They’ve majored in paranoia, the men on Madison Avenue. It’s easier to prove the existence of God than it is to smell your own breath. I play it safe: I talk like Edgar Bergen. Armpits, yes. Armpits are available. But house odors are self-effacing. You have to walk around the block three times before you can judge your own catbox objectively. The nation of TV commercials is a great fireplug. Fetid, rank, laminated with the gamy, leg-lifting of 200 million creatures. Measured diagonally, friend, we’re all nose. Well, not all. The disturbing fact is: only middle-class folk and middle-class homes stink. In Harlem or Bedford-Stuyvesant, it seems, the people sweat as much as R2-D2.
Jerry Della Femina, the Deep Throat of advertising, told me, “Most good advertising concepts, I think, come out of fear. Somebody’s afraid to be embarrassed. What advertising people do best, they’re conscious of the fear that maybe other people haven’t seen. The secret is that advertising people aren’t good, but they have fantastic noses. They smell things before anyone else does.”
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