TV Advertisers Make Case in Black and White

No, your color television set isn’t broken. All those commercials really ARE in black and white, though with the occasional splash of color.

Until fashion houses appropriated the dusky look a few years ago, black-and-white advertising was the domain of small-budgeted marketers. Now, even the most deep-pocketed and strait-laced among them are producing moody black-and-white ads.

“When we opted for this look, far fewer than one in five ads on TV were black and white,” said Wilma Bowers, assistant vice president of corporate advertising at Bell Atlantic. “Now, more than a third are.” Bell Atlantic’s ads broke in September.

Bell Atlantic went with the black-and-white look to “highlight our breakthrough message that we’re more than a local phone company. For the telecommunications category it’s way out there, but in keeping with our heritage,” Bowers said.

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Black-and-white ads do more than stand out in a colorful world, the way running an ad upside down would. They evoke memories of childhood before color TV, while some marketers believe black-and-white represents a return to simplicity. Others use it because it’s stark and sophisticated. But one thing it isn’t any longer is cheaper than colorful ads.

“Because we feature employees’ children speaking in their own words, black and white seemed more fitting, more natural,” said Cathy Payne, account manager at International Paper Co.’s ad agency, Messner, Vetere, Berger, McNamee, Schmetterer Euro/RSCG.

The agency plans to roll out three new black-and-white spots in March.

Marketers say black and white serves up the truth unvarnished. In a new ad for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Tobacco Control Program, an aging lung disease sufferer confides that she began smoking at age 10 “to look older. And I’m sorry to say, it worked,” she says, revealing that she is only 26.

MassMutual ads are “true life, not posed,” Vice President Eustis Walcott said. “Black and white enhances that sense of naturalness.”

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It’s also used to import a sense of seriousness. A new black-and-white spot for AT&T; Corp. where Main Street turns into a concrete wave that people surf was “an attempt to visualize the Internet in a way not done before and convey AT&T;’s mission to be the leader in Internet services for businesses,” said David Moore, group creative director at the Interpublic Group’s McCann-Erickson.

It can also have almost the opposite effect, suggesting a mystical state, marketers said.

“Black and white provides an evocative element of dream-like fantasy as in the Ansel Adams portraits of America,” said Tom Gabriel, creative director at the Carmichael Lynch ad agency in Minneapolis.

In a new spot for Harley-Davidson Inc., a cane-tapping blind man listens intently as a whir approaches. “Nice Harley,” he mutters as the motorcycle’s roar recedes.

There is an urgency with black and white “that pulls the viewer in,” said Jeroen Bours, senior vice president, creative director at McCann Erickson. For Marriott Corp. black and white “stands out, evokes a mood of mystery and elegance and builds a climax better. We wanted the audience to become part of a job applicant’s turmoil, for example, and it has done that and built real brand awareness,” he said.

Health o Meter Products Inc. chose black and white to convey, well, nothing. New ads take consumers to Nothing, Ariz., (population 4) where Mayor Les Payne, a self-proclaimed expert on Nothing, holds an all-town turnout taste test to show that Health o Meter’s Culligan water filters makes water taste like nothing.

“Black and white conveys nothingness better than color,” senior product manager Gail Metcalfe said. “Color can give viewers too much information; black and white makes it simple.”

Some marketers flash back in black and white to distinguish the past from the present. One current Merrill Lynch spot shows a financially comfortable widow (in color), recalling happy times (in black and white) in the home she’s able to maintain. “We’ve also used black and white to distinguish place,” said Jay Schulberg, vice chairman of Bozell Worldwide, ad agency for Merrill Lynch.

In one spot where a couple adopts a baby in South America, black-and-white footage identifies their time outside the U.S. “It’s a clean demarcation and shows a difference between then and now and here and there,” Schulberg said.

Does black-and-white advertising work? Researchers Joan Meyers-Levy and Laura Peracchio reported in the Journal of Advertising Research that when viewers paid little attention to advertising, black and white actually outperformed colorful ads. But when viewers scrutinized ads, the highly colorful ones were most persuasive.

Marketers say the approach may work better to establish an identity or increase general awareness rather than pump up sales. Some insist it works better selling a mood than the actual soap powder.

So the colorless look will probably not prevail, said Arthur Bijur, president of Cordiant’s Cliff Freeman & Partners, ad agency for Little Caesar’s and Staples.

“This once unfamiliar technique, enlisted to get products to stand out from the crowd has attracted the crowd and become all too familiar. It’s growing old . . . quickly,” Bijur said.