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These audiences have been joined by the Pepsi generation, which sees but does not believe. Raised on the tube, these young people have heard and seen all the obvious plays on insecurity and are unimpressed by all the weaseling statements that sound impressive but mean nothing. Marshall McLuhan (who else?) has observed that future historians will find in advertising "the richest and most faithful daily reflections that any society ever made of its entire range of activities."
If so, the reflections derived from the old, hard-sell commercials will be rather odd. In the typical American family, Mom is obviously a nut. Every blessed washday, she is seen running around the backyard with wild, passionate abandon, embracing her laundry and squealing, "It even smells clean!" That's more than can be said for Sis. Poor kid, her best friend just told her she's got rotten armpits. As for Dad, he keeps getting punched in the eye because he won't switch his brand of cigarettes. So he asserts his virility by barreling around mountain roads in his wide-track, fastback, four-on-the-floor Belchfire with the racer's edge. And Junior, well, the sudden joy of discovering that he's got 27% fewer cavities has apparently unhinged him. Now he stands in front of the mirror all day and counts his pimples. And after dinner, the whole family gathers at the hearthside, unwraps their Wrigley's and, with a hi ho and a hey hey, chews their little troubles away.
Real People. This kind of pitch, with its view of the consumer as saphead, is still afl too prevalent. But, increasingly, as admen are trying to break through the CEBUS barrier, the old commercial is being replaced with the truly new brand of ad with miracle ingredients some honesty, some humor, packaged with meticulous care. It might be called the uncommercial, and it has transformed the viewer into a consumer of the pitch as much as of the product.
He identifies with the characters who for once look almost like real people fat, scrawny, drab, sassy, ordinary. He is caught up in a Jell-O ad, in which a snatch of conversation and a glimpse of beaming faces around the dinner table capture the mood and moment of a young soldier home on furlough. He is washed in nostalgia as a Kodak spot scans a lifetime by focusing on a greying couple as they rummage through old snapshots. Says Adman David Ogilvy: "The consumer isn't a moron she is your wife." Adwoman Mary Wells, president of Wells, Rich, Greene, sounds the credo of the new uncommercial makers: "You have to talk person to person with people, use people words and people terms. You have to touch them, show humanness and warmth, charm them with funny vignettes. You have to make them feel good about a product so they'll love you."