Guest blogger: TOM MESSNER

• Tom Messner is co-founder of Euro RSCG New York and an Adweek columnist.

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Sunday, Feb. 4, 2007 — 2:09 p.m.
   First off, a quick reply to Joseph Jaffe’s speculation about a possible wardrobe malfunction today: Vegas reports prop bets on Prince’s costume splitting is at +1000, meaning you put up a 100 plus the vig to win a thousand if the pants go asunder. Or you lay a thousand plus the vig to win a hundred. If you can find someone wanting to bet even money, bet that Prince’s suits stay together. And you will have a 900 dollar overlay.

3:53 p.m.
   Seth Godin reported that: >>Someone at Frito Lay told me that they can prove that enough people buy chips during halftime (they leave their house and race out to the store) that the ads pay for themselves.<<
   Remarkable: Post hoc ergo propter hoc raised to half-time store checks.
   What we do know is that the Doritos consumer promotion must have generated at least 15,000 (wild estimate based on 1,060 finished spots and spots that got killed by the creators before finishing) sales of bags that otherwise would be still be languishing on shelves undiscovered by Lights, Camera, Action.
   One kid with a terrific sense of irony sent an e-mail to the blog or whatever that Doritos-Yahoo! had going: “Is it within the rules for me to go out and buy a hundred bags of Doritos?”

7:46 p.m.
   The small picture at the end of the first quarter:
   A) My bets on the over and The Bears with the points look good
   B) The Doritos spot deserved to win (I saw about 750 of them); I guess that proves that if you show 1060 ideas to a random client, it will pick the best one. OHHHHHHH.....WAAAAIITT A SECOND doritos spot just came on-----WHAT A HORRIBLE piece of excrement....thought they were only running one. Why not quit while ahead??? They paying SAG rates, does anyone know? Right now a great ROI---50,000 dollars to get work on 5 million dollars of media.....
   C) The over is now looking better than the Bears.
   D) So tomorrow some sportswriter will propose only playing the Super Bowl in a dome
   E) The greatest championship game in history was radio to most Giants fans in 1958 when the NFL blacked out the TV for the famous Colt 23-17 SUDDEN DEATH overtime victory. The sport has come a long way because on the 11 o’clock news that night the CBS newsguy pronounced Johnny Unitas, YOU-KNEE-TAS........

8:16 p.m.
   I earlier noted that Seth Godin reported that: >>Someone at Frito Lay told me that they can prove that enough people buy chips during halftime (they leave their house and race out to the store) that the ads pay for themselves.<< Because of the second advertisement for Doritos, I am now leaving my house, racing to the store, and returning a dozen Doritos, a couple Cheetos, and half-eaten bag of Fritos.

11:20 p.m.
   Football and advertising creative people:
   Other than Cool Hand Luke, North Dallas Forty’s last locker room scene is the finest metaphor of the relationship between people who like to create and people who determine what will run and what the creative people will be paid.
   I feel a sense of remorse in having dissed the second Doritos spot.
   I haven’t produced a commercial I wrote in six years so who am I to criticize these people’s efforts?
   22 years ago, I was on a panel with a bunch of ad luminaries. The subject at hand was whether the business was fun anymore. I prosaically defended the notion we were, after all, salaried workers not unlike postmen, janitors and proofreaders.
   As I finished, I realized that of the six alleged luminaries, I was the only worker; the rest were agency owners. One of the owners, in a very articulate, swift rejoinder, called on the passion of the audience, the belief in themselves, but above all the true passion they could bring to the business if they didn’t think like me.
   The audience erupted in tremendous applause and I seemed like Samuel Gompers or Johnny Friendly.
   Two years ago I experienced a sudden l’esprit de escalier, in this case a twenty-year-long-staircase slide.
   To that long ago audience, I said what I should have said two decades before:
   “When you cheer, remember it’s your passion, but his commission. You are a player, he is an owner. You’re Carl Furillo and he’s Walter O’Malley.
   He will never know what it is to catch a ball off the right field wall and turn and cut down a young Willie Mays going to third, but you will never know what it is like to look up in the stands, gaze around and count the receipts.”
   I have no problem critiquing movies, TV shows, books...but for some reason I am getting jumpy attacking other people’s commercials. My apologies again to those Doritos folks.
   As for the game, lost with the Bears, won the over. Out the one-game vig.
   It’s why if you want to bet sports, .500 batting percentage is tap city.

February 4, 2007 | Permalink