A Matter of Taste

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

--H. L. Mencken

Quite a few advertising men apparently accept Mencken's waspish assessment. Though much current advertising is superior by any standards, there is an abundance of tasteless, exaggerated or misleading ads. Today's increasingly sophisticated consumer is exposed to 1,600 selling messages a day, and he feels abused or insulted by many. As a result, shoddy and deceptive advertising is the subject of growing debate inside and outside the profession.

The Government is deeply concerned. Last week Bryce Harlow, national affairs counselor to President Nixon, warned a Washington conference of the American Advertising Federation that agency officials must monitor more closely the claims they make for products or else face speedier federal intervention. He pointed to a number of bills in the House and Senate, all supported by the Administration, that would give the Federal Trade Commission immediate power to seek preliminary injunctions against deceptive ads. Now the FTC often must wage lengthy court battles in order to make a company delete misleading claims. But if it were armed with a preliminary injunction, the commission could act before, instead of after a court decision. Said Harlow: "The existence of this power in the FTC does create the possibility of a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign being stopped in its tracks."

Outright deception is rare. Many commercials retreat into a world of pure fantasy, in which humor and Madison Avenue mythology explore hard-sell claims to product superiority. The agencies have created an unearthly band of mnemonic miracle-makers--a White Knight, a Green Phantom, Josephine the lady plumber, Mr. Clean the bacteriophobic eunuch, and the Man from Glad, who is gussied up in platinum hairdo and white trench coat. In one ad, a failing used-car salesman takes a dollop of Listerine mouthwash, and customers start buying without waiting for the sales pitch. In another commercial, a bespectacled, frumpish old maid uses Ice Blue Secret deodorant and is transformed into a glamorous beauty; presumably, even her eyesight is improved because at the end she no longer wears glasses.

Adman Stan Freberg, the shrewd and witty president of Freberg Ltd., believes that ads generally have never been worse. "Tastefulness is probably the last thing an agency thinks about," he says. "The only thing lower on the scale is, 'How will this ad be received in the Sudetenland?'" To Freberg, all that is unbelievable and insulting in advertising is contained in a commercial for Head & Shoulders shampoo, in which a bride takes time out from her wedding preparations to deal with her father's dandruff. The father's punch line: "I haven't lost a daughter; I've gained a dandruff shampoo."

The bad taste of many ads for detergents, household cleaners and such personal-care items as mouthwashes and hair rinses is generally conceded by most advertising men. Officials of agencies creating these ads explain that such products, because they deal with dirt and unpleasant aspects of life, are difficult to sell gracefully. Ted Bates & Co. produced a television commercial for Colgate 100 mouthwash in which one woman confides to another: "My boyfriend said my breath would kill an elephant." According to Robert Castle, a Bates senior vice president, the ad revived the product's sagging sales. Says he: "You cannot sell mouthwashes with Bermuda beaches." On the other side, John OToole, president of Foote, Cone & Belding, contends that "the people who create offensive ads are on a level with people polluting the atmosphere; they are destroying the credibility of advertising."

Cluttered Screen. A number of agency officials also fear that television's impact is being rapidly dissipated because the home screen has become so cluttered with commercials. In order to promote an avalanche of new products, advertisers often squeeze commercials for two or more products into a one-minute time slot that was formerly devoted to a single item. One critic, Herbert Maneloveg, vice president of Batten Barton Durstine and Osborn, reports that in 1964 there were 1,990 different commercials a month on network television, and more than 60% ran longer than 30 seconds. By 1968, TV was carrying 3,022 commercials in a month, and only 20% were longer than 30 seconds.

The result is a series of rapid-fire presentations that often confuse the viewer. Fairly typically, a recent one-hour segment of Rebel Without a Cause, shown in the late afternoon, was interrupted by six commercial breaks totaling 16 minutes. Kenneth Cox, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, complained last week that one station, WAGF in Dothan, Ala., shows 41 minutes of commercials in an hour. Since the number of commercials is limited only by a voluntary but unenforceable code of the National Association of Broadcasters,* the FCC feels powerless to cut the clutter.

Because the differences among so many competing products are as vague as a pitchman's promise, many agency officials believe that some exaggeration and clutter are inevitable. BBDO's Maneloveg argues that exaggeration is a part of doing business and does no real wrong to the consumer. "Advertising," he says, "is what made America America." Taking a somewhat different tack, James Durfee, president of Carl Ally, Inc., believes that much advertising is gross, but that it often reflects the society it serves. Advertising could be improved, he says, if the agencies refused to knuckle under to insensitive advertisers who think that the only sell is the hard sell. The ad world's most influential innovator, William Bernbach. chairman of Doyle Dane Bernbach, has little patience with tasteless or deceptive ads. "The big thing," he says, "is recognizing that honesty sells. There is no reason why honesty cannot be combined with the skills of persuasion. People are shouted at by so many manufacturers today that they don't know what to believe."

*The NAB code restricts a TV station to running no more than 10 minutes and 20 seconds of commercials in one hour of prime evening time, and 16 minutes and 20 seconds an hour at all other times.

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