I laughed the first time and every time I see this tv spot.
A solid, streamlined concept any decent freelance copywriter has to admire.
It’s a great, simple idea: Show how high-definition and lifelike this Samsung smart phone’s screen is by having people freak completely out when a spider appears on it–to the point of screaming and fleeing the phone and summoning every last atom of manly courage to swat the phone into arachnid submission.
As a freelance copywriter, I wish I got brought in on more tv commercials with production values like this.
The direction and/or acting talent on this television commercial is also inspired. When Ms. Bizlunch sees the smart spider, her scream progresses through three stages of increasing horror as she fully, then more fully, and then completely realizes there’s a tarantula on the table.
Mr. Bizlunch Sr. swats the eight-legged innocent into submission, and then swats him again to make sure. This is even more hilarious because he manages to let a certain shakiness come through his voice that communicates both how cool and collected he’s trying to appear and how much fear he had to overcome to swat the spider.
Slam dunk.
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And the wise radio commercial copywriter answers their entreaty by summoning the spirit to craft a new tale out of an age-old story.
Over the next few posts, in that spirit, I’ll bring you some of my summonings. This first spot is built on another tale, Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”
I resurrected Ebeneezer Scrooge to help Stonestown Shopping Center ring in the season.
The obvious inspiration was the promotional tie-in with San Francisco’s ACT production of this Dickens tale.
I was also lucky enough to cast Sydney Walker as Scrooge. Sydney played Scrooge in ACT’s production for many years.
Ebeneezer will be haunting this blog again soon…
“Flick That Switch”
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This radio ad script‘s title was “Nightmare,”…and it nearly was.
When I presented this script to my marketing friends at Kelly-Moore Paint Company, they brought it to the Big Guy upstairs, who green-lighted production. (And why wouldn’t he? Kelly-Moore was more than holding it’s own as the industry was sagging. They attributed their immunity to the slump to Tim’s immunity to K-M.)
When the marketing team brought the finished radio spot back upstairs for final approval before broadcast, the Big Guy decided not to run it because “It sounds like a nightmare.”
Go figure.
He slept on it and, a few days later, decided to air it.
Whew.
This was the last spot of this radio advertising campaign. In future posts I’ll return to my work for Kelly-Moore to show how I built further campaigns on Tim Dauber’s back.
“Nightmare”
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Well, maybe wife Claire isn’t quite as oblivious as all that. In this radio commercial she’s hired a P.I. (Paint Investigator) to check Tim’s work. 
The radio ad script, “A Spy in the House of Dauber” presented creative and technical challenges for this radio commercial producer.
The timing and distancing of sound effects and dialogue had to be handled with great precision and at the same time creative interpretation to present an understandable, realistic and funny ear picture of goings on behind closed doors and out back windows.
Big fun here to have the audience root for mispainting malefactor, Tim Dauber, to escape detection and dodge Kelly-Moore Paints again–even as they take in the message of how this paint company offers friendly, expert advice and sells top quality paints at great prices.
”A Spy in the House of Dauber”
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But the neighbors are upset about the neighborhood eyesore that is the Dauber residence.
It was fun to paint a new dimension of Claire’s obliviousness and innocence in this radio commercial script.
And doubly fun to script Tim playing along to sidestep a lynch mob.
“No noose is good noose”
]]>Part of the secret of the visual nature of this radio ad campaign‘s radio commercials is in the scripting, acting and production that keep Tim shifting points of view between confiding in his listeners, and putting on another face for his wife and others.
I cast Mike McShane, a wonderful actor, to play Tim Dauber. Mike has gone on to perform lots of great roles in film, television and stage. Some may remember him on Seinfeld as Kramer’s nemisis, Franklin Delano Romanowski.
He masterfully shifted between chatting openly with us, shifting into his glad handing domestic persona for Claire, and even craftily slipping us an occasional conspiratorial aside right in front of his adversaries–and then getting caught at it.
In this radio commercial, Tim Dauber continues his career in bad house painting despite Nosey Neighbor Neil, who’s wise to him.
“Nosey Neighbors”
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that is extendable, expandable, and, hopefully, effective.
It can keep going.
Tim Dauber seemed to walk that talk by engaging the listener in his ongoing domestic struggles with wife Claire.
As I was asked to create radio spot after radio spot in this radio advertising campaign, Tim’s backhanded advocacy of Kelly-Moore Paints played out many ways.
Here’s how it went down when Tim’s wife wanted to move out of their mispainted house…
Tim Dauber paints the door shut on moving in
“Realtor”
Stay tuned to hear me and Tim Dauber keep slapping down this radio advertising campaign and painting more indelible radio spots.
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I approached Kelly-Moore directly because they were based in my home town and I thought I could create and produce better radio ad scripts than they were airing.
They had a little jingle tag:
“Kelly-Moore! We help you do it right. We’re the painter’s paint store!”
This was their thrilling conclusion to radio spots in which an announcer simply read off the week’s sale items and their prices. They ran the same list in newspapers. That pretty much tells you how much use they were making of radio as a medium.
They agreed to a meeting, liked me and my samples, and asked me to come up with something better.
There was a benefit or two suggested in their jingle tag, so I questioned them about that and it did turn out their store employees are quite knowledgeable and helpful and many professional painters buy Kelly-Moore.
Their jingle jangled my imagination.
So I kicked around several ideas that might communicate how helpful the folks at K-M are and how good their paint is. But I thought it would be fresher and more attention-getting to not just brag about their staff and products. I wanted to dramatize it.
And this led me to my first campaign based on an ongoing character, Tim Dauber.
Tim Dauber gets to acknowledge K-M’s benefits without being a shill or spokesman.
How?
Tim Dauber’s secret to getting his way in life is to avoid K-M paint stores with their great advice and top quality paints.
When his wife wants her parents to come for a visit, he just keeps on miss-painting the guestroom with his lack of know-how and poor quality paint.
‘Oops, I’m so not sorry.’
He’s got an aptitude for using his painting ineptitude to get out of family vacations, selling the house, and anything else he wants to manipulate.
All he’s got to do is stay away from Kelly-Moore, or he’d have no excuse for the way things always go his way.
Here’s the first radio spot I scripted to set up the premise…
Tim Dauber’s Radio Debut:
“Guestroom”
You can start to see how this is going to play out as Tim tries his worst to escape an impending family vacation…
Tim Dauber Lays It on Thick:
“A Dauber Family Vacation”
So now the campaign got rolling and I had to keep cooking up situations for Tim to cook up a way out of…All while pushing Kelly-Moore’s sound advice and great paint. BTW, a 5-sceond tag at the end of each spot gave live announcers a chance to plug the paints on sale that week.
Wonder what would happen if Claire wanted to sell the house and Tim didn’t…
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THICKE: This is Ed Thicke.
DULL: And Ted Dull.
THICKE: With a message from the Monolith Brick Company.
DULL: About strong, hard, rectangular…
THICKE: Monolith Bricks.
DULL: Ladies, Monolith Bricks are sturdy and reliable.
THICKE: And now, with Monolith’s new expanded line of products,
you can get them in your choice of two beautiful designer shapes: Wide or Tall.
DULL: Ed, I think the tall one is just a wide one standing on end.
SFX: CLUNK OF BRICK FALLING OVER ON ITS SIDE
THICKE: So it is. Well, I guess Monolith doesn’t offer all that much variety.
But aren’t there lots of great cosmetic and housekeeping uses for these hard, lifeless objects, Ted?
DULL: Could be, Ed. But we don’t really have to get into all that.
THICKE: I guess that’s true. Tell ‘em why, Ted.
DULL: You see, ladies, the Monolith Brick Company has just placed such an obese media buy
that it hardly matters what we say.
THICKE: We thought about just bluntly reading our marketing strategy at you—
DULL: But we don’t even have to do that, let alone capture your imagination or sell you on the benefits,
if there are any, of Monolith Bricks.
THICKE: No, all we have to do is keep hitting you with these boring brick commercials night and day
till you stagger off and buy some.
DULL: And don’t even think about switching stations.
THICKE: No, we’re on every station right now.
DULL: And will be again every five minutes till we reach our sales goals.
THICKE: So you see, ladies, it’s sort of a blackmail situation.
DULL: And it’s truly in your own best interests to think up your own uses for Monolith Bricks.
THICKE: We know you don’t want to hear from us.
DULL: And we don’t particularly like to talk to you.
THICKE: So what it really comes down to is—
DULL: Buy us or we’ll bore you.
THICKE: Say, that’d make a sell tagline, Ted.
DULL: We don’t need one, Ed.
DDB, of course, did this wonderfully for Volkswagen time and again.
This classic print ad would look pretty dull in Google...
The not-spelled-out, keyword-oblivious gap between what you read and what you see forces a spark to leap between the two to form an idea. That spark leaps from your brain, so you have to engage and participate in the idea.
I haven’t interviewed any laboratory primates to confirm that this participation plants the presented idea more deeply in said simian’s cerebellum. But this primate knows that’s how it goes.
Having been enlisted to participate in the ad’s idea often aligns the reader more closely with the ads message: You’ve become an insider.
This magical marriage of copywriter and art director, however, is on the rocks.
The Internet is the most efficient way to reach the most targeted audience with an advertising message.
The problem with this fact of virtual life is that the search engines that decide what combination of art and copy will find you in your moment of need can’t perceive the riveting, illuminating, engaging gap between the words and the pictures.
So the copywriter and art director have hobbled to separate corners.
I think art directors have suffered the most in the break-up.
Google looks for keywords in place of inspiration. At least copywriters can write keywords. It can be a flatfooted, colorless hobble down court, but we copywriters seem to be holding the bounceless ball.
But now I’ll pivot and say it’s not quite the end of the game. It’s more a matter of a few rule changes. And as verbal and visual players, we need to invent new moves and strengthen basic skills that play best in a changed game.
Branding and sales still seem to count as keywords in the marketing arena. So as a freelance copywriter, I go on delivering the copywriting services that score those points for my clients…And, of course, a couple of points for myself when I can. I mean, what’s a copywriter to do?
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