To Hell with Sell

Television grows depressing. Yes, it was always depressing; but now the commercials grow depressing too. The “creative revolution” in advertising of the Sixties is over, done in by the Nixon recession and mounting evidence that viewers loved the ads but couldn’t remember the products. Gone, probably forever, are the clever ads— the man arguing with his stomach for Alka-Seltzer; the wonderfully insulting Italian aristocrat who (supposedly) presided over the Buitoni spaghetti sauce empire; that ultimate imperialist oppressor, Savarin Coffee’s “El Exigente.” Even the Volkswagen spots are growing dull.

Gone too are the superspectaculars: The Busby Berkeleyesque extravaganza that Stan Freberg staged (for $140,- 000) for Heinz Great American Soups was the lavishest, and the last. Even the merely pleasant commercials—the Salem smokers frisking in the countryside, Jonathan Winters playing Maudie Frickert for Hefty Trash Bags—are fewer and fewer. One of the Old Bolsheviks of the creative revolution, Mary Wells Lawrence of Wells Rich & Green, no longer sprays Braniff planes pink and dresses the hostesses in Pucci outfits; now she talks of the importance of Hard Sell—and so back we go, with Anacin’s little hammers pounding away inside our heads, to the good old days of which dissolves faster, whose wash is whiter, and is Certs a candy mint or a breath mint?

CS

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C. H. Simonds

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Television grows depressing. Yes, it was always depressing; but now the commercials grow depressing too. The “creative revolution” in advertising of the Sixties is over, done in by the Nixon recession and mounting evidence that viewers loved the ads but couldn’t remember the products. Gone, probably forever, are the clever ads— the man arguing with his stomach for Alka-Seltzer; the wonderfully insulting Italian aristocrat who (supposedly) presided over the Buitoni spaghetti sauce empire; that ultimate imperialist oppressor, Savarin Coffee’s “El Exigente.” Even the Volkswagen spots are growing dull.

Gone too are the superspectaculars: The Busby Berkeleyesque extravaganza that Stan Freberg staged (for $140,- 000) for Heinz Great American Soups was the lavishest, and the last. Even the merely pleasant commercials—the Salem smokers frisking in the countryside, Jonathan Winters playing Maudie Frickert for Hefty Trash Bags—are fewer and fewer. One of the Old Bolsheviks of the creative revolution, Mary Wells Lawrence of Wells Rich & Green, no longer sprays Braniff planes pink and dresses the hostesses in Pucci outfits; now she talks of the importance of Hard Sell—and so back we go, with Anacin’s little hammers pounding away inside our heads, to the good old days of which dissolves faster, whose wash is whiter, and is Certs a candy mint or a breath mint?