Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S2E19 - Nothing In Common: How Hollywood Portrays Ad People

Episode Date: May 11, 2013

Most pilots, lawyers and doctors roll their eyes at the way Hollywood depicts them, and ad people are no exception. From the 1947 movie The Hucksters, to the Rock Hudson/Doris Day film Love Come Back, to Darrin Stephens in Bewitched, to Dudley Moore in Crazy People, to the Tom Hanks movie Nothing In Common, all the way to Mad Men. We'll rate them all, and see where they got it right, and where they got it very, very wrong. 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. We'll see you next time. new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. From the Under the Influence digital box set, this episode is from Season 2, 2013.

You're so king in it. You're lovin' it in style. Your teeth look whiter than noon, noon, noon. You're not you when you're hungry. You're in good hands with us. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. Say I want you to retract the flaps, retract the gear, trim us nose down. Okay, trim down. What are you going to do? In the movie Flight, Denzel Washington stars as a commercial airline pilot with substance abuse problems. During the course of the movie, his plane suddenly malfunctions,

and he has to pull off some pretty fancy maneuvers to save the crew and his passengers. It's tense from start to finish. But if you heard someone howling with laughter in the back of the theater, chances are there was a pilot in the audience. It might have even been Patrick Smith. He's a pilot who wrote in the Daily Beast recently. Even though he's given up on realistic portrayals of pilots in movies, he says flight takes the cake. Let's first get right by the fact Denzel Washington's character

is a pilot who is drinking on board the flight. Pilots are not allowed to drink within eight hours of a flight, and drug and alcohol testing is often and random. But it's the checklists and procedural call-outs that are usually inaccurate and most times just plain silly. There is a scene

where Washington decides to increase to maximum flying speed to race between storm cells, all without the permission of air traffic control. Patrick Smith's three-word reaction

to that plot point? Are you kidding? In another critical moment, with the plane nosediving straight toward the ground, Washington saves the day by flipping the plane upside down, then right side up, which you see in the movie's trailer. We're gonna roll it. What do you mean roll it?

Ready? Here we go. Smith says the acrobatic magic here escapes him. But what does he know? He's only a pilot. Then there's medical dramas. The Center for Nursing Advocacy in the U.S. monitors the way nurses are portrayed on TV. The show House, for example,

was given a rating of half a star out of a possible four, saying that nurses are just background noise on the program, walking in and out of scenes with clipboards. Of the medical shows House, Grey's Anatomy, and ER, only ER came close to accurately portraying nurses. It got one and a half stars. Lawyers don't give Hollywood passing marks either, often seeing themselves portrayed as sleazy or outright buffoons,

especially in film. As for the accurate legal procedure, one attorney said online, Hollywood knows nothing about the law. Journalists are often shown as uncaring people who will stop at nothing to get their story.

And, as one reporter says, they're always terribly dressed. It got me thinking that it might be fun to analyze how the advertising industry has been portrayed over the years.

Hollywood has certainly drawn from the advertising well quite a bit in its history, going all the way back to a movie called Cohen's Advertising Scheme in 1904 and continuing through to today with the Emmy-winning Mad Men. While I've discussed Mad Men in the past,

giving it high marks for the advertising content and low marks for the drinking and womanizing, which was era-specific, not advertising-specific. There are lots of other movies and TV shows that have painted a picture of the typical advertising person. Some have been comedies, some have been dramas, some have been on TV, and some were motion pictures. And sometimes Hollywood got it right.

And other times, well, if you heard laughing in the back of the room, it was probably me. You're under the influence. The advertising business is a business of staying invisible, meaning that the people behind the creation of advertising are generally nameless to the population at large.

The job of an advertising agency is to promote their clients' products to the public, not themselves. You may love Apple's advertising, but you have no idea who actually creates it. You may hate Ric Apple's advertising, but you have no idea who actually creates it. You may hate Ricola's advertising, but quick, name the people who wrote it. Now, if you were in the advertising business, you could answer those questions. We're all very aware of who creates what.

And, because the advertising industry is a behind-the-scenes business, your opinion or image of advertising people may be formed, in large part, by how they are portrayed on TV and in movies. Let me say this. It's rare to see the advertising profession accurately depicted. It's usually an outsider's take on what they think it's like. And, with that in mind, let's start with one of my favorite sitcoms of the 60s. Bewitched ran from 1964 until 1972. It was created by Saul Sachs, and one of the main

writers on the show was Bernard Slade, who hailed from St. Catharines, Ontario. The show was about a real-life witch, Samantha Stevens, who was married to a mortal man named Darren. They struggled to maintain a normal marriage, and hilarity ensued. Besides being madly in love with star Elizabeth Montgomery, Did you call me? Love you. I was exposed to the advertising industry, maybe for the first time ever, through her husband Darren.

He worked for an ad agency called McMahon and Tate. Larry Tate was his nervous do-anything-to-save-the-account boss. I like it. It's cute, but not too cute. Original, but not too far out. And it gets the message across without being obvious.

You really like it? I'm sure I'll think it's terrific. When? When the client loves it. Okay, there are lots of Larry Tates in advertising. You got me there. When an advertising account hangs in the balance, the fawning can be spectacular.

But I want to talk about Darren Stevens. Darren was the creative director, which means he was in charge of the agency's creative advertising output. A creative director may be a man or a woman, and that person is either a writer or an art director by trade. But Darren Stevens was both. Not only was he a writer and an art director, but he also wrote jingles.

Not only did he write, art direct, and compose jingles, but he was also an account man in charge of strategy. In my 30 years in the ad business, I have never, ever met a creative director who was a writer, an art director, a music composer and an account person those are four different skill sets in advertising Darren also had the benefit of a magical wife who could wiggle her nose and come

up with fantastic advertising ideas when he was stuck in other words the whole thing was a fake staged staged for your benefit. I don't understand. Darren was trying to show you that in today's society, people don't always communicate with, well, with sunshine. Does that happen in real life? All the time. My wife has vetted, cheered, booed, and made incredible suggestions on my ad work for years.

By the way, a little side note. There is a statue of Samantha Stevens on her broom in a specific American town. Can you guess where? Salem, Massachusetts. I'd give Bewitched a 5 out of 10 on the Advertising Believability Scale. Four points for getting boss Larry Tate right, and 1 point for the jack-of-all-trades Darren Stevens.

Interesting to note that movies take much harder potshots at advertising than television does. I guess TV is too smart to bite the hand that feeds it. Let's turn to the movies and jump back to 1947. One of my favorite old movies about advertising was called The Hucksters. It starred Clark Gable as Victor Norman, an ad man just back from World War II looking to restart his career.

He lands a job with the Kimberly Advertising Agency. Their biggest account is Beauty Soap. The CEO of Beauty Soap is an abrasive and intimidating client named Mr. Evans, played by actor Sidney Greenstreet. It's a character based on the very demanding and very real president of Lucky Strike Cigarettes at the time, George Washington Hill. In maybe the movie's most famous scene, Clark Gable is brought to the Beauty Soap boardroom to meet the boorish CEO, who is surrounded by his yes-man. Here, Evans treats Victor Norman to his philosophy of advertising by actually spitting on the boardroom table.

Mr. Victor? room table. to sell any soap. Check. Check. Check. Example. Beauty soap. Beauty soap. Beauty soap. Repeat it until it comes out of their ears. Repeat it until they sit in their sleep. Irritate them, Mr. Norman. Irritate. Irritate. Irritate them. Never forget. Irritate them. Knock them dead. See what I mean? It's a fantastic scene, and Sydney Green Street is perfect as the tyrannical client. While I have never seen an advertiser spit on the boardroom table, I have been in the presence of many intimidating clients. They have rigid theories on how advertising works, and they really don't want to hear a dissenting opinion. It's a demoralizing relationship to be in for an ad agency, because the client has the

power. Clark Gable's character, however, because the client has the power. Clark Gable's character, however, has the courage of his convictions. He has the backbone to stand up to Mr. Evans. In this scene, the brutish Mr. Evans has come up with a print ad idea, which is supposed to be the ad agency's job, but Gable doesn't like it. Evans challenges him to give a reason why and Gable isn't afraid to tell him so. Because, Mr. Evans, a careful examination of the layout revealed a single very

disturbing element. The element to which I refer, Mr. Evans, is inherently opposed to the basic qualities to the very themes of the movie is that Clark Gable's character struggles to maintain his dignity. And in the advertising business, it's easy to lose sight of that when you have certain clients who demand you go against your own philosophies and beliefs about selling. Near the end of the movie, Gable decides he's had enough of groveling to clients like Mr. Evans and

actually pours a jug of water over his head. Knowing he's just been fired for the act, he later tells his girlfriend, Deborah Carr, that marriage will have to wait until he can find another job, preferably not in advertising because the respectable advertising

world he knew before the war seems to have disappeared. And here's why I like the movie. She tells him, You've come to hate the business you're in and you just want to drop it and go live on a beach in Tahiti or something. That's an idea. Yes, but Vic, you're too good for that. Why don't you sell things you believe in and sell them with dignity and taste?

Yes, there is a lot of bad advertising out there. But the best ad people try to create smart work that presents the product in its best light, wrapped in a selling idea that acknowledges every commercial is an interruption and tries to make that interruption the most polite one possible. Like books, movies and music, only a small percentage of the work is any good at the end of one possible. Like books, movies, and music, only a small percentage of the work is any good at the end of the day. But the best people still aim for the brass ring. I give the Hucksters an 8 out of 10.

For its time, for its era, it is still, to this day, a pretty fair depiction of the travails of the advertising industry. And we'll be right back. If you're enjoying this episode, why not dip into our archives, available wherever you download your pods. Go to terryoreilly.ca for a master episode list. Doris Day and Rock Hudson

play competing ad executives in the 1961 movie Lover Come Back. This is Madison Avenue, nerve center of the advertising world. Here at least steel and concrete beehives are born the ideas that decide what we the public will eat,

drink, drive, and smoke, and how we will dress, sleep, shave, so good. Can't argue with that. In the movie, the Miller's wax account is up for grabs, and both Doris Day and Rock Hudson want to win it. Here's how Doris Day prepares for the pitch. Tell research I want a complete rundown on J. Paxton Miller. His packaging setup, distribution setup, sales volume, and strong and weak market areas.

That's exactly how an agency would start a pitch, thorough and analytical. Here's how Rock Hudson prepares for the pitch. J. Paxton Miller of Miller's Wax is due in tonight to pick up a new agency. The account's up for grabs. Okay, let's start grabbing. Where's he from?

Richmond, Virginia. Get me a book on the Civil War and tell research I want a complete rundown on Jay Paxton Miller. His family background, will his wife be with him, what brand of liquor does he drink, and what kind of girls does he like? No. While that kind of hijinks may have happened back in the day, no respectable agency would ever ply a prospective client with liquor and girls to win an account in this day and age. Later in the movie, Rock Hudson shoots a commercial for a non-existent product called Vip, starring one of his many girlfriends just to keep her happy

he has no intentions of airing it considering how much TV commercials cost would that ever happen not on your life the VIP commercial gets on the air by mistake and people start sending in letters by the hundreds looking for the non-existent product Tony Randall plays the constantly stressed-out agency president, and he starts to panic. But Rock Hudson has the answer. Are you out of your mind? There's no such product as VIP.

There will be. All of these people ready to spend money on VIP. It's only fair that we give it to them. Where do we get it? We invent it. Would an agency ever create a national, full-blown television campaign for a product that doesn't exist? Not a chance. Yes, it was all part of the hilarity ensuing on Lover Come Back.

It's a fun movie, but it's still a false and not very flattering portrayal of advertising people. It gets a 3 out of 10, and only because Doris Day's character is a smart ad woman. There is no doubt the pressure of advertising takes its toll on ad execs. One of my favorite movies on that topic is called Lost in America, starring Albert Brooks. He plays an ad man so stressed out about a promotion that he gives it all up and decides to set out across America in a Winnebago.

It is hilarious. Mel Gibson starred in What Women Want, about a sexist ad man who can suddenly hear what women are thinking, and the lessons make him change his ways. Tom Hanks starred in a 1986 movie called Nothing in Common. He plays the creative director of a Chicago advertising agency, and Jackie Gleason plays his father. It would be Gleason's last movie role.

In the scene shot at the fictional ad agency we see the creative department as a little out of control one practical joke after another with ten people squeezing into a tiny cubicle built for one that scene like so many other Hollywood depictions of ad agencies is supposed to imply that agencies are highly unusual workplaces, which they are. It also implies they are highly undisciplined workplaces, which they are not. If you walked into an ad agency, you would see people in suits and you would see people in jeans.

You would see creative office spaces and you would see conservative office spaces. One of the most awarded agencies in Canada uses a ping-pong table as a boardroom table. Another has a silver Airstream trailer as part of their office space. An agency I worked for in the 80s had a three-story pair of binoculars as its entrance.

As crazy as that sounds, the ad agency business is very disciplined. It has to be. The deadlines are too tight and there's too much money at stake not to be. In Nothing in Common, there is a scene where the creative team is presenting a musical idea to Tom Hanks. They stand around his desk and sing the jingle to him. One, two, three, four. jingle to him. And later, they sing a jingle to a client in a presentation. I have never, ever seen that happen in the big leagues of advertising.

If music was required for a commercial, the creative team would hire a music company. At the most, they might write the lyrics. But what they won't do is compose and sing jingles. Pure Hollywood. There is another interesting scene later in the movie where Hanks is presenting his ideas to a big airline account.

When one of the clients asks him why the agency didn't use their Sterling air safety record as a selling feature, Hanks gives them his opinion. Colonial has a perfect safety record for the last 20 years. You didn't say anything about that. That's because it could backfire. People think you've just been lucky and are going to wonder when that luck is going to run out. It's a very impressive record and we'll use it in other places, but not in mass market. It's too whiffy. Suppose we insisted. I'd talk you out of it. If you couldn't, then I'd walk away. It's a bad move and I'm not going to be responsible for it. It's an excellent, well-written scene. In many presentations, ad people are faced with tough moments. Clients may hate the work, or clients want to change the work so much that it no longer resembles what the agency

believes in, or there are major disagreements over the strategic directions. It echoes the scene in The Hucksters, filmed almost 40 years earlier. In Nothing in Common, Tom Hanks fields a penetrating question from a client, knowing full well that to give in would make the client extremely happy, but it would compromise

the work. It's an element of advertising that never changes, come what may. As I always say, you don't win every battle, but you always have to fight the good fight.

In the end, a good client will respect your opinion, and a bad one will fire you. I give Nothing in Common a 6.5 out of 10. The singing creative teams are pure fiction, but the boardroom sword fights are true to form. New year, new me. Season is here, and honestly, we're already over it enter felix the health

care company helping canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year weight loss is more than just diet and exercise it can be about tackling genetics hormones metabolism felix gets it they connect you with licensed health care practitioners online who'll create a personalized treatment plan that pairs your healthy lifestyle with a little help and a little extra support. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A. In a program about how Hollywood depicts the advertising business, how could you not talk about the Dudley Moore movie, Crazy People? Moore plays Emery Leeson, an adman who has a nervous breakdown and begins to write ads based on what he calls sheer honesty.

For a luxury car, he writes an ad that basically says, Jaguar. For men who'd like sex from beautiful women, they hardly know. And for Volvo, he writes, Buy Volvos. They're boxy, but they're good. We know they're not sexy. This is not a smart time to be sexy anyway. With so many new diseases around.

Be safe instead of sexy. Volvo, boxy but good. Are you crazy? So, Moore's character is sent to a psychiatric hospital to recover. While there, his original ads are sent to the printer by mistake. At first, his ad agency is terrified of what just happened and prepares to be fired by their clients. But, Jag and Volvo sales start to soar.

His ad agency does a 360 and suddenly asks Moore for more work in that vein. He can't keep up with the demand, so Moore recruits his fellow psychiatric patients to write more honest ads. We know you love him, but if he happens to die, we give you two Mercedes and a summer home. Wouldn't that be nice too?

John Hancock. First, an advertising agency would never have two competing automobile accounts. Second, you might think that a strategy like it's boxy but it's good could never work in the real world. That it's a crazy idea. But it has a real-world precedent. The original Volkswagen campaign of the 1960s.

It was based on glaring honesty. What other car company would dare run a headline like it's ugly but it gets you there. Well, Volkswagen did. How about, Presenting America's slowest fastback. Or, The 1970 VW will stay ugly longer.

Or, An ad that was all blank with no photograph that said, No point showing the 62 Volkswagen, it still looks the same. Or, What about the most famous VW headline of all? Lemon. So crazy people's central plot point that it takes a crazy person to do ads like that gets a 2 out of 10

because VW built an empire doing just that 30 years earlier. But the movie gets a 9 out of 10 for suggesting it's not done often enough. I'm sure doctors, lawyers, and police officers often shudder when they see their professions depicted on the screen. As pilot Patrick Smith said in his article, he's not sure who gets the shortest end of the stick. Viewers who are being lied to, pilots whose profession is unrealistically portrayed, or nervous flyers whose fears will only compound.

Hollywood has long taken great license with those depictions and bends them at will to generate expedient humor or convenient drama. When a huge medical inaccuracy was pointed out in his script, one Hollywood director recently said, Look, it's a movie, not a documentary. Hmm, okay. But a constant bombardment of repeated negative imagery takes its toll. Nurses feel the shortage in their profession is,

to a large degree, the result of young people viewing minimized images of their profession. And many young people make career choices based on what they see on TV. Of course, there are far more important issues than how Hollywood portrays ad folks. But, while I've rolled my eyes at most of the

depictions of the advertising business, I have to admit I've also enjoyed a lot of them too. Even when they were absurd, many still contained a kernel of the truth. Whether it be the nervous, client-fawning Larry Tate, who always made me laugh

and I've worked with a lot of Larry Tates, or the constantly stressed-out Tony Randall character in Lover Come Back, I had hair when I started in this business. Or the intimidating beauty soap type client who comes close to spitting on the boardroom table. And those tables cost a lot of money. Yet it was good old Darren Stevens who gave me my first glimpse of the advertising world where I would spend my career. But, as I discovered, the reality was a little different than what was advertised when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O Steve Chase here.

Interesting you say that ad agencies aren't as crazy as Hollywood makes them out to be. I was just wondering if you remember when you and I were shooting that TV commercial in Chicago back in the 80s and the director kicked us off the set of our own commercial. Ring any bells, Terry? Under the Influence was produced

at Pirate Toronto. Sound engineer, Keith Ullman. Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Series coordinator, Debbie O'Reilly.

By the way, I know you've been dreaming of wearing an Under the Influence t-shirt. Or maybe I was dreaming that. But anyway, we have them for sale on our shop page. And if you listen to the show while sipping a tea or a coffee, have we got the mug for you. Go to terryoreilly.ca slash shop. See you next week.

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