1981
I am haunted by high school. The bumbled and incomplete
relationships. The experiences that started with promise and ended in
fragments. I was too shy, too straight laced, too restrained. I missed out on
too much of the fun.
From time to time as an adult I've made up
for what I missed. Here's one example. Nothing to be proud of but this is
a memoir not a confession.
In 1981 I worked on the Coca Cola account at the
McCann Erickson ad agency branch office in Toronto.
Ad agencies have buckets of people; account
executives (I was one) liaise with the client; creative people make the
commercials; media people arrange for the advertising to be seen and market
researchers search for sneaky ways to fool consumers into buying more.
The typical ad agency drama is that the creative
people are trying to get to the bleeding edge of advertising ideas because it
enhances their portfolio while the account people are getting in the way trying
to ensure the client feels their money is well spent and that the advertising
works.
Most places where people work are like high school
except with more money. Thank you Frank Zappa. At ad agencies in the 80s the
creatives, dressed as they did in high school, were the cool people. Account
people, dressed in suits, were the nerds.
I became friends with a star copywriter named Harry
Yates. Typical ad guy. Two failed marriages, huge tolerance for alcohol, off
the charts salesperson.
One glaring difference was that Harry stuttered -
in a charming way, which I think led to the failed marriages.
We got along because he was smart enough to
appreciate my ironic sense of humour and I liked being his wingman.
We had to handle snafus which took us to New York
from time to time. Usually to fix a TV commercial with technology only
available in the big apple. It was also a chance to test the limits of
what we could put on an expense account.
Coca Cola had a huge advertising budget which meant
wherever Harry and I went to chase a fix we were welcomed. Typically in the
reception area of a recording or post production studio we'd just whisper Coca
Cola and someone would point us in the right direction. If the receptionist was
extra attractive Harry would stop and flirt in his native language, stutterese.
So far nothing to be less than proud of but then we
jumped the shark.
1981 was three years before Diet Coke became a
thing. At the time Tab Cola was the company's brand in the diet cola segment.
Tab Cola had its own aura not because it tasted ok,
it didn't, but because it was promoted by one of the best commercials ever. In
the ad a svelte bikini clad model was sashaying out of the ocean carrying a can
of Tab Cola. The model, attractive to men and some women, was endorsing Tab.
Good simple visual selling.
Neither Harry or I had anything to do with the
creation of the ad. Tab was a New York client.
One time over a beer we were lamenting not having
been present at the creation of the Tab advertising. Wishing we had. All those
models. All those casting sessions.
And then Harry had a brainwave to muffle our
lamentations. Why should we suffer just because we didn't work on the Tab
brand? We worked on the Coke brand. People hopped when we said hop.
Harry ran casting sessions all the time in New York
as well as Toronto. All we needed to do was borrow a meeting a room and call a
talent agency in New York. Easy peasy.
There it was. We were about to have a casting
session for a phantom commercial. All the castees would be good looking young
women. They would come prepared to model in a bikini and walk seductively as if
they were sashaying out of the ocean onto a beach while fondling a can of Tab.
And we were going to sit in judgement of these women whose time we were
stealing.
Do you think we went thru with it? Two polite
Canadians in New York City in their thirties and forties taking advantage of a
little power and our stale dated immaturity.
Of course we did.
I realize now in my seventies that like some things
I did in high school, it was wrong.
That confessed, it is a great memory.
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