Hyper inked.

In writing to my advertising friends at BBDO, I have learned of two copywriters that I worked with who passed away a while ago.

One was Bob Mallin, a boss of mine at BBDO. He died in Dobbs Ferry, NY at the age of 51. I do not know the date of his death, so I’m guessing 1995. He was a longtime BBDO copywriter who became an Associate Creative Director. He had been to rehab for alcohol, but relapsed. Terrible news.

The other death was another Bob, Bob Smith who was the best man at my wedding. He was one of my closest friends and all my BBDO stories, it seems, include him. (My other close friend at BBDO was Al Merrin who as far as I know is still with us and still doing well at BBDO.) Bob Smith was simply the world’s nicest guy and I can still see his smile and hear his voice. He was creative; he was funny; he was my friend. I miss him right now.

Bob Smith apparently died in the early 1990’s possibly within a year of when I last spoke with him. Over the years I knew him, I could see the growing effects of his drinking, but denied the seriousness of them. He was in LA working as a marketing guy for a major hotel, possibly Marriott. He was from Long Beach, California and had the support of his family there. From what I heard, he did not enter rehab, but tried to cut back on his drinking. Apparently, he died alone at his residence. A damn good copywriter. An enormous personal loss for all of us who knew him.

Requiescat in pace. Vita brevis.

(My apologies for the lack of detail in this post, but I have been unable to find any published obituaries.)

I found this interview in which Ted Sann, former Creative Director of BBDO New York, surveys the rocky field of internet advertising.

At the time, he was extremely negative on it or as the article says “The people in his business who can make it work just aren’t paying attention. Call them the unbelievers.”

It cites click-through stats because it’s one of few yardsticks of online advertising success. The article puts the click-through rate at way under 1%. How high are your click-through rates on banner ads?

Or as I see it, my small purchases like books, electronics and things raided from America’s attic on eBay are huge. But I have yet to choose a car based on any Internet ad.

I have seen an amazing tv commercial. It’s a commercial that sells the charitable work of veterinarians reattaching rabbit’s feet back to their original owners.Uh-huh. Because?

Because people don’t need luck any more now that they have Traveler’s Insurance.

The ad agency is Fallon in Minneapolis. It’s was realized on film by Tim Godsall at Biscuit Filmworks, as reported in Adweek.

Two Deans, Hanson and Buckhorn, art directed and wrote it. For the complete credits for this creative gem, go to adforum.com.

Some comment on the commercial here and here.

At first viewing, I thought the bunnies were wearing colored bandages. Now that I get it duh! I am a little squeamish myself. (Yep, I know what a lucky rabbit’s foot is,. I just didn’t want to take the clever idea that far.)

When you read the label on Zest soap, you discover that most the the seemingly incomprehensible ingredient names are soap. Sodium Tallowate? Soap. Sodium Palmate? Soap. Sodium Cocoate and/or Palm Kernate? Soap.

There is one plentiful ingredient ether sulfonate that is not soap. It is a surfactant, or surface active agent. These chemicals reduce the surface tension of water. Their molecules have both a hydrophilic end and a hydrophobic end. So one side of the molecule aligns with water, the other with oily dirt. They keep the dirt in suspension so it can be freely rinsed away.

In researching this, I encountered the themeline “Zestfully clean” first used in the 1980’s. This was written by the redoubtable James J. Jordan, Jr. who was a prime mover at BBDO for many years. He was Creative Director before being promoted to President of the agency. Incredibly talented, he coined memorable lines including “Wisk beats ring around the collar” and “Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch.” The fact that these themes are still remembered today testifies to their creative power.

I knew Mr. Jordan and I am sad to see that he passed away in 2004. He was a force of nature, and a passionate lover of great advertising. He will be missed.

Arizona has placed a proposition on its ballot that could make a random voter a millionaire. Prop 200 proposes a million dollar lottery every two years for a lucky Arizona voter.

This would certainly increase voter turnout. A local Arizona newspaper has decried the idea, saying it doesn’t want uninformed voters. But maybe the winner will be a reader of your fine publication.

Honestly, the odds of winning a voter lottery are far better than the normal state lotteries.In 2004, about 2 million Arizonans voted so the odds of winning are 1 in 2 million. The odds of winning PowerBall are 1 in 146 million.

It makes voting seem like a good deal. (I believe they could speed up the state’s ballot counting by just looking at my ballot, and announcing the winners to be those for whom I didn’t vote. The last President for whom I voted was Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt.)

Now if they could just cut down on ballot propositions. This year, Arizona topped the nation with nineteen — including two each on land conservation and banning smoking in various places.

See this New York Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/17/us/17voter.html

There’s a new weight problem emerging in America: sleep eating. Apparently, the often-used sleeping medication Ambien (r) can cause the problem in susceptible people.

The story is chronicled in an article in The New York Timesthat tells of “emerging medical case studies that describe how the drug’s users sometimes sleepwalk into their kitchens, claw through their refrigerators like animals and consume calories ranging into the thousands,”

The patient eats food in the middle of the night and has no memory of the snacking.

But there are undeniable clues: a mouthful of peanut butter, Popsicle sticks and candy wrappers on the floor, crumbs in bed. More worrisome are the lit ovens and stoves found the next day. One woman taking the drug was discovered by her son frying bacon and eggs in her sleep, even though she was hampered by a body cast. “During the day, I couldn’t even make it to the bathroom by myself,” she said, according to the Times reporter.

Dr. Carlos Schenck, a sleep disorders specialist in Minneapolis has found 32 people with the nighttime problem, all of whom have total amnesia of the nightime meals. One patient with the problem gained 100 pounds. Often the patients know they have an eating problem, but have no idea of the link between night eating and the sleep medication.

Ambien, or zolpidem, is a $2.2 billion seller in the U.S. alone, making it the best-selling sleeping medication in America. This has been helped by $130 million advertising budget in 2005. (We’ve all seen the tv commercials.) In other countries, the drug is sold under the brand names Stilnox and Stilnocht. When I recently heard an Ambien spot, I did notice any warning about the weight gain issue.

Now if they can just synthesize a drug with the opposite effect on weight, they will have a real winner.

Read the article the Times’ site. There’s an editorial or two, and letters as well.

Matt Drudge and others on the net claim the Today Show icon is heading to CBS to anchor the Evening News, a post once held by Walter Cronkite. Makes you a little queasy, doesn’t it?

The blog entry above claims CBS staffers are creating I hate Katie Couric t-shirts.

Yes, it’s true: after reports surfaced about the vice-president accidentally shooting his friend Harry Whittington, a 78-year old attorney, while quail hunting, another long-time friend and hunting pal of Dick Cheney’s, Alan Simpson, the former Republican Senator from Wyoming, arose out of the tall grass to say this:

“But when this man, the victim, the poor guy, it‘s a sad thing what happened to him, but it has less to do with Dick Cheney and much more to do with him. He apparently went for another bird, picked it up, came back and got behind the two other hunters and didn‘t say I‘m back, I‘m behind you, I‘m here. And if you don‘t do that, let me tell you, anything can happen.”

Simpson’s went on to praise Cheney’s extraordinary marksmanship, as if he were Wyatt Earp.

I heard this on MSNBC.

Forget all your hunting safety courses if you are the vice president of the United States: the guy you shoot is at fault. Not you, who pulled the trigger.

Imagine if the same accident had happened with the roles reversed. Would the US government be considering serious federal charges. Yes, they would.

Do you think that then it would be the victim’s fault? No, it wouldn’t. (Maybe it’s the Secret Service’s fault?)

(Then too how close and involved is the Secret Service? Do they just prevent the vice president from being shot? But if their boss is about to shoot someone, it’s look-the-other-way? )

Hello? It is always the responsibility of the hunter to know what they shooting, not the people walking with the hunter. (If you are the vice president’s situation, see how long the police wait to question you. And see how far “it was the other guy’s fault” gets you.)

Should future hunting partners of Mr. Cheney be issued body armor? That would seem prudent.

This newspaper of record has come out on the issue of whether Judge Alito should be confirmed by the US Senate as a Supreme Court Justice.

Surprise! They are against him. In a piece entiltled Judge Alito’s Radical Views, they attack his “radically broad view of the president’s power” as well as “a radically narrow view of Congress’s power.” Sounds like the kind of Supreme Court justice any White House incumbent would want.

The previous court — with the retiring Justice O’Connor — stood up against the presidential push to violate the principle of habeas corpus, espousing the view that suspected terrorists could be held “indefinitely and without trial.”

This executive priviledge has been named the “unitary executive” theory. Where was Judge Alito when President Nixon needed him?

The Times also thinks that the judge “would quickly vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.” The new Chief Justice Roberts made that point of strongly favoring judicial precedent over the Court’s power to legislate these diffficult matters from the bench — something Alito in his uninformative testimony has failed to do.

The Times says his paper trail is filled with cases favoring those in power at the expense of the little guy — whether they be racial minorities, the aging, workers or women. Or even, incredibly, car customers who think it should be illegal to turn back car odometers, insisting “Congress did not have the power” to protect them.

In summary, the newspaper feels that senators voting for this appointment will rue the day and wish they appointed someone more like Sanda Day O’Connor, with “her cautious, centrist approach to the law.”

The administration views Alito’s confirmation as an unevitable slam dunk. Time will tell.

See another blog’s take on the Times’ piece.

Remember the outcry over U.S. films being shot in Canada to cut production costs? Or using the Internet to allow programmers in Asia to compete with American programmers — another “world-is-flat” bid to cut costs to the bone?

Now, with the founding of Banerjee & Partners of New York, Bombay and Bangalore, this outsourcing has begun in advertising. Not only is there serious, American-culture-infused, creative talent in India, there is a booming film industry there to implement further cost savings.

Losang Gyatso, the executive creative director in New York, explained in an Adweek article that because Indians speak many different languages, all the advertising is created in English (former British colony) and driven by strong brand-building imagery.

The foreign creative idea has its detractors. Kevin Roddy, ECD at the Bartle Bogle Hegarty ad agency in New York said “It’s incredibly difficult to creatively direct someone who is thousands of miles away.” While he was Creative Director at Fallon in New York, he had to manage creative teams in Minneapolis.

Still the ad talent in the region is undeniable. In the last three years, Indian advertising has won thirteen Cannes Lions.