Brachial Acts of Kindness

I ran into an acquaintance last week, an Exec Producer for a bi-coastal production company. I won't name him here, but suffice it to say if you've been in the business for more than a few years, you know this guy.


Anyway, we got to talking about another mutual acquaintance, and my EP friend says something like, "Yeah, I got him his first job in advertising.  Funny story."  And he goes on to recount a tale that goes something like this...


Apparently, at the age of around 8 or so, my EP friend and his brother were roughhousing around the house, as young boys are wont to do. And at one point the roughhousing gets pretty rough and this future EP's arm goes through a plate glass window.


If you're a student of anatomy, you'll know that armpit is the home of the Brachial artery, which is the major blood vessel of the upper arm. And what's unusual about it is that it's relatively close to the surface of the skin.  So if you put your arm through a plate glass window there's a pretty good chance you could sever this artery.


Which is exactly what happened.


Now, even if you don't know anything about anatomy, you probably do know that "severed artery = very bad thing."  


So there's blood spraying everywhere, and the dad runs into the room. If you're a parent, this is pretty much your worst nightmare.  This isn't a tooth knocked out, or a broken bone or a concussion.  All of those things are terrible, but they're probably pretty common childhood injuries and they all have a large enough window of opportunity to call an ambulance or get to the hospital.  The window of opportunity on an 8 year old's life blood squirting out of a severed artery is very small.


Very, very small.


At the time this occurred, 911 hadn't even been invented yet.  But even if it had, EMT's would never have arrived in time.  


So now what?  


The dad runs to the next door neighbor's house.  The next door neighbor is a doctor, a cancer doctor.  I don't even know what that means.  An oncologist? A surgeon? It doesn't really matter because he's home.  And he comes running over to the house, I assume with his doctor's bag, because in my imagination that's exactly what Marcus Welby would do.  And he and the dad pick this kid up and put him on the kitchen table, and the doctor operates on him right there. In front of the Frigidaire and the Amana Radar Range, kitchen floor slick with blood, this man operates on this kid.


And he saves his life.


Years later, the kid grows up to be head of production at some agency or another, and one day a young man walks into his office and says, "My name is xxx xxxxxxx.  My father saved your life so you have to give me a job."  And of course he did.


Funny story indeed.


This narrative made me stop and take my own measure as a man, and as a father.  If this was one of my beautiful girls, what would I have done?  Could I have remained as calm and focused as this man's dad, to remember that a doctor lived next door and to fetch him so quickly?


Equally amazing is that the doctor was home and came immediately, without question, to make the ultimate house call.  With no discussion of liability or malpractice.  Simply to help, and to save a life.  


It was a simpler time, I think.  But I also know that people like this still exist.


Which is why I like this spot so much.  I saw this shortly after I heard that story, and it really made me feel that despite everything we hear, people are still basically good, and there are heroes everywhere, in big ways and small ways.  


I'd like to think that this is all actual security camera footage and that none of it is staged.  I really hope it is.  But even if it's not, it's still a wonderful spot.  Nice job, Coke.

Haven't I heard/seen you before?

Over the past three months, I've spent a great deal of time on the phone with Verizon.

Don't ask.

The point is, if you spend a great deal of time on the phone with Verizon, you become very familiar with their hold music.  You can whistle it, you can hum it, and it inserts itself into a teeny, tiny cubby in your brain attic, a place so small you don't even know it's there.

Until one day when a Shop-Rite commercial comes on and you're watching this thing and you're thinking, "what is it about this spot that's so freaking familiar," and it's driving you crazy and then you realize it's the Verizon hold music on the Shop-Rite commercial.

And that doesn't make it any better, but at least you know it's not going to drive you crazy every time you see the damn thing.

Which brings me to the point of this post, borrowed interest in advertising.  Really, copying and ripping off creative in advertising, but honestly, whats the difference?

If you were creating a commercial, and you decided to use an existing piece of music, wouldn't you check to see if that piece of music had been licensed for use in advertising before?  Especially for a product that is directly competitive to yours?

I would.

So it always drives me crazy when I see something like this:

This spot aired early last year.  Directed by Adrien Brody, it is a modern look at the golden era of motoring and automotive design, as seen through the lens of the Chrysler corporation.

Beautifully done.  Nice job, guys.

And how about that track?  Hauntingly beautiful, right?

Right.

And it was even more hauntingly beautiful the first time I heard it, in 2000, in this Volkswagen ad:

 

This Dante Ariola gem is one of my favorite commercials.  One line of dialogue, no AVO, pure storytelling.  It is the song (One Million Miles Away by J. Ralph) that makes this spot eminently watchable, for me anyway.   And although the Chrysler spot is a really nice piece of work, I'd pick this one over that one any day.

So what gives?  Did the Chrysler agency think we'd never seen the VW ad and thus wouldn't know?  Or that we wouldn't remember this extremely memorable track?  Perhaps they believe that the statute of limitations on our memory is only around 10 years or so.

This happens a lot.

In 2002, Lincoln started using a jazzy tune called Get a Move On in their Navigator spots.  The first time I saw one I thought  "...Isn't that the song from that Volvo ad, the one where the Dad is racing back and forth from the pool to the soccer field?  And didn't Sam Bayer direct that in 1995?"

And lo and behold, it was true.

 

 

Granted, probably ninety nine percent of the population who view these ads will never know that either song was ever used in another commercial at all, let alone one for a competitive product.  Only ad schmucks like me see a spot like this and know exactly where and when the borrowed interest comes from.

 

If I worked on Lincoln or Chrysler, it would always bother me that regardless of how old the original ads are, it wasn't our idea first to use those songs in a car spot, and that even with that knowledge, we still couldn't come up with music that worked just as well, or better.

But it's not just car ads.  Oh no.

In 2005 a man picks up a smooth stone on the beach... it's a Motorola phone.

Five years later, a man picks up a smooth stone on a beach... surprise, it's an HTC phone.

The HTC ad says

"Every idea we have begins with you." 

But what I think the copywriter meant to say was

"Most ideas we have begin with you, but some others begin with a Motorola commercial."

Man rides motorcycle down country road in Academy Award winning film:

I'm looking off to one side, wearing aviator glasses, with one hand on my knee.

Man rides motorcycle down country road in 2009 commercial:

No, I'm looking off to one side, wearing aviator glasses with one hand on my knee!

I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with this, but I think I do happen to notice it more than most others.

I think my friend Dave Tutin put it best:

"...when an industry gets rid of all its senior people - either by natural retirement or firings or promoting them away from the actual work, then the new wave of "leaders" are free to claim recycled ideas as their own because there's really nobody to challenge them. Well, there is but most just cannot be bothered."

I understand how difficult it is to come up with a truly original idea, and I know that this industry we work in is the stuff of borrowed interest anyway.  But for me, the "no one will know or remember" reasoning is lame.

Because some people do remember.

And somebody will always know.

Poor Pete Campbell

This is the best thing that's happened to me all day!


Pete Campbell is such a douchebag and to see him get laid out not once, but twice in the Mad Men season finale was profoundly satisfying to me.


Now I can enjoy it again and again and again and again...

The Best Part of Waking Up is...Lego In Your Cup?

OK, this is bugging the hell out of me.

This commercial for Lego Duplo is running in pretty heavy rotation right now on Nick Jr. right now.  There's nothing wrong with the spot, it's fine.  And Lego Duplo looks like something I might actually buy for my 3 1/2 year old.  She'd probably like it a lot.

The problem I have with the spot is that the music sounds really, really like the Folger's music.  You know the song...

"blah blah blah blah blah, 

blah blah blah blah blah,

the best part of waking up

is Folger's in your cup"

Oh, I know it's not exactly the same, but it's close enough that by the end of the spot, every time, I can't help humming to myself,  "the best part of waking up is Folger's in your cup."

Which really bothers me because I hate that song.

Also annoying is the announcer, who seems to have taken the afternoon off from her phone sex job to record this AVO.  She is so breathy and and urgent and... eager.   Is this supposed to feel intimate and approachable?  Like "I'm telling you a secret about Duplo"?

To me it just says "hand job in the alley."

And we're back...

So I saw a couple of things recently that I thought I wanted to write about, so I signed in to my trusty ol' blog.


Maybe I should say my dusty old blog because lo and behold, can it really be almost a year and a half since I've written anything?  "Oh my gott!" as our cleaning lady would say.  That's a long time.


So let's rectify that straight away with this first little tidbit.


Now I'm not a big fan of the Real Housewives.  New Jersey, Atlanta, Beverly Hills, Uzbekistan, wherever they're from I just don't give a shit. Really.  Believe me, I've got plenty of guilty pleasures, but the Real Housewives is not one of them.


My wife, however, does watch the Beverly Hills episodes from time to time and she called out to me the other day, "Paul, Paul, come here quick, you've got to see this!"


So I scampered into the living room lickety split, because that is what you do when your wife calls out to you from the other room.


Here is what she showed me:

"Wow, you look amazing!"  

"You look gorgeous too"

"And I've got my finger jammed so far up my ear I'm giving my brain a good rogering."

This poor woman, who bears an unfortunate resemblance to the late Buddy Hackett, will be forever perserved in the annals of entertainment in this extremely unflattering manner.

                                                    

I'm sure she's a perfectly nice person.  Just a case of the wrong place at the wrong time.  Or the right time, depending on your point of view.

Thank you producers and editors of Real Housewives for choosing not to cut around this colorful and delightful moment.

An Open Letter to Don Draper

Mr. Donald F. Draper

Sterling, Cooper, Draper & Pryce

c/o Pierre Hotel

New York, NY

July 25, 2010

Dear Don,

Don't suck.  Just please don't suck.  I'm going to see you tonight for the first time in almost 9 months, and I want it to be great.  I've missed you and I don't think I could bear it if tonight is anything less than brilliant.

So please don't suck, ok?

I've thought about you a lot in these past 36 weeks.  Where is your office?  You must have moved from the Pierre by now.  Where are you living?  Are you seeing anyone?  Is your divorce final?

Oh Don, so many questions.  And you, holding all the answers.  

It's funny, when I first met you I thought you were the king of cool.  A cigarette perpetually dangling from the corner of your mouth, rye whiskey and broads aplenty.  Ring a ding ding, baby, you know?

But as I got to know you a little better, I began to see how much more complicated you are than that.  For instance, you're an excellent creative director, but a jerk to work for.  And you're a terrible husband and father.  Yet still I find myself rooting for you, interested in your life, wanting you to triumph and succeed.

I see what you've run away from, how you've worked so very very hard to erase the past and create a new persona.  But let's face it, Don, you've fucked some shit up.  And now you're going to have to figure it out.

So I'll be waiting, Don, and watching.  I'll always be here for you.

Just don't let me down, ok?

Sincerely,

Paul F. Cammarota

Bye Bye Baby

Friday is rubbish day in my town. That's the day, once a week, when along with your normal household garbage you can put larger items out by the curb. Furniture, old TVs, mattresses... you name it. Since Friday morning is when the garbage men pick up the rubbish, that makes Thursday evening prime time for...

the Night Pickers.

Night Picker?  What the fuck is a night picker?

Night Picker is a phrase coined by my dad and sisters and me to describe the folks who walk or drive around the neighborhood the night before rubbish day and pick through the trash in hopes of finding some treasure to cart off and call their own. It's not dumpster diving; it's got nothing to do with food. It's about taking that perfectly good something that someone three blocks away is throwing out, bringing it home, cleaning it up and calling it your own.

I was raised in an upper middle class neighborhood, and that's the kind of neighborhood I live in now. You'd be surprised how much perfectly good stuff people simply throw away. 

The next town over from me is wealthy.  You should see the amazing shit they put out by the curb.

I think the fact that people are so quick to discard things has much to do with our very conspicuously consumptive society and what middle class means today. Years ago, something like a bike was a treasure. A decent one cost a good amount of money to buy, and it got handed down from kid to kid. Too bad for you if you were the last kid in your family. If it broke, either your dad fixed it or you took it to the bike shop. But you didn't throw it away.

Now, more often than not it seems people just toss that same bike out and buy a new one. Why not? Bikes and TVs and DVD players have become so inexpensive that it almost makes sense. Plus, I think we have gotten so used to buying new stuff to replace our other stuff that fewer and fewer people know how to actually fix anything anymore.

I am not ashamed to say that I have night picked a thing or two in my time.   An end table with beautiful wooden inlays that was missing only a small detail on one of the legs.  I placed that side against the wall. Another time, as I was walking our ridiculously tiny dog I spied a Weber grill that someone across the street was throwing away. Mint condition. Although I made quite a racket wheeling it across the street, scared the hell out of the dog and probably woke up several neighbors in the process, I still fire up that grill in the backyard today.

The legions of night pickers are many, and the treasures to be gotten are legend. 

But this is not about night pickers, at least not directly.

Nope, this is about little girls growing up.

Because last week I myself put something out on the sidewalk Thursday night for pickup on Friday.

I put out the high chair.

The high chair that endured countless yogurt spills and still has a little piece of spaghetti stuck in that crevice that I just couldn't reach no matter how hard I tried.

The high chair that bears the the faintest remnants of scribbles from markers and pens because no matter how I scrubbed, it never all came out.

The high chair that witnessed thousands of laughs and giggles and almost as many tears.

The high chair that heard me make every sound imaginable, from airplanes to elephants, that might encourage a little girl to open her mouth and take one more bite.

The high chair that held a baby safely while her daddy got a sorely needed cup of coffee.

The high chair that wobbled a little near the end, who's seat cover never fit quite right again after I took it off that first time to wash it.

The high chair that has seen two little girls begin to become big girls.

Yeah.  That high chair.

The trash men come at around 8:30 in the morning.  I could easily have put it out then.  But I didn't.  Somehow I couldn't bear to see them throw that little piece of my girls childhood into the back of the truck.  

So I put it out the night before. 

And sure enough, by 6:00 am Friday morning it was gone.

I'd like to think that someone took it home, cleaned it off, and called it their own.  Maybe some dad somewhere else is making elephant noises to his little girl right now.

Bonne chance, Night Picker.

Bonne chance.