Where Have All the Yuppies Gone? Ads Have Dropped Them, Every One
It is not the sort of ad that stirs great passion. A couple of guys at a diner are jawing about their cars. Sounds about as exciting as watching sheep sleep, huh?
But this commercial, for Honda Dealers of Southern California, is the sort of ad that could spell the end of a short-lived era. The yuppie as an advertising vehicle is dead.
“The whole concept of the yuppie has become laughable,” said Robert Elen, whose Los Angeles agency, Robert Elen & Associates, created the Honda ad. “I don’t know of one major advertiser who is putting together a big yuppie campaign right now. I think they’d be embarrassed to be in the category.”
If the two guys in the Honda were wearing suspenders or dining on sushi, they could easily pass as yuppies. But the ad takes great pains to, instead, simply present them as a couple of Joes who aren’t really interested in having it all. In fact, all they want is a car that works.
“Isn’t variety the spice of life?” poses one guy, when his buddy tells him that he just bought his third Honda. Responds the other guy: “Well, my last Honda was red.”
What has killed the yuppie--and yuppie values--in ads? “It’s the natural death of a fad,” said Rajeev Batra, associate professor of marketing at Columbia University. But advertising executives say that several other factors are also at work.
October’s stock market crash cast an ugly glow on the image of the yuppie as greedy. “Everyone’s mad at them,” said Larry Postaer, creative director at the Los Angeles ad firm, Rubin Postaer.
What’s more, too many advertisers jumped on the yuppie bandwagon at once. All the ads began to look alike. “The trend of yuppie commercials has expired of its own tedium,” said John Ferrell, executive vice president and creative director at the New York office of the ad agency Young & Rubicam. “In fact, many young people have been laughing at this advertising for several years, but it wasn’t until recently that advertisers made that connection.”
Comedy writers, however, quickly caught on. The popular television show, “Saturday Night Live,” parodied the king of yuppie advertising, Michelob, more than a year ago.
The old Michelob ads, under the theme, “Where you’re going, it’s Michelob,” showed stereotypical yuppies enjoying the brew. Recently, however, the maker of Michelob, Anheuser-Busch Co., did a virtual about-face in its ad campaign.
Now, instead of marketing itself as the beer of the yuppie, Michelob is trying to attract a much broader audience by repositioning itself as the beer that is synonymous with nighttime. After all, you don’t have to be a yuppie to be swayed by such one-liners as “the night belongs to Michelob” and “light up the night with Michelob Light.”
“A lot of advertisers are rethinking their positions,” said Jane Talcott, creative director at DDB Needham Worldwide. “There’s a return to ads that say, ‘Hey, you should buy this product whether you’re a yuppie or not.”
At the same time, some advertisers that still want to reach yuppie executives have recast the image from the happy-go-lucky executive on the move to that of the manager who is just trying to keep his job. Companies such as AT&T;, MCI, IBM and Wang are all running ads that show snippets of young executives in difficult business situations.
“I call them yuppies from hell,” said Steve Hayden, chief creative officer at the Los Angeles office of the ad firm BBDO. “It’s a bunch of serious white guys with worried looks on their faces.”
Now, one advertiser has even taken to yuppie-bashing. In an ad for Southern California Lincoln/Mercury Dealers, yuppies have become the target of ridicule. When a guy at a chi-chi place named Vista del Condo is discovered driving an American-made car--a Mercury Sable, no less--a gaggle of condo residents take him to task. “You’ve never been happy here, have you?” the man is asked. “Perhaps,” a neighbor poses, “you’d be happy in an unplanned community.”
That ad, created by the San Francisco office of Young & Rubicam, is trying to build awareness of the Sable in trend-setting California, said Gene Chaput, vice president. “People who prefer high-tech, European cars are not even candidates for our car,” said Chaput. “We’re taking a pot shot at yuppies, but it’s a group that we don’t have a chance of attracting anyway.”
Worldwide Church of God Switches Agencies
It is not the most glorious way to start a new job. But just days after Gene Cameron took the helm as president of the ad firm BBDO Los Angeles, a key client has transferred its $15-million account to a different BBDO office. Gone is the Worldwide Church of God, the Pasadena-based religious organization that publishes the magazine Plain Truth and broadcasts the television show, “The World Tomorrow.” It has followed BBDO’s former Los Angeles president, Donald Mitchum, to the ad firm’s Atlanta office.
“It’s not that we were dissatisfied with their L.A. office,” said Michael Snyder, a spokesman for the church. “We just wanted to preserve our relationship with Don Mitchum.”
BBDO’s Cameron in the Los Angeles office was not available for comment. In a statement, however, he said “some staff reductions appear likely.”
Ayds May Resume Broadcast Messages
For the first time in years, the makers of Ayds may soon do broadcast advertising. Last week, Dep Corp. officials said they are test-marketing the new name Aydslim for the diet candy. If the new name sticks, said Robert Berglass, Dep’s chief executive, Ayds may take to the airwaves again. “Right now, we won’t say the name of our product on TV or radio, because it sounds exactly like the AIDS disease,” Berglass said. “But if we change it to Aydslim,” he said, “there can’t be any confusion.”
Fortune Magazine Gets French Accent
Psst. Wanna make a Fortune in France? Time Inc. does. The company this month began publishing a French edition of Fortune--which comes complete with advertising from such giant French firms as Cartier, Renault and Longines. Advertisers, however, are only paying $9,470 for full-page ads in Fortune’s French edition while it costs $43,380 for full-page ads in the U.S. edition.
Of course, the circulation of the French version is just 50,000 while the American edition has a circulation of 755,000.
Fortune’s French edition is a joint venture with Hachette-Filipacchi, which also publishes Paris Match and Elle.
The price of the magazine is 25 francs ($4.50). That’s $1 more than the newsstand price in the United States. Explained a Time Inc. spokesman, “That’s the going rate for magazines over there.”
Not Really Sending Coal to Newcastle
Mickey Mouse never figured he’d have to compete with Mickey Mouse.
But with the recent burst of Disney World advertisements throughout Southern California, that’s exactly what’s happening. For the first time, Disney World has begun advertising in nine Western markets, including very heavy advertising in Mickey Mouse’s birthplace--California.
The ads, which try to lure travelers to Orlando, Fla.’s Epcot Center, have appeared on television and in magazines for the past two months. But, says a Disney spokesman, that’s just fine. “It helps develop an awareness that there is a difference between Disneyland and Disney World,” said Mark Feary, Disneyland’s director of marketing. “Besides, when people see Mickey Mouse in the ad, I think there’s a rub-off effect, and they also think of us.”
