SPITBALLING WITH FLAIR

Spitballing, or brainstorming, is something like a group-therapy session in which the patient is the product and the doctors are the admen. Recently, TIME Correspondent Edgar Shook sat in on a brainstorming meeting at Chicago's North Advertising Inc. The patient: Flair, a new Paper Mate pen with a nylon tip. Among the doctors: North President Don Nathanson, Creative Director Alice Westbrook, Copy Chief Bob Natkin and Copywriters Steve Lehner and Ken Hutchison. The dialogue, somewhat condensed: Natkin: We have what I think must be the first graffiti advertising campaign, which we've been running in teen-age magazines. The reason I bring this up is that it could be translated into TV and could be very arresting.

Westbrook: I love graffiti.

Natkin (reading from graffiti ads): "Keep America beautiful. Bury a cheap, ugly pen today. Buy a Paper Mate." Some research has been done on this and it looks like it's working. "Draw a flower on your knee with a Paper Mate Flair." Westbrook: Why not "navel"?

Natkin: They wouldn't let us say it. We are going to compromise. It was going to be "Draw a flower around your genitals with a Paper Mate Flair." Then they'd say "knee" and we'd say "navel," and we'd meet in the middle.

Westbrook: Body paint is going to get hotter and hotter.

Nathanson: Did you read that memo I sent out about the bosoms? God, I think bosom makeup is going to be big.

Westbrook: I do too. I know just the color for it too.

Nathanson: You know, you can do a fantastic industrial campaign on the idea of a silent pen. Because just think of the noise level. I mean, nothing is noisier than these competitor's pens. Everybody quiet. Just listen. (He scratches first with the competitor's pen, then with a Flair.)

Westbrook: Boy, that really moves me. Lehner: Picture the kind of thing you would get if you were awarded the Legion of Honor. Real parchmenty, with a great big heraldry and wax and stamps. And on the certificate it says, "The American Anti-Noise League." And you hear the announcer say with great . . .

Hutchison: Flair. Lehner: . . ."From the American Anti-Noise League, for exceptionally smooth writing without scratching or squeaking." You hear a trumpet. Tah-Tah! We dissolve to another document. "To Flair from the United Cap Forgetters Council: for having a new kind of ink that won't dry out if you leave the cap off overnight." And a couple of trumpets. Bum-Bum! And on to a third document. "To Flair from the National

Pen Pounders Association: for having a smooth, tough, nylon point that won't push down." And you've got three trumpets going, and an announcer comes back in and says, "Flair even looks like a better way to write." We would play it very straight. Very pompous. Like Robert Morley's voice when he says these words. You get a kind of electricity between the silliness.

Westbrook: Let's face it. People just don't get emotionally involved with their pens. I think there's the danger of taking yourself too seriously when you're talking about a thing like that.

Lehner: We have other ideas that we think would be stronger at this point in time. For instance, one thing that we're playing with now is a guy sitting at his desk . . . Westbrook: A big, snappy executive.

Lehner: And his secretary is with him and this guy is making notations like a guy would. Writing. "Yeah." "No." "See me . . ."

Westbrook: "You're fired." Stuff like that. Lehner: And when the girl goes out of the room, he takes a leather portfolio, looks around, opens it up and starts doodling some very silly, funny little things. And the announcer says: "Introducing a new executive status symbol--Flair. To the casual observer, Flair is a dignified, serious, executive pen. But when you're alone, Flair reveals its true identity as the executive play pen. The greatest doodler in the world. This Christmas give him the executive play pen, Flair."

Westbrook: That's a great line! I think we ought to pretend like we got some new colors and see what we can do with it. Nathanson: What a television color commercial it could be, with fuchsias and, oh, I don't know, you name them. You know, orchid colors. You'll get women to write letters with orchid . . . Westbrook: You could have a black pen with white ink or a white pen with black ink. Sort of an integrated pen, you know. (Laughter.) It could be called "the soul pen."

Nathanson: Black paper!

Westbrook: With white ink! That's groovy!

Nathanson: With blue paper!

Westbrook: Purple paper with pink ink! Pink paper with purple ink!

Nathanson: Brown ink! We present them with a whole slew of marvelous ideas. Sealskin and alligator pens!

Westbrook: Phony fur pens! Wouldn't you love a fur pen? A mink pen? How about a tiger pen? Or a leopard pen? Would you believe an alligator pen?

Natkin: How about a grey flannel pen?

Westbrook: Grey flannel is out. How about a turtleneck pen?

(To learn what, if anything, resulted from this meeting, watch your TV set.) commercial, with entertainment simply an extension of the sales pitch. The networks become, in effect, just audience-delivery services. It is not that they are influenced by advertisers--they are psyched by them. In a classic episode, Chevrolet once changed the script of a western to read "crossing" instead of "fording" a river.

Such an incident is less likely now than it used to be (a recent Chevy commercial actually mentioned Ford by name). But it still remains indicative of a certain way of thinking by sponsors. With the exception of a few enlightened companies--among them Xerox, Hallmark, Bell Telephone and Western Electric--most advertisers still prefer to avoid controversial or specialinterest programs, and are happily led to the kind of show that provides the best frame for a sales pitch. Sometimes the frame and the picture merge completely, as when Clairol builds a beauty pageant around its commercials.

What can be done? Chances are that if everyone keeps his fingers crossed and buys the right products, the light-hearted uncommercials will spread and increasingly crowd the ugh-plugs off the air. But that is not enough. Another prospect is that the networks, goaded by viewer resentment, will move closer to the European scheme by having fewer but slightly longer commercial breaks. At present, with 9,000 new items appearing on the supermarket shelves each year, sponsors have started "clustering"--cramming more but shorter messages into the same time space. In the past two years alone, the number of products shown on TV has increased by about one-third, most of them in ten, 20-and 30-second shots. There will also be more "piggybacking": promoting two unrelated products in one ad. "Triggerbacking" and "quarterbacking" are just a station break away.

Glorious Hours. Humorist Stan Freberg, a freelance commercial producer who created the Sunsweet prune and Jeno's pizza ads for TV, is pushing another possible cure. It is frankly Utopian. He calls it "The Freberg Part-Time Television Plan: A Startling but Perfectly Reasonable Proposal for the De-escalation of Television in a Free Society, Mass Media-wise." The plan calls for a week like this: Monday. Television as usual. Tuesday. The set goes black, but one word shines in the center of the screen: Read!

Wednesday. Television as usual. Thursday. The set goes black again, but this time we see the word Talk! Friday. Television as usual. Saturday. The words Unsupervised Activity.

And Sunday? Says Freberg: "We have to have somewhere to lump all those leftover commercials, don't we? Think of it! Twenty-four glorious, uninterrupted hours of advertising!"

It might just work--and it could be worse.

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