The Real Mad Men Read Online Free Page B

painfully, mercilessly—and keep hitting them until they give in. Boring, repetitive commercials, usually featuring quasi-scientists in white coats or basic graphic devices with a voice-over slamming home a product virtue—over and over again: “Four out of five doctors…”
    Typical of this “monkey see, monkey do” approach was a commercial for M&Ms, focusing on the utilitarian point that the candy doesn’t melt in the hand. Two closed fists were shown, the viewer asked to guess which hand holds the M&Ms. Then they’re opened and one is messy, and a grinning presenter helps us to the desired conclusion.

    Tense, nervous headache? Examples of Rosser Reeves’ campaign for Anacin.
    The same 1962 Time article continued, “the average American is now exposed to ten thousand TV commercials a year. As the number increases, so do the admen’s worries about ‘overexposure.’”
    There had been plenty of opportunity for overexposure before, in the heyday of radio. But the new intrusiveness of television, which demanded (and got) both ears and eyes, together with the repetitiveness of the new thirty-second TV commercial format meant that “most admen profess to detect evidence of… more vocal public irritation with strident or tasteless ads.”
    Even more uncompromising, Fairfax Cone, his own agency a big TV spender, said to the Federal Communications Commission, “The great mass of television viewers are treated to an almost continuous program of tastelessness, which is projected on behalf of competitive products of little interest and only occasional necessity.”
    Bear in mind, this was before the remote control and there was no way of changing channel or switching off without actually getting off the couch and walking to the set. Norman Strouse, then president of JWT, worried, “It is a simple matter to turn a page but TV makes it possible for advertisers to impose rudely on the viewer with every unhappy practice of the industry—hard sell, bad taste, driving repetition.” And the more they saw of it, the more the public disliked it.
    YET REEVES HIMSELF was the polar opposite of the crude salesman and media hooligan that his legacy would suggest. Born in 1910, he was the son of a Virginian minister and a graduate of the University of Virginia. It seems he viewed advertising simply as an activity to make money to enrich his leisure time, and his leisure time was as cultured as his output was uncouth. It was as if there were two Reeves.
    Living in Greenwich Village during the beatnik era, he was a poet, a novelist, a keen racing yachtsman and pilot, and, testament to tremendous concentration and analytical powers, captain of the 1955 US chess team picked to play Russia. He was good company, quick-witted, and whilst normally showing a calm poise, he also occasionally betrayed a disarming enthusiasm once he got his teeth into something. His interests evenextended to being part of a consortium of eleven Southern businessmen, mainly Brown and Williamson tobacco executives, who “owned” Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) in the early days of his career.
    â€œWhat do you want out of me? Fine writing? Do you want masterpieces? Do you want glowing things that can be framed by copywriters? Or do you want to see the goddam sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?”
    ROSSER REEVES
    A huge believer in research and analysis, he passionately held that entertainment or charm in advertising were not just unnecessary but undesirable, describing them as “video vampires.” And any departure from an agreed proposition, even in a small detail, was to be avoided.
    In 1961, Reeves’ philosophy, and guidance on its implementation, was collated into his book Reality in Advertising , which was originally written as a document for executives joining the agency, releasing a torrent of imitative commercials—repetitive, didactic,