Actress, Ice Skater Get Meaty Roles
Perhaps the carnivore in them has gotten the best of Peggy Fleming and Cybill Shepherd. Then again, maybe it’s the prospect of meaty paychecks.
Last week, in separate deals, the former Olympic ice skating champion and the model-turned-actress emerged as rival spokeswomen for twin trade groups that are slugging it out for the appetites of American meat-eaters: the National Pork Producers Council and the Beef Industry Council.
For good measure, the Beef Industry Council also signed another celebrity with wide appeal and high marks for trustworthiness--James Garner.
While inking big-buck contracts with celebrities is nothing new in the ad world, some industry executives say that logical connections between product and personality are passe. Although viewers can still draw a clear association between Willie Nelson and the Wrangler Jeans he now advertises, there is a hazy connection, at best, between John Houseman and Puritan Oil.
Today, it’s far more crucial to land a star with an honest face.
“Peggy Fleming is kinda cute and all that,” said Michael Kamin, an assistant professor of marketing at USC, “but there doesn’t appear to be any real connection between her and pork.” Contributing to the problem, he said, is the fact that nearly 40% of the commercials on U.S. television now use celebrities--and that trend continues upward.
Celebrities can be especially critical to products that need a boost. The chicken industry--which does no generic advertising--continues to pluck away at the hefty market once dominated by beef and pork. As a result, the celebrities will soon kick off massive ad blitzes--a $30-million campaign for beef versus a $6.5-million campaign for pork. In a bid to out-chicken chicken, pork will be called “the other white meat.”
Campaigns such as these have been a boon to big-time talent agencies that make it their business to match stars with products. One such Los Angeles firm, Charles H. Stern Agency Inc., has matched Garner with Polaroid, Telly Savalas with Zale’s Jewelry, Merlin Olsen with FTD Florists and Dennis Weaver with Great Western Savings & Loan.
“Actors are getting to be fussy about what products they associate themselves with,” Stern said. “No one wants to be associated with a product that fails.”
But the huge paychecks that clients are dangling--often as large as movie contracts--are luring more and more celebrities into the fold. Witness a few of the most recent big-ticket stars to join the commercial brigade--”Moonlighting’s” Bruce Willis, who picked up a cool $2 million for his Seagram’s Golden Wine Cooler campaign, and “Miami Vice” star Don Johnson and “Family Ties” star Michael J. Fox, who signed multimillion-dollar contracts to pitch Pepsi.
Fleming was selected because of her credibility, said Ric Cooper, general manager of the ad firm Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon & Eckhardt’s Omaha office, which created the campaign. “She can help us overcome a lot of bad connotations about pork,” he said. Although Fleming will not appear in TV commercials, she will take off her skates to tour the country as a spokeswoman.
Meanwhile, the beef producers--who say that they, too, are getting a bum steer from the media--hope that Shepherd and Garner will help boost their image. “Our surveys showed them to be the most believable celebrities around,” said Ken Dudwick, president of Ketchum Advertising’s San Francisco office, which is handling the campaign. “Besides,” he said, “they both like beef.”
Depressing Reading for Magazine Firms
Tony Fimiani knows, first-hand, how bad the magazine business is these days.
Tony was not one of the 700-plus magazine publishing executives who met in Orlando, Fla., last week at the annual conference of the New York-based Magazine Publishers Assn. But Tony’s magazine stand--on 43rd Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan--is in the pits.
“Sales are about half of what they used to be,” laments Tony, whose stand has been in the family for 30 years. “There’s nothing we can do but hope.”
Tony may have something to hang his hopes on. While magazine ad pages have been flat for the past two years, ad revenue is up slightly and circulation is on the rise. “That’s nothing to do a dance about,” said John Caldwell, senior vice president of the association. But his 1987 forecast should have executives on their feet: ad page growth of 4% and ad revenue up 8%.
While some specialty monthly magazines have fared well in 1986--such as American Health, which has seen an 18% jump in ad pages--many of the weekly magazines have come to look more like weaklies. Advertising has taken a real drubbing--some magazines suffering double-digit percentage dips in ad pages due to big drops in liquor, tobacco and high-tech ads, says a study by the New York ad firm Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne Inc.
This follows 1985, “the worst year in recent memory” for magazine advertising, said the report. The drop in ad pages for the first three quarters of 1986 appears to be every bit as bad, if not worse. BBDO reports Newsweek down 10%, Time down 4%, U.S. News & World Report down 2%, Business Week down 12%, New Yorker down 13%, People down 1% and TV Guide down 3%.
South Africa Tourism Ads Cause a Ruckus
“South Africa. You’ll Come Back. Again and Again.”
This full-page tourism ad, which has appeared in 13 major newspapers over the past two weekends--including the Los Angeles Times--has caused an industry ruckus.
After all, in opposition to South Africa’s apartheid policies, Congress recently slapped economic sanctions against it--including a ban on direct air service between the United States and South Africa. Now, however, the New York-based South African Tourism Board is advertising a way around the sanctions--flights via Europe.
The ad is part of a $1-million campaign to reverse a tourism decline of 32% this year.
The ads--created by a Johannesburg-based associate of Saatchi & Saatchi--promise visitors that they will be “pleasantly surprised” by the difference between South Africa as depicted on the evening news “and the real South Africa.”
But Paul Irish, associate director of the New York-based American Committee on Africa, an anti-apartheid lobby, said: “Even if tourists do get there, you can bet they won’t be allowed to see the real South Africa.”
Saatchi & Saatchi has no ownership interest in KMT-Compton--the associated firm that created the ads--and no investments in South Africa, said Jim Adler, president of Saatchi & Saatchi Compton Group. “But our job is to service clients,” he said, “and if they do some basic business in South Africa, we will service them.”
The first day that the ad ran, the tourism board received more than 200 phone calls for more information, said Peter Celliers, a spokesman for the board. “Many Americans feel they aren’t allowed to travel to South Africa,” he said. “That just isn’t so.”
Best-Dressed Guests at Hotel Are for the Birds
Have you heard the one about the four penguins that checked into the Sheraton Universal?
Except, this is no joke. En route to filming a commercial in a Hollywood lot, the four penguins--complete with two trainers and four rented air conditioners--checked into two $80-per-night rooms at the hotel in Universal City. The birds don’t fly, so they were chauffeured in from San Diego’s Sea World--in a specially air-conditioned van, no less.
The penguins are stars of a commercial that Sea World of Ohio filmed last week. It borrowed the penguins from its sister park in San Diego. The $30,000 commercial, conceived by DDB/Needham’s Los Angeles office, will begin airing in the Midwest next week.
The penguins--who bedded down in the bathroom--had a wonderful night at the posh hotel, but the trainers didn’t get much sleep, according to Diane Hill, an assistant producer with DDB. To keep the penguins comfortable, trainers had to keep the room temperature well below 60 degrees.
