And -- in the lower orders of trade and industrial publications -- you can still find the half-clad female posing beside a drill press or delivery truck. The advertisers, imitators perhaps of the Rigid Tool Company and its pin-up calendar issued each year in celebration of rigid tools, have to squander their cleverest puns trying to relate the cheesecake to the cheese:

   We wouldn't want to throw you any curves

   The rear view is important

   No butts about it

New business, by definition, means products and subjects on which the creative people are largely ignorant. This is why they look rumpled and dazed and have tousled hair and pimples and why most of what passes for creativity is puns.

A pun is the natural reaction of a disarranged mind to a new idea. If you don't understand it, at least you know what it sounds like.

The art director reacts with visual puns of his own, with time-tested symbolic charms (owls, pigs, bulls, lions, tigers, stags, rabbits, rainy days, umbrellas, football players), or with photographs of startling parts of the body. When all else fails, he calls for pictures of sexy young women or of money. This may mean asking the writer to come up with new headlines, which the writer usually does, convinced as he is that all product benefits are, at root, species of greed or lust -- and knowing, too, that his headline will sound awfully stupid if it fails to create the impression that the graphic has something to do with the product.

In television commercials, the elements are the same except that now they move and make noises: the bulls stampede, the hips swivel to equivocal music, and the football player performs gestures and facial expressions. The puns, since they are too verbal for this visual medium, are relegated to the status of slogans, echoed weakly at the end. If puns are used in the pricipal scenes, they have to be repeated at least three times to make any dent at all. Thus, for a laxative commercial, three different credible, smiling (unconstipated) characters exclaim, in turn, "It doesn't cramp my style!"

Authoritative-Candor is achieved by hiring an actor who talks like your father. Grass-Roots-Testimonials are filmed on location in a grocery store or drugstore using actors who talk like your mother. A Dramatic-Comparison is staged as an argument between your parents, which mother wins, either in the kitchen (taste tests or shiny plates), the bathroom (deodorants, shampoos), or the laundry (detergents). Proof is performed as an argument in which father -- in white coat or suitcoat -- gets the last word. Slice-of-Life situations are shot between arguments to train child actors toward appearance in Grass-Roots-Testimonials later in their acting careers.

If the selling proposition is so far-fetched that not even Mom and Dad can put it over, the preferred spokesmen are small children, talking animals, or animated cartoon creatures who are supposed to be silly and thus can honestly advance a silly argument.

Some of the same advantage can be gained by creating or adopting a lovable and, if possible, eccentric character who can speak for the product with mindless enthusiasm because that's what he or she is for. Tony the tiger, Charlie the Tuna, Morris the Cat, Cora, Mr. Whipple, Rosie, Josephine the Plumber, and the Maytag Repairman are entitled to irrational admiration for ordinary products since they are undisguised fictions from the land of make-believe where nobody has to tell the truth except Pinocchio.

The advertiser is thereby free to have his character enchanted by utterly trivial product features and amazed by imaginary virtues. However, the advertiser must also answer to certain characters at the FCC and the FTC who have the eccentricities of Mr. Whipple and Charlie the Tuna combined, the compassion of Mr. Dirt, and the wit of Elsie the Cow. So it all works out to be a fairly tidy balance of extreme fictions.

FCC and FTC insist on documentation of advertising claims. Since facts are impossible to prove (experts on almost anything disagree on almost everything), few advertisers can afford to include facts in their commercials. They can use comedy, farce, slapstick, jingles, psycho drama, celebrities, and big dance numbers to their hearts' content, but facts are essentially illegal.

Thus most of the TV commercial techniques described above are variations on the right to remain silent.

The Creative Account Man
Following such a veto, a new solution is proposed, then another, then another. As the creative people spew forth this procession of ideas, it is the job of the account executive to present them. The stronger the idea, the less "selling" will be needed to put it over. On the other hand, a principled account executive will refuse to present a poor idea at all. Thus, as a practical matter, poor ideas are presented with great enthusiasm by unprincipled account men.

The Creative Director
In a typical agency, there is a least one creative hotshot (star) whose writing or art direction has been clearly superior to that of second-rank creative people (drones) and who has therefore won the confidence of various clients. Client confidence, when it is expressed at all, is expressed in meetings. Noting their hotshot's success in meeting after meeting, agency management appoints him as creative director. From then on, all creative work is done by the drones, and the creative director spends all of his time in meetings. Clients are fickle, so it pays to take every precaution.

The Creative Strategy
Another responsibility of the Creative Director is preparation of a "creative strategy" for each campaign. This is a statement of the reasoning which would have led to this copy and layout approach if it had been arrived at by logic. A well-constructed creative strategy demonstrates that the campaign as presented is the one true salvation from the advertiser's unique plight. To accomplish this, it is first necessary to invent a plight, so the creative strategy begins by stating an objective.

To devise a proper objective, the Creative Director spreads all of the layouts on the floor of his office and asks himself: "If this were a solution, what problem would it be a solution to?" He then states this problem as the client's overriding concern. For the fortunate client, help for just such a problem is at hand.