From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor - Jerry Della Femina [100]
All of a sudden, now it’s O. K. to show the work. We’re very close to them and now the pitch becomes almost automatic. I start to look over at Ron but I don’t have to because he’s reaching to pick up the first sample of work. First I go into a disclaimer, telling them that some of the work they’re going to see was done at three different agencies.
The first ad we show is the Peanuts ad for Talon Zippers. We do it because it gives the group a chance to laugh right off the bat. I tell them that I don’t know whether the ad ever sold a zipper or not, but it was a good ad psychologically for all the clothing manufacturers who were looking at the ad to know about Talon. So you’ve opened the meeting and the feeling is warm and friendly; now you’ve got to hit them with something hard, so we show the Pretty Feet ad – the one that says, ‘What’s the Ugliest Part of Your Body?’ A very good reaction on this one. They look impressed so I detour into drug advertising. Then, all of a sudden, there’s a long discussion about Pretty Feet.
Plesser is there watching and waiting. The very second this guy asks me a question and I answer it, I know I haven’t answered it right down the line. One second later the next voice I hear is Plesser’s saying, ‘And another side of it is …’ Plesser adds a little more weight; he makes my answer palatable.
Corum Watches comes on next and before you know it the lights are out and the commercial reel is on. We open with the commercial for Ozone, a men’s hairspray, which we did at Bates using Yogi Berra. Whenever that commercial is shown at a presentation, somebody’s voice comes out of the dark saying, ‘Look at the face on this guy.’ The next commercial is one our own agency did for The New York Knickerbocker, a newspaper that began after the World-Journal Tribune folded. It folded pretty quickly itself. As it starts to play I always say, ‘That commercial cost six thousand dollars to produce. These days you can’t even get a baby picture of your kid for six thousand.’ They all pick up. Now they’re looking to see what we got for our six grand – which is something they toss away every hour. A Royal Globe Insurance commercial is next. In the final scene of this one a driver out of control is coming straight out of the screen at the viewer in a very dramatic night shot. Ron quietly gets up during this commercial and walks over to the projector. He looks as though he’s fiddling with the focus, but what he really is doing is turning the sound of the commercial up full blast. The sound of the commercial fills the room just as the car is about to crash. As the commercial finishes, Ron turns down the sound and sits down again. This works very well and the guy next to me says, ‘Wow!’
We close the reel with a commercial we did for the National Hemophilia Foundation, which features a bleeder bleeding on camera. On come the lights and then I go into the agency philosophy. Because this is a company with problems with the Government, I tell them about Miss Cheng and Feminique. They’re nodding their heads, saying, ‘Yeah. Thank God somebody else is being persecuted.’ One old conservative guy at the meeting is saying, ‘You mean you can talk about a woman’s private parts and they won’t let us say what we want to say about food?’ He’s very angry and as far as he’s concerned he’s got to go out and lynch a couple