Pharma it out

My late great friend Jim Benedict was talking to my wife one time about my somewhat confrontational style when I think someone is full of sh#t or something is worth fighting for, and he told her "Jeff draws lines." He was right.

And professionally, pharma is one of the places I draw them.

Now before you think it's just my relatively-in-check-for-advertising ego talking, I don't think I'm too good to do pharma advertising. And if you look at some of the...ahem...work I've churned out over the years, I'm certainly not above it. It's just that with the cliche stock photography, see-and-say headlines, painfully corny metaphors and miles of legal copy, I wouldn't know where to start in creating the kind of work pharma clients seem to buy. It's an extremely different sensibility.

I mean to me, two people side by side in separate bathtubs seems counter intuitive for an erectile dysfunction ad. Unless he has another condition we don't know about (insert penis joke here - yes I said insert and penis in the same sentence). But I digress.

I have an art director friend of mine who's been working on pharma accounts for the past year. It's not pretty, but she approaches it like she does every assignment she gets at any agency: she gives 110% and tries to create the best work possible. But it's like Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football: she'll never be able to move them beyond where they are. It's a big industry, and they. know. what. works.

Which may be the reason my friend, like so many of my friends, has adopted my tried and true philosophy: the checks clear. And the silver lining is pharma checks clear bigger than most.

I used to pride myself on the fact I could work on any account in any category. But, as Clint Eastwood said in Magmum Force:

I wouldn't know where to start if I was asked to write one of those Sit 'N Sleep spots that litter the radio landscape. And I wouldn't know where to start on an ad for painkillers, catheters, arthritis medicine, yeast infection ointment or any of the other pharma ads that seem to show up on every third commercial.

I suppose as those ads become more and more prevalent, and the drug companies need more and more creatives to do them, none of us should ever say never.

But remember, talk to your headhunter before taking a pharma assignment to see if the job is right for you.

Working on pharma accounts may cause side effects including migraine headaches, vomiting, nausea, dizziness, ringing in the ears, verbal diarrhea, overall discomfort, rash decisions, elevated blood pressure and thoughts of career suicide.

Where credit's due

Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. Nowhere is that truer than in advertising.

When a campaign or an individual spot happens to hit big - locally, regionally and especially nationally - it seems everyone who was in the building, in one meeting, used to work on the business or walked by the conference room while it was being presented is ready to jump on the credit bandwagon.

The industry is lousy with examples of it: VW. Joe Isuzu. Apple. Nike. FedEx. Nissan. The list goes on and on. And on.

In the late 80's, there was a McDonald's campaign called Mac Tonight. It sprang from a local promotion by an operator's group for dinner at McDonald's. It was created by my friend and former art director partner Jim Benedict before we worked together.

Under the agency leadership of Brad Ball and Mark Davis, Jim was given the freedom and support to create a genuinely unique, fun and memorable spot for a client who wasn't particularly known for taking risks. With Jim's vision of a quarter moon leading man, and parody lyrics to Bobby Darin's "Mac The Knife", the spot took off in a way no one saw coming.

Wildly popular, McDonald's picked up the promotion nationally and suddenly it was everywhere.

What happened next was sadly familiar.

The executive creative director at the time (who has since long gone) started giving national press interviews about how he came up with the concept - some bullshit about how he was looking at the moon one night and it just came to him. Jim started getting assigned to other, less visible accounts. And his name was mysteriously absent from both the interviews and award show entries (and the spot won many awards).

To no one's surprise, McDonald's wanted to pool out the character and did in other, lesser spots created by the people who claimed they'd done the original.

To their own credit, the agency leadership was always honorable about rightfully giving the credit to Jim.

But, creatively speaking, low people in high places are a devious mix. If you've worked for one - and eventually we all do - I'm sure you have war stories of your own to tell.

Jim eventually became a creative director at McCann, where he continued to take on the challenge of doing outstandingly creative work for clients that had reputations for being resistant to it (I'm looking at you Nestlé). He died in 1994.

The agency, even in its current incarnation, still displays the spot on its website. And it should. It continues to be a great success story.

For them, and for Jim.