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Off the screen, the roster of professionals is equally impressive. Hollywood Cameraman George Folsey, who has been nominated for an Oscar 13 times, now trains his lens on Miller High Life beer and Sanka coffee. Composer Mitch Leigh, who wrote the music for Man of La Mancha, is a top jingle writer for commercials. Dress Designer Bill Blass does the wardrobe for the models who are seen nuzzling up to the Princess telephone.
The men who put it all together, the directors, may one day be hailed as true innovators in film it is they who pack a succinct story into a few seconds and in the process produce many new cinematic ideas. The work of such directors as Michael Cimino for Kodak, Howard Zieff for Benson & Hedges and Mike Elliott for Rheingold, has precipitated an interplay of ideas that flows freely between Madison Avenue and the conventional movie set. The directors dabble with Fellini-like stream-of-consciousness techniques. Hollywood copies TV's fast cuts and odd-angle perspectives. The quality of Richard Lester's movies A Hard Day's Night, Petulia reflects his experience as director of more than 300 commercials.
CEBUS. This refreshing infusion of talent came just in time: the old sock-it-to-'em pitch was making a lot of people punchy. The only way to sell certain analgesics was to make the viewer queasy just watching: faucets dripped acids into the stomach, hammers clanged on anvils in the head. It was getting increasingly difficult to tell whether the little old winemaker was getting tanked on Drano, or pushing Ken-L Ration for hungry Living Bras. Gradually, after 20 years of hard-sell harangue, viewers developed a kind of filter blend up front. They did not turn off their sets; they turned off their minds. Admen refer to that phenomenon as the "fatigue factor," but their research departments know it by the more ominous name of CEBUS (Confirmed Exposure but Unconscious). In one recent survey, 75% of the viewers tested had no recollection of what products they had just seen demonstrated.