tanks also created amusing moments. One night, a corporal was on guard duty when two Frenchmen on bicycles accidentally wandered past the perimeter. Their eyes nearly bugged out of their heads as they watched four GIs pick up what looked like a 40-ton Sherman tank and turn it around by hand. The corporal just looked at the Frenchmen and said, American soldiers are very strong. The Ghost Army was unique.

They were so effective that German records show that the deceptions were taken hook, line and sinker. The Ghost Army was so top secret that its existence wasn't made public until 1996. Using only imagination and creativity, this small group saved lives and had a surprising influence on the outcome of the war. It's always surprising to know what goes on behind the scenes. And the world of marketing has its fair share of battles

and surprising behind-the-scenes skirmishes. In a business where campaigns are so carefully planned and millions of dollars are spent, it's surprising how many things can still go wrong, how many advertisers still make ridiculous requests, how arch-enemies try so hard to one-up each other and fail, and how great ideas can be shot down for the strangest reasons. You're under the influence. Steve Chase and I used to be creative partners at an advertising agency back in the 80s.

Steve was an art director. I was a writer. We did a lot of fun, award-winning work together. Steve eventually went on to become a top commercial director based in Los Angeles. He was once directing a TV commercial for a major brewery in the U.S. It was a fun Thanksgiving Day ad. In the commercial, a farmer is walking through his farm with an axe in his hand. He picks out a turkey. The turkey gulps. The farmer starts sharpening his axe. He's about to do the dirty deed when the turkey suddenly pushes a bottle of beer out from under his wing. The farmer's eyebrows go up. In the next scene, we see the farmer putting pizza down on the Thanksgiving Day dinner table instead of turkey. And we see the farmer putting pizza down on the Thanksgiving Day dinner table instead

of turkey. And we see the turkey looking through the window with a relieved look on his face. In other words, the turkey traded a beer for his life. The man overseeing all the advertising was the son of the very wealthy family who owned the huge brewing company. He flies to work in a helicopter, kind of wealthy. He was in his early 20s at the time, and his father had given him a big beer brand to manage. When Steve Chase was talking the son through the storyboard for the commercial,

explaining how he planned to shoot the ad, his client said he had a problem. He wanted to know why the farmer was putting the pizza on the table. Steve said, What do you mean? The beer heir replied,

Shouldn't the butler be putting the pizza on the table? That's when Steve realized that the very wealthy son of the beer owner didn't know that ordinary people, i.e. farmers, don't have butlers.

The rich beer guy just lived in a completely different, rarefied world. So Steve explained it to him. So the farmer will put the food down on his own table. Steve said, uh, yeah. True story. On another beer shoot, Steve Chase was filming a big Super Bowl commercial

for Anheuser-Busch. At that time, back around 2003, there was an actor's strike in the U.S., so the decision was made to shoot the commercial in Canada, specifically in Montreal. The day before the shoot, a pre-production meeting was scheduled for 1 p.m. so Steve could explain to the beer clients how he was going to shoot the commercial. It was an important meeting because August Bush IV himself was flying in from the States to attend. Steve's producer called him that morning and said,

Bring your passport to the meeting. Steve said, What? Bring your passport. Just before 1 p.m., Steve got into a car with his passport and was driven to the meeting. He soon realized the meeting was being held at the airport. As it turned out, August Bush IV had flown in on his private jet, but he wasn't getting out of the plane for the meeting. The reason? He was not allowed to actually step foot outside the continental U.S. for security reasons, fear of kidnappings, ransoms, etc.

It was a company edict. So Steve and his team had to go through security, then through U.S. Customs, then get on a bus, then get driven out to the tarmac where the private jet was idling. Everybody climbed the stairs to the jet, had a 15-minute meeting with August Bush IV,

then Steve and company had to climb back down the stairs, get back on the bus, be driven back to the terminal, and had to go back through Customs again to re-enter Canada. When the Canadian customs officials asked Steve how long he'd been away, he said, 15 minutes. Only in advertising. Speaking of beer, back in the 80s, Molson and Labatt were arch enemies. As anyone who has worked on beer advertising knows, breweries take that rivalry very, very seriously.

Secrecy is paramount. As it happened, both breweries were preparing their big summer TV campaigns, the biggest of the year. Summertime is beer time. In order to maintain the utmost secrecy, they both opted to shoot their commercials outside of Canada. Unbeknownst to them, they had both opted to shoot their commercials in Australia and ended up shooting on the same beach at the same time.

Comedy gold. As I've said many times before, there are a million ways to die in the advertising business. Another friend of mine told me a story about working on an ad for a shoe company. The day after the ad ran, the client drove by his store and called the ad writer to complain that the ad didn't work because there was nobody in his store. That's when the ad writer said, it's 9 a.m. Your store doesn't open until 10. Creative director Ron Tite told me a funny story about doing work for Red Lobster. The clients flew up to Toronto from Miami for the meeting. The ad agency was presenting ideas for Red Lobster's upcoming promotions.

One of the ad executives walked up to a whiteboard to start listing the promotions. The first one up was for a bottomless bucket of crab. But on the board she wrote, bottomless bucket of crap. Then, without realizing her mistake, she turned around to face the clients and immediately detected a change of temperature in the room. David Cavagato is the co-founder of an advertising agency called Grip. His office lobby has a big orange slide front and center, going from the second floor down to the first.

It was just a fun element they added when designing the office to underscore the playfulness of their creative agency. One day, the president of a big chocolate company flew in from Switzerland to have a meeting. When he saw the slide, he insisted on taking a run at it. Down he went, like a bullet train. Then fell off and opened a gash on his chin. He said he was fine. Then the ad agency proceeded to present their ideas

to a man who was bleeding profusely. They went through an almost entire box of Kleenex in the boardroom, hoping to stem the flow for two full hours. Which reminds me of a very

funny but painful story about cat litter. Considering how incredibly expensive TV commercials are to make, usually costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's shocking how much can still go wrong. My friend Alan Marr is a top commercial director. He told me a funny story about a Canadian kitty litter commercial. The product was aimed at high-end pet owners who treat their pets like children and insist

that only the best is good enough for their little darlings. So the ad agency came up with a cute commercial idea titled, The Cat Lady. The commercial showed a lovable old lady sitting in her living room, talking to, what you're led to believe, are her children. She refers to them each by name, tells them to politely share their food, and not to talk with their mouths full.

But when the camera pulls back, we realize she is talking to a room full of adorable cats and kittens. The Canadian clients loved the commercial, but protocol dictated that they had to get approval

from the head of marketing at the company's head office in Chicago. This was normally just a formality. If the Canadian office had developed the ad for a Canadian audience, the Chicago head office always gave its blessing.

Except for this time. The Chicago head of marketing instantly hated the commercial and said it would only be shown over his dead body. It had nothing to do with the script, or the idea, or the production values, or the cats. His problem was with the lovable little old lady. She looked and sounded exactly like his ex-mother-in-law. And the entire expensive commercial was thrown in the garbage can.

You have some of the strangest conversations in the advertising business. My friend Andrew Simon was working on a TV commercial for a new baked potato snack food called Spuds. S-P-U-D-Z. His idea was to have Mr. Potato Head come home only to discover Mrs. Potato Head in bed with a bag of Spuds.

A very funny concept. His client loved the idea, but Andrew had to get permission from Hasbro, the company that owned the Mr. Potato Head toy. Andrew called Hasbro and explained the idea. The marketing people there thought it was cute, but had to pass it by upper management. A few days later, Andrew Simon was on the golf course when he got an urgent call from Hasbro.

They told him that the Hasbro brass would not allow Mrs. Potato Head to be in bed with another potato product, quote, on moral grounds. Andrew reminded everyone that they were talking about plastic inanimate objects. That's when the call got heated. Hasbro yelled at Andrew. Andrew yelled back. Finally, everyone calmed down, and Andrew got them to agree to a couch

instead of a bed. Just as they were about to hang up, a Hasbro executive yelled, but not a pull-out couch! You can't write this stuff. Years ago, I was asked to direct a radio campaign for Moosehead Beer. The scripts were funny, and I suggested we cast Robert Goulet to read them.

I had heard Goulet do a commercial for The Simpsons, and his baritone was funny. Mr. Robert Goulet reads from The Writings of Bart, the collected after-school blackboard writings of young Bart Simpson. Mr. Goulet. I will not trade pants with others. I will not do

that thing with my tongue. I will not Xerox my butt. A burp is not an answer. I will not pledge allegiance to Bart. I will not eat things for money. I will not bring sheep to class. So we sent the scripts to Goulet and he said he was interested. Except there was one problem.

The key line in the campaign was their brownie sucked, but the beer was great. And Goulet said he refused to say the word sucked. He said it was rude. Because that line was critical to the campaign,

I arranged a phone call with Robert Goulet to try and talk him into saying the word. When Goulet got on the phone, I did my best to explain to him that the word sucked no longer had a sexual connotation to it, that in today's parlance, it just meant something that wasn't good, something that was low quality. Goulet wasn't buying it. I maintained the word was completely innocuous. He maintained it was offensive. I countered with a long dissertation on the way old-school words take on different meanings over time. And in the middle of my rant, I had this out-of-body moment.

I realized I was on the phone talking to Robert Goulet trying to convince him to say the word sucked. And I was projecting ahead to that moment I got home later when my wife would ask, how was your day? That moment.

I wasn't able to convince Robert Goulet to say sucked on that phone call, so the ad agency decided not to hire him and went with Eugene Levy instead. Goulet threatened to sue us. Only in advertising. Back in 2008, Nancy Vonk was the co-creative director of the Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency. One of their accounts was Shreddies. Kraft, the company that owned Shreddies,

was just about to give up on the brand. There was never anything new to say about Shreddies. It just couldn't compete with other more fun cereals. Canadians had all but forgotten about Shreddies. But Nancy's team came up with a very funny idea. They decided to put their tongues firmly in cheek and make up some news by saying, introducing new Diamond Shreddies. They created a big multimedia campaign earnestly promoting the new and exciting diamond shreddies. Of course, in reality,

new diamond shreddies were just the square shreddies turned on their corners to look like a diamond shape. It was all just a good-natured wink, a funny idea for a brand that never had anything new to say. New Diamond Shreddies packages were created. They even created hilarious combo

packs. Half square, half diamond. The ad agency created commercials of people comparing the old Square Shreddies with the new Diamond Shreddies with the new Diamond Shreddies. Which one did you prefer, first of all? The first one. The first one?

It had more flavor. Okay. The first one was the Diamond. The Diamond one felt more crunchy. It's better Shreddies. It became a huge success. The ads won awards, television and radio shows did stories on Diamond Shreddies.

It even made the cover of Maclean's magazine. The best part? Sales shot up 18%. Kraft shared the case study with their global organization as a bold new model to emulate. Then, the ad agency had another good idea.

They wanted to create Neil Diamond Shreddies. Now, Neil Diamond didn't do ads as a rule. He didn't need to. But Nancy Vonk and her team took a chance and sent Neil a mock-up of a Neil Diamond Shreddies box. He loved it, thought it was hysterical. Not only that, Neil offered to include a link on the

package to a recording of Sweet Caroline that he had performed in Canada but had never been released. It was a dream come true. Agency loved it. Kraft loved it. Neil Diamond loved it. Then, disaster.

A research person threw on the brakes and insisted on doing one more last-minute round of focus groups to make sure they weren't, quote, hurting the brand. In those focus groups, a quarter of the people said they didn't like the campaign. They said there was no real difference between the square shreddies and the new diamond shreddies. They said the campaign insulted their intelligence.

What was Shreddies trying to pull? They simply didn't get the joke. The simple, very funny joke. It was death by research. And the entire brilliant diamond Shreddies campaign screeched to a halt and was never seen again. In case nobody's told you, weight loss goes beyond the old just eat less and move more narrative. And that's where Felix comes in. Felix is redefining weight loss for Canadians with a smarter, more personalized approach to help you crush your health goals this year.

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Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Sometimes in advertising, you get to work on a dream account. For me, I got to produce an ad for the Beatles when their anthology book came out. For my friend David Gee, it was working on a James Bond project. David was a James Bond nerd. He loved James Bond movies. He loved everything James Bond nerd. He loved James Bond movies. He loved everything James Bond. At the time, David was the creative director

for the Toronto International Film Festival, or TIFF as it's called. The TIFF building in Toronto has a large gallery space dedicated to film-based exhibitions. And TIFF had signed an agreement to host a big touring exhibition celebrating 50 years of James Bond films, on loan from the Barbican, London, England's huge cultural arts center, the largest in Europe. In other words, this was a big deal, David G. was sent over to have a meeting,

not only with the Barbican people, but with the head of the studio that owns the James Bond franchise. In that meeting, the studio head explicitly told David he could not use any James Bond imagery in the advertising. No images, no film stills, no hats, no cars, no guns, no villains, no shots of any actors who played James Bond, no nothing. That made the advertising a bit of a challenge. How do you advertise a James Bond exhibit

if you can't show anything from James Bond? But David is a creative guy, so he went back to Toronto and he and his team managed to come up with a really smart advertising campaign despite the limitation of not being able to use one iota of existing James Bond imagery. Then, David flew back to London

to present his ideas to the studio head. He began the meeting by saying what an honor it was, both professionally and personally, to be working on a James Bond project. Then he started to show his James Bond-free ideas that promoted the James Bond exhibit. As he revealed each successive piece, the studio head's eyebrows rose as quickly as her face and mood sank. To add to the misery, her phone rang every five minutes, prompting her to leave the room over and over again. Then she would re-enter the board room, sit down, cross her arms and say, Go on.

This fractured in-and-out meeting went on for over an hour. Finally, David got to the end of his presentation and asked if there were any questions. He was met by a bitter, icy silence. Then the studio head said, Can you give me one good reason why you didn't use any of our James Bond imagery? Then the studio head said, David and the studio head just stared at each other for a moment. Then David blurted out, That would have certainly made it easier, but you yourself told me I couldn't use any Bond images. They just stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity. Luckily,

her phone rang again. She looked down and said, sorry, it's Daniel Craig, and left the room. Only in advertising. When I reached out to my advertising colleagues and asked them to send me their most outrageous stories, I was inundated with so many good ones. I could probably do a series of episodes on this amusing topic, and I still couldn't fit them all in. The advertising business is a mixture of high pressure, impossible deadlines, and demanding clients.

It's a business where millions of dollars are thrown around, and one share point can mean the difference between success and being fired. As you can see, so much can still go wrong, and you can also see the power that clients wield over their advertising agencies. But in the trenches of marketing, there are some very smart, highly creative people who have battle scars, but they can still laugh at it all at the end of the day. And that's the key to every high-stress career.

You take the work seriously, but not yourself, when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Terrastream Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound Engineer, Jeff Devine. Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like

To Bleep or Not to Bleep, Vulgar Trademarks, Season 8, Episode 20. You'll find it in our archives wherever you listen to podcasts. If you'd like to be the first to know the latest under the influence news Get insider peeks at upcoming episodes and events Subscribe to our newsletter at apostrophepodcasts.ca See you next week Fun fact Neil Diamond sang in his high school glee club with Barbara Streisand 20 years before they recorded You Don't Send Me Flowers Anymore in 1978.

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