Television: They’re Doing Something Right

On the television screen a flamingo takes flight across a verdant rain forest. A doe peers at the sky. A jet swoops upward, catching the wind, in a visual poem to flight. Educational TV? A documentary on aeronautics? No, just a two-minute spot plugging Eastern Airlines’ flight to Miami. In any year it would have been a tasteful, artful job of the soft sell, but in this, television’s slackest season, the Eastern Airlines commercial looked like a masterwork.

It is only one of many such works that are currently outclassing the programs they interrupt. Alka-Seltzer, for example, has retired its ubiquitous, jolly salesman Speedy, substituted a diverting view of waistlines—a hula dancer’s, a frugger’s, a weight lifter’s, a pants press-er’s—and simply says, “no matter what shape your stomach’s in, when it gets out of shape, take Alka-Seltzer.” The public is getting the message—Alka-Seltzer sales have risen 16% this year—and so are sponsors.

Pitchman & Lion. Along the Eastern seaboard, Rheingold beer, once notorious for a stupefying parade of look-alike Miss Rheingolds, has switched to a vigorous ethnic pitch. Its commercials now show Negroes, Jews, Greeks, Irish and other minority groups enjoying themselves at parties, quaffing beer when they get too tired to dance. Rheingold then shrugs at its new-found success with its now famous tag line: “We must be doing something right.”

In the nuts-and-bolts field of truck selling, Ford has chosen gentle Silent Film Veteran Buster Keaton as its pitchman. In one new commercial, Keaton fills up a truck with furniture only to find that he has left out a live lion.

When Keaton loads him on another truck, the lion drives off. Buster is last seen in hot pursuit, his legs whirring away at silent-movie speed.

Flamencos & Astronauts. Even deter gents, capital offenders of eyes and eardrums, have begun to inject a light touch. Lever Brothers’ Breeze includes a towel as a premium in its package, and spends much of its precious 60 seconds showing a man flamencoing in the bathroom, snapping the towel about his shoulders and abruptly turning into Jose Greco when the spirit moves him. Presumably his wife is Breezing the dishes, but she never appears.

Are the tasteful new commercials a trend? Yes, but with a big hedge. Esthetically, the fresh approach is appealing to nearly all clients; financially, it remains out of reach for most. The Alka-Seltzer commercial cost nearly $25,000, and a new Ford spot featuring an astronaut walking in space outside her car cost even more. Still the fact that commercials are now being watched with something like pleasure does raise, at least faintly, the startling possibility that TV might be upgraded by, of all things, the long-abused commercial.