slightly to the right, a puzzled look on his face. I stood in the doorway to his office and stared hard at him, thinking he’d sense my attention and snap out of it. Finally I said, “Everything okay?” And he said, “Isn’t it weird how you can’t see air? But it’s there.”
So I’m working with him on a butterlike product called, beautifully, BenCol. It prevents your body from absorbing eighty percent of dietary cholesterol. Thus the name, a shortening of “beneficial to cholesterol.” Despite the fact that it sounds like an allergy medicine or a laxative, I must make it sound like a miraculous breakthrough, accidentally discovered on a farm in Denmark. Not a trick of science but a gift from Nature.
The strategy reads: “So pure, it’s odorless. Natural, because it’s derived from trees.”
So I’m trying to write something that’s spare and elegant and slightly magical. But really, I’m wasting my time. Because they don’t want elegant and magical. They want shit, in their own proprietary color. They want this, I’m sure of it:
V IDEO :
Amy Irving, star of
Yentl
, stands in a sun-drenched gourmet kitchen (brushed-steel appliances, cherry cabinets, an island with a granite countertop), waving her hand over dishes of prepared food items: eggs, steaks, lobster, fried chicken.
V OICE-OVER :
Hi. I’m Academy Award nominee Amy Irving. And I’ve got incredible news! Now, all the foods you know and love can actually lower your cholesterol by fifteen percent—guaranteed! Introducing BenCol. A revolutionary breakthrough, discovered in Nature. BenCol is a rich, creamy spread that’s sweet and delicious. Use it just like butter, and it lowers your cholesterol throughout the day. In two weeks, your cholesterol will be fifteen percent lower—or your money back.
We called it BenCol because it’s beneficial to cholesterol. But you’ll just call it delicious.
V IDEO :
Amy bites into a drumstick, eyes wide with pleasure.
S OUND E FFECT :
Crunching chicken skin.
S ILENT S UPER :
BenCol—for deliciously lower cholesterol.
So that’s exactly what they want. In the old days—the eighties—this kind of advertising was referred to as “Two Cs in a K.” Which translates to: two cunts in a kitchen. Although this spot uses only one cunt, the formula is the same.
I can’t believe this is my career: mad-scientist fake butter. And I just wonder whether in five years the FDA will discover (oops!!!) that it causes some sort of untreatable cancer or additional limb growth.
I really wouldn’t have such a problem with it if a normal food company were the manufacturer. I could almost buy into the whole idea if it came from Kraft or General Foods. Except this stuff comes not from the kitchens of Sara Lee but from the labs of a leading drug manufacturer. It doesn’t take quantitative focus groups in shopping malls to know that people do not want an artificial butter from the makers of America’s favorite synthetic broad-spectrum antibiotic agent.
After Olestra (may cause anal leakage), people are a tad suspicious of products that do things that are too good to be true in the natural world.
I tell this to the account people, and they say, “But it comes from trees!”
To which I reply, “Yes, and so does napalm and rubber cement. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to spread them on my English muffin.”
And poor Dim doesn’t understand my resistance. He lumbers into my office like a child with a few canine chromosomes and says, “Hey. Wanna brainstorm? Maybe we can make it rain, he he.”
I tell him, “After my nose stops bleeding.”
This causes his face to fall. “Oh, wow, man. Sorry. Yeah, sure.” And he backs away.
Is it me? Have I finally rotted to the core? It’s like my passion for advertising is directly related to my hair. The more hair I lose, the more I detest my job. My life is going bald.
Last weekend, I spent Sunday in a Starbucks
So I’m working with him on a butterlike product called, beautifully, BenCol. It prevents your body from absorbing eighty percent of dietary cholesterol. Thus the name, a shortening of “beneficial to cholesterol.” Despite the fact that it sounds like an allergy medicine or a laxative, I must make it sound like a miraculous breakthrough, accidentally discovered on a farm in Denmark. Not a trick of science but a gift from Nature.
The strategy reads: “So pure, it’s odorless. Natural, because it’s derived from trees.”
So I’m trying to write something that’s spare and elegant and slightly magical. But really, I’m wasting my time. Because they don’t want elegant and magical. They want shit, in their own proprietary color. They want this, I’m sure of it:
V IDEO :
Amy Irving, star of
Yentl
, stands in a sun-drenched gourmet kitchen (brushed-steel appliances, cherry cabinets, an island with a granite countertop), waving her hand over dishes of prepared food items: eggs, steaks, lobster, fried chicken.
V OICE-OVER :
Hi. I’m Academy Award nominee Amy Irving. And I’ve got incredible news! Now, all the foods you know and love can actually lower your cholesterol by fifteen percent—guaranteed! Introducing BenCol. A revolutionary breakthrough, discovered in Nature. BenCol is a rich, creamy spread that’s sweet and delicious. Use it just like butter, and it lowers your cholesterol throughout the day. In two weeks, your cholesterol will be fifteen percent lower—or your money back.
We called it BenCol because it’s beneficial to cholesterol. But you’ll just call it delicious.
V IDEO :
Amy bites into a drumstick, eyes wide with pleasure.
S OUND E FFECT :
Crunching chicken skin.
S ILENT S UPER :
BenCol—for deliciously lower cholesterol.
So that’s exactly what they want. In the old days—the eighties—this kind of advertising was referred to as “Two Cs in a K.” Which translates to: two cunts in a kitchen. Although this spot uses only one cunt, the formula is the same.
I can’t believe this is my career: mad-scientist fake butter. And I just wonder whether in five years the FDA will discover (oops!!!) that it causes some sort of untreatable cancer or additional limb growth.
I really wouldn’t have such a problem with it if a normal food company were the manufacturer. I could almost buy into the whole idea if it came from Kraft or General Foods. Except this stuff comes not from the kitchens of Sara Lee but from the labs of a leading drug manufacturer. It doesn’t take quantitative focus groups in shopping malls to know that people do not want an artificial butter from the makers of America’s favorite synthetic broad-spectrum antibiotic agent.
After Olestra (may cause anal leakage), people are a tad suspicious of products that do things that are too good to be true in the natural world.
I tell this to the account people, and they say, “But it comes from trees!”
To which I reply, “Yes, and so does napalm and rubber cement. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to spread them on my English muffin.”
And poor Dim doesn’t understand my resistance. He lumbers into my office like a child with a few canine chromosomes and says, “Hey. Wanna brainstorm? Maybe we can make it rain, he he.”
I tell him, “After my nose stops bleeding.”
This causes his face to fall. “Oh, wow, man. Sorry. Yeah, sure.” And he backs away.
Is it me? Have I finally rotted to the core? It’s like my passion for advertising is directly related to my hair. The more hair I lose, the more I detest my job. My life is going bald.
Last weekend, I spent Sunday in a Starbucks
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