An Octogenarian Confession

True Confessions of Octogenarian Advertising Panderer David L Lewis

First, a word from… can you name the sponsor? Hint: You may have to be over 50 to remember some of them. Answers at end:

1) Time For Another Commercial Is Here! Quick, Run And Get A ________ ____

2) Pop, Pop, Fizz, Fizz, Oh What A Relief It Is, ____ _______

3) I’d Walk A Mile For A ________

4) _______ ______ Good To The Last Drop

5) _________ Sugar Corn Pops! Sugar Pops Are Tops!

6) Mr Whipple, please don’t squeeze the ___________

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Yes, yes, I know, it now starts in July. BUT, back in my day Christmas shopping season began the day after Thanksgiving. This was the day retailers went from operating in the red to being profitable, that is, in the black. Which meant advertising for Christmas began in late November.

Now that I am an official octogenarian and the grim reaper has me on speed dial, one must consider getting one’s affairs in order and confessing faults. Forgive me, therefore, dear reader, though knowing it has been a venial sin since invention of TV remote, I must confess to sometimes having intentionally watched TV Commercials!

Yes, they can get boring after a few exposures, and some are ‘indiscreet’ at best. But, I must confess the Art of Advertising has fascinated me since before I ever heard of Black Friday. And, I’ve learned a lot of new stuff and stolen a lot of good ideas from them.

I herewith offer penitence for my transgressions by revealing the seven evil temptations of the advertising copy-writing demons.

Temptation #1: Advertising Works  In 21^st century Nothing, absolutely nothing, gets to you until someone launches an effective marketing campaign - Nothing. This includes not only everything ever purchased, but also every idea ever incorporated into our world view – Everything.

Temptation #2: Advertising Benefits  It is what keeps newspapers, radio, TV in business. PBS (and even Cable TV!), once much ballyhooed as Free, must accept advertising revenue to survive. If you watch or read any of them, you benefit from advertisers who paid to make it possible.

Temptation #3: Advertising Infiltrates It’s in everything, everywhere, all the time. They all follow the same format: The ‘hook’ to get attention of likely buyers, the ‘Schick’ to keep viewer attention, the ‘close’ to motivate the buyer. If it works, we get endless repetitions! As they say: ‘If you say it loud enough, loud enough, often enough, it becomes the truth.’

Temptation #4: Advertising Deceives  By Law they do have to tell truth; but watch out for how they say it, and what they don’t have to say.

• Nothing is “Free” and there are always costs – always

• Lawyer Talk is not there to protect the Buyer from law suits

• Truth in Advertising does not require clarity in presentation

• Presenting Benefits does not require equal time for Problems

• When it comes on louder than program the argument is weak

• It’s more profitable to sell Cure than market cheaper Prevention

• If it is too good to be true then it probably is too good to be true!

Temptation #5: Advertising Fluctuates

• Good: ‘Serial’ commercials for property damage insurance are best and most successful ads running (how long has Flo been spokesperson for what?).

• Bad: The very worst are the endless drug promotions (if you listen to them carefully, why would anyone put them in their body?).

• Tolerable: Infomercials must be working, they have been going on since birth of TV. And, a lot of people have gotten rich from them. Suppose they’re tolerable, I just never watched any.

• Worst: Those which offend traditional values and sense of decency. As once said: An old-timer is someone who remembers when a bra was called a brazier, and was never mentioned in public.

Temptation #6: Advertising Profits  Every individual commercial you see on network TV represents a gamble of from $50K to multi-millions of dollars. Ads have to pay off! Every commercial endeavor which has ever failed has failed because it lacked an effective marketing plan which reached the target market. If we see an ad repeated a lot, it is for one simple reason – it worked. Ads must profit the advertiser, costs only justified if it brings more income to advertiser.

Temptation #7: Advertising Captures  If you watch, listen, read just long enough to be aware of what it is advertising, the advertiser wins. But, if you don’t remember the product, it’s worthless. So, if I remember the advertisers of my above Quiz so many years later, they were worth the effort to the brands whether I bought their product or not.

Just doing some advertising copy-writing to thank that dude who invented the remote control.

TheOctogenaeian

QUIZ ANSWERS

(1) Falstaff Beer (2) Alka Seltzer (3) Camel (4) Folgers Coffee (5) Kellogg's (6) Charmin

 the Bullet that Changed America

Consequences of death of John F Kennedy as observed by David L Lewis

It was sixty years now past. To be precise, 12:35PM, Friday, November 22 1963. I was a civilian clerk for St. Louis Police Department typing on a green IBM Selectric typewriter. A woman in communications room opened the door and called out, “FBI reporting someone is shooting at the President in Dallas Texas”. In this now old man’s observation it was day the world turned over and would never be the same as whatever it had been. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the man who carried the hopes and dreams of a generation, was dead.

In high school American History the first semester ended with 1860 election of Lincoln. The second semester began with the American Civil War and went through to 1950 or so. I submit the second turning point in American history was the 1960 election of 35^th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. What JFK would say in his inaugural address would inspire a generation and release social and political reform the full consequences of which we have not yet seen: “And, so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

The world turned that day now 60 years past. Nothing would ever be the same because Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B Johnson, came to office. LBJ had the political clout and expertise, and sympathy of the country, to put into reality the dreams which Kennedy probably never dreamed himself, nor would have been able to accomplish. It is because we lost the man who inspired us that the man who could get it done came to power – for better or worse, or both.

Medicare

Medicare put profit into the research needed to extend lives. It is well within the realm of possible alternatives that I am alive today because JFK gave way to LBJ.

Civil Rights

Fought at first, but new generations knew no other world. We became the nation of all nationalities to a great extent because of these laws.

Voting Rights

Which changed the loyalties of competing parties and entered America into a new phase of politics.

The Great Society

Which included such things as Aid to Dependent Children, Food Stamps, and Medicaid. To an extent creating something of a ‘cottage industry’ out making babies, and creating a certain degree of dependence on government. The Great Society also came to include Pell grants, Student Loans, and other provisions which put profit into providing education. Three of our children got their education in part because LBJ was President.

Vietnam

Kennedy inherited this conflict from Eisenhower. There was an unconfirmed story that Kennedy had decided US needed to get out. Supposedly he told his secretary, Mrs. Lincoln, that he had decided to try and get out of Vietnam and wanted to work on the problem as soon as they got back from Dallas. In any case, there would not have been the Vietnam war we got without Lyndn Johnson.

My American History professor said something which has stuck with me all these years: ‘History is not about artifacts, or dates, or events. History is about people – the circumstances they faced, how they responded, and what consequences it has on we who followed.’ None of the so-called “Great Society” legislation would have come to fruition without Lyndon Johnson. We can never tell our history without mention of Vietnam. Would Kennedy even recognize the world created by the consequences of one bullet?

Ours was the first generation of the 21st century to know a world without world war. As children of ‘the greatest generation’ we envisioned how great America could be. We were the only generation to be inspired by John F Kennedy. We were sure he would turn the world over. He did. That dark day in Dallas changed America, me, and you because it changed the circumstances for all of us who followed.

TheLifeObserver!

 

DUTY-HONOR-COUNTRY

A Veteran's Day retrospective and prospective by David L Lewis

'Five-star General of the Armies Douglas MacArthur served in World War I, World War II, and Korean War. A recipient of Medal of Honor and seventeen other medals, he distinguished himself as a talented, brave, and able soldier, military commander, and man of honor.'

Excerpt below is from MacArthur’s “Duty, Honor, Country” speech to West Point Cadets May 12 1962...

“Duty – Honor – Country

“Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.

“[Those three words] are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean...

“But these are some of the things they do.

“[Those three words] build your basic character, they mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation’s defense, they make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

“[Those three words] teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, nor to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

“[Those three words] give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease.

“ [Those three words] create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what’s next, and the joy and inspiration of life...”

I was born in the middle of the greatest conflict in human history, World War II. During those times the United States of America mustered an estimated 16-million troops. Only God knows precise total of how many have served in American military since founding of the nation.

• Most, particularly in times of war, volunteer; some were drafted.

• Most “stood by the supplies” (I Samuel 30.24); some fought in fierce conflict.

• Most did not get recognition for what they had done; some did.

• Most answered the call of Duty, Honor, Country; some did not.

Since the day of Douglas MacArthur and ‘the greatest generation’ the significance and regard for duty, honor, country may have lost some of its impact to the world in which we now live.  However, I’ve lived long enough to have known heroes and cowards, successes and failures, good an evil. May I respectfully suggest the criteria by which all who take the Oath of Allegiance to the Constitution be judged must be this:

Did they answer the call of Duty, Honor, Country?

 

I’d Like to Sing the World My Song

music by Coca-Cola, lyrics by noted congenital amusia songsmith David L Lewis

I’d like to sing the world my song

and tell it of our love

But know I’d only sing it wrong

thou it comes from God above

It’s the Real Thing!

Dear Katie,

On the day I was born God realized what a basket-case He’d made, and that I’d need someone special if I was ever going to survive. When I was about two weeks old He made you especially for me, which is how I got to be two-weeks and nine months older than you. The bad news is that when you look at me you see how old you will be in two weeks and nine months.

Of all people you would know that music is not within the perimeters of my expertise. However, I do appreciate lyrics and sometimes see our life together in them. This is is our life together in songs that impressed me as germane to our story.

If our life together was to be told in song, the first would have to be my favorite of all, Some Enchanted Evening. You were the prettiest girl at the skating rink. So, when I met you I took the advice of that song, “once you have found her, never let her go”. Don’t know which is more amazing: How young I now see we were, or how old I thought I was at the time.

Since then you have followed me down a lot of roads I would not travel again, and probably would not have taken if youth had not blinded their dead end. What the song writer called a journey of My Elusive Dreams. There were fair years and poor, changes and dreams, plans and hopes, moves and small towns, and five much loved babies. There were times of living by faith, usually yours. There were times of roller-coaster self-employment and fleeting minutes of actual ministry. When my health and life fell apart you followed one more dream when we came to Indiana. Here our last baby came to manhood and began his search. Here our second child is laid to rest. Here I wish my mortal remains laid beside yours forever, where we will share memories of the good things brought me by your willingness to follow my elusive dreams.

Marty Robbins wrote and sang My Woman, My Woman, My Wife which contains verses which speaks to me of you.

Eyes, that show some disappointment
And there's been quite a lot in her life
She's the foundation I lean on
My woman, my woman, my wife

Lips, that are weary but tender

With love, that strengthens my life

A saint, in a dress made of gingham

My woman, my woman, my wife

If our story is to be fully told, one last song must be shared, Far Side Banks of Jordan..

But if it proves to be His will that I am first to go
And somehow I've a feelin' it will be
When it comes your time to travel likewise, don't feel lost
For I will be the first one that you'll see

And I'll be waiting on the far side banks of Jordan

I'll be sitting drawing pictures in the sand

And when I see you coming, I will rise up with the shout

And come running through the shallow waters, reaching for your hand

And, I love you enough not to sing to you! In His love,

David