Howard Boyce’s caterpillar-shaped eyebrows shot skyward when he was shown the latest draft of a 1948 Studebaker ad. “How could you waste such terrific artwork on such boring copy?” he stammered.
His boss was used to Howard’s rather excitable mannerisms, so he had a ready response.
“Look, we’ve already had so much back and forth with the client on this one that I don’t know if we can get any more changes,” the boss said as he shrugged his shoulders. “But if you have suggestions, I will take a look at them.”
Howard’s eyebrows went into wiggly mode as he sized up the response. His boss apparently didn’t realize that Howard’s caterpillars were inching their way to a wholesale rewriting of the ad (click on image to enlarge).
Howard went back to his desk and reread the latest draft a couple of times. “A trained monkey could do a better job,” he muttered. The only good line in the whole ad was “riding low, wide and handsome.” Everything else was corporate babble. So out it went.
How far can you take a wiener?
Howard tried hard to write like people talked down at the bar (at least aside from the expletives). The further away he got from the draft ad, the more he had to remind himself to not get too invested in his new approach. The boss was patronizing him. But if nothing else, Howard could lay the groundwork for the kind of ads he would write once he got the nerve to form his own ad agency.
When the boss read Howard’s draft he manfully struggled to keep from laughing — but failed. “Okay, so this must have been cathartic to write, but you know this isn’t going to get past the censors.”
The boss handed the draft back to Howard. “’Roast your wiener’? The closest we could get to that is ‘barbecue your burger.’”
Howard knew what to do. Once he got back to his desk, he put the draft into a “Rejected ideas” folder at the back of his drawer. That would be one of the few things he would take when his caterpillar eyebrows left the building for good.
RE:SOURCES
- oldcaradvertising.com: Studebaker (1948)
“Ad Nauseam” is a regular feature that parodies automotive ads and brochures. We start off with themes from actual ad copy and riff from there. Sometimes we even change the names. For further discussion about what is real, go here.
It’s a shame he didn’t go with the tagline, “The Champion on the beach is he who is the Commander of his own wiener.”