There are a few – a very few –  advertisers who are extremely effective speaking for themselves. Unfortunately, their success tempts a lot of others who really, really shouldn't do it to try to be their own spokespeople.

Orville Redenbacher's Gourmet Popcorn brought Orville back as a living-dead spokesperson at the beginning of 2007. But while Wendy's post-mortem Dave Thomas spots used a montage of stills with a voice-over in a tasteful tribute to their late founder's business philosophy, the popcorn folks had Digital Domain create an Orville Redenbacher avatar, bow-tie and all. The almost life-like spokeszombie looked and sounded more like it was created by Ed Wood than by the folks who did the trompe l'oeil sequences of Titanic and Apollo 13. The net effect was somewhere between embarrassingly amateurish and disturbingly creepy.

Inept family spokespeople seem to be an epidemic in the brewery business. Pete Coors shilled for his family's beer (including, if memory serves, a moderation spot) until his DWI incident. Augie Busch did a spot to launch Budweiser Select in which he explained that until then, all beers had been lacking something. In effect, he told the beer drinkers that the other Anheuser-Busch brands they'd been drinking for years were inferior beer.

Same thing happened in the auto industry. William Ford did a spot in which he explained all of the areas in which Ford was going to improve over the next five years. A tacit admission that, at that moment, Ford products weren't much good. Not a message likely to generate immediate demand for the cars and trucks Ford was desperately trying to sell at the time. Dr. Z's name isn't on the factory, but as Chrysler's CEO he did a series of commercials that drove Chrysler sales to new lows. It's probably lucky that GM pulled the plug on Oldsmobile, or the spectre of Barney Oldfield might be touting the brand's virtues from beyond the grave.

Remember Leona Helmsley for Helmsley Hotels? Now we have Donald Trump and a comb-over worthy of the Guinness Book of World Records.

A couple of generations of Johnsons have stared earnestly out of our television sets to remind us that S. C. Johnson is a family company.

The brash Mr. Branson has been in Virgin Atlantic ads.

It seems as if every sausage purveyor in the country has been in a commercial with a passel of tow-headed grandchildren who wolf down Grandpa's grease patties while Gramps regales us with tales of family tradition and the wholesome virtues of cholesterol.

Local advertising has sub-genres of self representation as ritualized as Kabuki theater:

• The appliance or furniture huckster screaming at the camera. And even  
• worse than the screamers are the ones with all the personality of the
• Barcalounger they're droning on about.
• Auto dealers who walk down a row of used cars and trucks and shouting
• out a price or payment while pointing at each vehicle in turn.
• The plaintiff's lawyer imploring the audience to sue someone. Anyone.
• Sometimes, in a great cosmic coincidence, an advertiser is an effective spokesperson for her or his product or service. But you can get better odds in the Powerball lottery.

The effective self-spokespeople have some characteristics in common:

• They earned, rather inherited, their CEO jobs. Often they founded the
• company.
• They are likeable and have lots of personality. And seriously high Q-scores.
• They're natural on camera.

Most CEO's don't have those characteristics. So any commercial they're in is almost certain to fail. That's why David Ogilvy said:

"Only in the gravest cases should you show the clients' faces."

 back to top I archive I home

Comment