Some Aim to Offend : Tacky Ads: a Low Road to Attention

Frank Hollick says that he’s as open-minded as the next guy. And just because his job is raising money for the Boy Scouts, that doesn’t mean his mind is always on merit badges.

But earlier this summer, when Hollick opened the sports section of his hometown newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, he was horrified. It wasn’t the news about Phillies slugger Mike Schmidt quitting baseball that bothered him. It was a full-page ad, placed by shoe manufacturer Nike, that was intended as a tribute to the departing third baseman.

The ad didn’t show a picture of Schmidt knocking one out of the park. It didn’t show any photo at all. It was simply a two-word headline in huge capital letters, followed by one tiny line of copy.

Said the bold headline: “No Schmidt.”

Reader Takes Issue

The play on words was unmistakeable. “Here’s a guy that’s done a lot for Philadelphia,” Hollick complained, “and this is how they treat him. To me, it says that Nike figures everyone in Philadelphia has the mentality of a juvenile.”

Nike says that was not the case at all. “We’re always on the edge in everything we do,” said Liz Dolan, the company’s director of public relations, “and people will sometimes think we’ve stepped over the line.” She said that Nike received few complaints about the ad. “We try to remain somewhere in the bounds of good taste, but our definition is not the same as the Boy Scouts’.”

When it comes to matters of taste in advertising, it isn’t just Nike and a Boy Scout fund-raiser that walk different paths. Everyone has his own definition. And while some advertising executives can’t seem to apologize enough for offending their customers, others would readily admit they intentionally make ads that are tacky.

Aiming to Provoke

As advertisers ferociously compete for the public’s attention, consultants say, a growing number of them seem to be stooping--intentionally or not--to all-time lows in taste.

These ads are not only the sexually risque. They are to advertising what trash-TV host Morton Downey was to talk shows: often silly, sometimes stupid and almost always obnoxious. The ads seem to give little consideration to whom they might offend--or how. Examples abound.

Earlier this month, a Los Angeles movie marketing company ran in several trade publications an ad featuring a full-page illustration of an athletic supporter. A San Francisco maker of trendy apparel last year ran a TV commercial that featured a youth who dies in a fiery auto accident--but whose clothing emerges unmarred. A New York clothing store chain took plenty of heat for its print ad showing foreigners burning an American flag.

Even the New York City Department of Health got into the act with its AIDS-prevention print ad headlined: “Man to Man.” As if that weren’t suggestive enough, the letter “o” in the type was a photo of a condom.

“Most of these guys are trying to double their pleasure with free media exposure,” said Fred Danzig, editor of the trade publication Advertising Age. Many ad executives figure that if their ads are provocative enough, the national media will cover them as news events. That, in effect, doubles the client’s exposure at no additional cost.

Some ads are so tasteless that they are ridiculed within the advertising industry. Almost every week, Advertising Age leaves some space in its letters-to-the-editor column for its “Ads We Can Do Without” section. Years ago, the magazine received about one entry a week; now it receives about one a day, Danzig said.

Some Executives Protest

Some top ad executives say they are disgusted with these often naughty and sometimes nasty ads.

“No one should ever have to ask themselves, ‘I wonder if I can get away with this ad,’ ” said Stan Freberg, the award-winning ad man, author and advertising consultant. “I never asked myself that question. I only asked: Will it communicate my client’s message?”

Freberg may be known best for the humorous campaign he created for Sun Sweet prunes (“Today the pits; tomorrow the wrinkles!”). He has always bristled at tasteless ads. Some 20 years ago, when he saw an offensive ad for an antacid on TV, he hurled an alarm clock through the picture tube.

Even today, Freberg likes to show reels of tasteless ads to his clients. He then suggests that anyone who wants to run offensive advertising might just as well convert the ad budget into $100 bills, then take a plane over the Grand Canyon and shove the cash out the door. Freberg explains: “It will communicate your message to just as many people.”

Mostly in Print

The majority of offensive ads never see the light of the TV tube. After all, the major networks are still relatively strong self-regulators of commercials. “If you put some of the ads on TV that get into print,” said Dave Vadehra, president of the New York research firm Video Storyboard Tests, “the networks would have to take their phones off the hooks.”

Most advertising executives vigorously defend their right to publish virtually any ad they want. “To me, the question of bad taste in ads is really a way of talking about censorship,” said Jack Roth, president of the Los Angeles firm Admarketing. His agency’s ads for C&R; Clothiers include one that shows a bridegroom walking down the aisle in his boxer shorts because his tailor didn’t have his pants ready in time for the wedding.

“We all have different standards of what is good or bad taste,” said Roth. “You can’t please everyone all the time.” Some advertisers say that a provocative ad is basically the only way to get attention these days.

That is why one Los Angeles movie marketing company--looking for publicity--earlier this month placed an ad in Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety showing a picture of a jock strap over the headline: “The only thing that gives more support in one location.”

Going for Attention

“Even though we’ve been in business for a year and worked on 22 movies, people didn’t know what we did,” said Gordon Weaver, president of the Gordon Weaver Co. “Now, they do.”

Do they ever. A number of complaints were phoned in. One male film executive called and angrily asked if the company planned to run a picture of a diaphragm in its next ad.

“Keep in mind, that ad was specifically targeted to entertainment industry executives,” said Peter Stranger, president of the Los Angeles office of Della Femina McNamee WCRS, which designed the ad. “If that ad had appeared anywhere else, it would have been terrible.”

Not that the trade magazines were all enthralled. Variety called Weaver and asked if he would reconsider the ad, and the trade magazine Adweek rejected it outright.

As if dangling a jockstrap in a print ad isn’t bad enough, what about an ad for a hotel chain showing a dozen pairs of men’s briefs? That is exactly what Residence Inn did in a campaign that ran through July in several in-flight magazines and in USA Today.

Underwear Symbols

In the ad, 10 of the men’s undergarments represented the average stay at the hotel, 10 nights. The other two represented the average stay at competing hotels. The ads ran for about eight months, and during that time the Marriott-owned chain received about 50 complaints, said Joseph Okon, Residence Inn’s director of marketing communications. “Some women wrote in and said that they wouldn’t stay at a Residence Inn because, obviously, we didn’t want their business.”

Yet, as Okon figures it, if the ad had shown women’s undergarments, “we’d have gotten even more complaints.” And, overall, the campaign seemed effective. During the months the ads ran, Okon said, calls to the chain’s reservation service increased 150%. “We reget offending anyone, but we certainly don’t regret running the ad,” he said. “At least, they were clean underwear . . . and nobody was in them.”

One young San Francisco agency has virtually built its reputation on ads that offend.

That agency is Mandelbaum Mooney Ashley. It is just over a year old and most of its clients are relatively small, and its president says the best way to get publicity for a client with a tiny ad budget is to run an offensive ad.

Short-Term Ploy

“You don’t do it as a long-term strategy,” said Ken Mandelbaum, the president. “You do it at the beginning, as the atomic blast.”

One such ad two years ago enraged advice columnist Ann Landers. A TV commercial for Union Bay apparel featured a take-off on a drag-racing scene from the film “Rebel Without a Cause.” In the ad--which appeared on MTV but not on network TV--two cars are racing and one roars off a steep cliff and explodes into flames. As the wreckage burns, the camera shows a jacket and pair of pants--apparently thrown from the driver’s body--left in perfect condition. The voice-over says: “Union Bay. Fashion that’s made to last.”

“We knew kids would love the campaign and parents would hate it,” Mandelbaum said. “That’s why we only ran it on MTV.”

More recently, the agency’s ad for another small client poked fun at Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis. That ad featured an unflattering picture of the former Democratic presidential candidate with the headline: “There are some people even we couldn’t make more persuasive.”

The advertiser was Presentation Technologies, a small company that makes personal computer accessories. Shortly after it appeared, Mandelbaum, who was a Dukakis supporter, received an angry call from Dukakis’ attorney and agreed to stop running the ad.

Priceless Publicity

But the agency had already done its job. It spent only $30,000 on the ad but got Presentation Technologies some free publicity in the form of articles about its advertising in the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press, and in a story aired on Cable News Network.

The agency--which says it will never do ads for tobacco, alcohol or military-related products--considered Dukakis fair game. Said Mandelbaum: “We weren’t telling people anything they didn’t already know.”

Offensive ads can come from unexpected places. Some of the most talked-about ads in New York, over the past few years, have come courtesy of the city’s Department of Health.

Two years ago, as part of the city’s AIDS education campaign, the department introduced an ad showing a woman getting dressed to go out on the town, then putting a condom into her purse just before going out the door. Ads in a concurrent print campaign advised: “Don’t go out without your rubbers.”

This summer, the New York health officials devised a TV and print campaign to encourage homosexual men to use condoms. In one TV spot, a gay man talks about kissing his boyfriend, and the narrator warns: “When you have sex with another man, always use a latex condom.”

“It’s not an issue of taste,” said Stephen C. Joseph, the city health commissioner. “We’re in the middle of the most frightful health crisis in anyone’s memory. And we’re trying to change the behavior of people in some of the most private and sensitive areas of their lives. In order to affect that behavior, you first have to get people’s attention.”

AIDS Spots Defended

That the ads have done. And Joseph has taken plenty of heat for the campaign--particularly from religious groups. “You have to remember,” Joseph said, “we’re not talking about ads that are trying to increase the market share of Van Heusen shirts by 0.25%, we’re talking about saving people’s lives.”

Not all New York advertisers have such altruistic intentions. Earlier this year, Hudsons clothing store ran a large ad in the New York Times and New York magazine that featured a large American flag in flames. The photo was captioned: “Americans may not be loved around the world, but our fashions are.”

“I had to field a lot of nasty letters and phone calls about that burning flag,” said David Russo, marketing director at Hudsons. Even the New York Times, which ran the ad, told Russo it would not accept it again.

Flag-Burning Explained

The purpose of the flag-burning picture wasn’t to offend anyone, Russo said. “It was to point out the bittersweet irony that, while we’re viewed as the devil abroad, the very people who do U.S.-bashing like to wear things like Levi’s and Denver Bronco sweat shirts.”

Occasionally, an advertiser admits it has messed up.

Two years ago, Dreyer’s ice cream briefly employed John D. Ehrlichman, former top aide to President Richard M. Nixon, as what it called “an unbelievable spokesman for an unbelievably good ice cream.” Ehrlichman, of course, is known for having served time in prison for conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury. The company received 325 letters objecting to the ad, and killed it. “Most of the people felt he was not of good moral character,” a Dreyer’s spokeswoman said.

Meanwhile, Continental Airlines still regrets a commercial it aired about a plan to offer low fares. The ad showed a samurai warrior character slashing a rock with the words High Fares printed on it.

The characterization was loosely based on one that actor John Belushi had portrayed in skits on “Saturday Night Live.” (Continental asked Belushi’s brother, Jim, to play the role, but he declined.) To make certain the ad would not offend Asians, the airline hired three Asian consultants to review it--including one expert in samurai swordsmanship.

Regrets Linger

“Despite these precautions, we did manage to irritate a lot of people,” said James V. O’Donnell, senior vice president of marketing at Continental. “I don’t mind irritating the competition, but I sure don’t want to irritate our customers.” Many Asians said they found it particularly offensive that a non-Asian was cast in the role.

After a five-week run, the ad was killed. O’Donnell says that Continental has been humbled by the experience. “I think any time you commit a social gaffe, you leave embarrassed,” he said. “We goofed, plain and simple.”