If you work in the ad business, it helps to understand that your job is to help sell the client's product. So what happens if the client's product is not exactly something you would like to sell? I remember a day, early in my career, when I was young and naive and on staff at a large agency. On this particular day, management gathered the troops to screen the agency reel for one of those "Aren't-We-Great" morale boosting meetings. As the lights dimmed, the hushed crowd gazed at beautifully shot images of puppies and children and Kraft marshmallows seductively blended with seamless editing and incredibly composed music. The lights come back up, and after a rousing hand, the erudite CEO, holding a pipe, takes the stage and opens the floor for questions. After listening to him respond to inquiries like, "Gee, how'd you get that puppy to lick the little girl's face," I decide to take advantage of this unexpected opportunity to "Ask the Cheese." Eventually, The Cheese nods in my direction and I spit it out:
As if a party guest had just knocked over the host's best crystal vase, a sudden uncomfortable silence fills the room. A few heads turn to see which of their co-workers is so bold, or stupid, to put the agency CEO on the spot in front of his entire staff. The CEO calmly pauses, takes a few slow puffs on his pipe, and with carefully measured words, responds:
I suddenly have visions of the corporate Gestapo quickly escorting me out of the room and beating me senseless. As the days pass, I never second guess the legitimacy of my question. I just begin to second guess the timing of it. I also wonder how much it effected my termination several months later. During my career I have had to work on some challenging assignments (infant anal thermometers comes to mind) but never anything that I have really had a problem with ... like Spam or Barney. I have, however, been involved with a few products that seemed a bit, shall we say, questionable. One client, a maker of homeopathic medicine with remedies for everything from sore throats to pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS), explained how some people actually used these remedies on their pets. "PMS pills for dogs?" I asked. "Sure," the client replied without missing a beat. And I had to struggle to keep a straight face when a marketing consultant started going into a little too much detail about a high-tech toilet seat called the "Santi-Seat". For every advertisable product on the market there is a hidden army of trade salespeople. Everyday, these people pack their suitcases with pencil erasers or GI Joe Battle Action accessories or whatever it is they are selling and take off on the road to places like Wilmington and Boise and Greenville trying to make quota to keep their jobs so they can do the same thing another year. In the Great Sales War, these men and women are the infantry, the front-line grunts. Compared to them, ad people are the airforce, the glamorous flyboys who get the credit. The ad agency, equipped with the latest high-tech weaponry, goes in for the kill with a killer campaign. Even if it is a stupid product, most ad people do not have to devote too big a part of their lifetime trying to sell it. One of my clients was an umbrella company. They made good quality umbrellas - they did not break with the first gust of wind. The guy I dealt with was the sales director. Nice guy. Smart guy. But basically, the guy was an umbrella salesman. He had travelled around the country with a bag full of umbrellas, the standard, the mini, the micro-mini, the full-size, the golf, the automatic, the semi-automatic, the designer line, the cane style, and the water resistant. This guy spent about 80% of his waking hours dealing with umbrellas. Do not get me wrong. Umbrellas are certainly an important and necessary part of society. I just would not want to devote my life to selling them. Thirteen years after the "Marshmallow Incident" I find myself having lunch with the very man to whom I addressed my provocative question. When I bring up the incident he confesses to a lack of recollection. Prefacing it with how young and naive I was, I recall the scene. "Hmmm ... so what did I answer?" he asks curiously. "You said that it's the government's role to determine which products should or shouldn't be advertised and that as long as a product is legal it's the agency's responsibility to do the very best job possible to advertise it's clients' products." With hardly a pause the ex-CEO speaks in a soft but certain manner: "I think my answer would be different today." He goes on to say how we all must be willing to accept more social responsibility for the decisions we make in business. I feel vindicated. A year later, I notice a blurb in the trades about my converted CEO pal. He has just passed away. Top of page | Related Web pages
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