Presenting the Soulamites

I’m not bragging, but I play a mean rendition of James Brown’s “Get Up Offa That Thing.” Our band, called the Soulamites after 1970’s poet and action star Dolemite, was a collection of suburban miscreants and band kids. We connected with the band kids because none of us could play a horn, and what is a soul band without horns? We played a set of clubs on Marietta Street in downtown Atlanta in an area that looked like the industrial parks in Robocop. In about 1/8 mile increments from the Georgia Tech campus lay the three spots: The Wreck Room, the Somber Reptile and PJ’s Nest. These were the places where I spent many of my teenage weekends playing “It’s Too Funky in Here” and “Soul Kitchen.”

It was one afternoon in late spring that I found myself in PJ’s Nest setting up for the four or five people who came to see us play when the opening act blared to full volume. It needs to be said that when it come to music, I have a high tolerance for cheesy. (Remember, I was a white kid from suburban Atlanta playing James Brown covers in a band named after a man also known as The Human Tornado.) I have played Montly Crüe songs without a hint of irony. I was a one man act in college playing filthy renditions of country songs under the name Rusty Bones. I am all about cheesy. But this particular opening act needed to be spread on a pita wafer topped with lemon honey and served with a fine Moscato D’Asti.

The singer was a man with long teased curly hair, a sleeveless shirt and bright white jeans. I also think he had some sort of chain link belt. The guitarist looked like Howard Stern on a crack binge and wore jeans so tight that he must have put them on wet and closed the zipper with pliers. The rest of the band looked like the cast of The Lost Boys, complete with leather trench coats, renaissance boots and trashy girlfriends. What this fashion club did have, however, was some of the best equipment we had even seen. The drummer had a full rail system with new Tama drums and every cymbal created since the Bronze Age. The guitarist played some sort of Ibanez with a handle on it (presumably for some sort of mid-solo acrobatic routine) popularized by 80’s axe hero Steve Vai. And when he went for a solo, we realized his guitar had a wireless connection which allowed him to rock his way through the crowd of eleven people to the back of the room and return with a pause to make some sort of tongue wag at his girlfriend. These guys’ music was so bad that the idea of hanging out in the toxic waste dump site across the street until our set didn’t seem like such a bad idea. They didn’t have talent.

What they had was production value.

Most advertising copywriters get their start in print where they don’t initially learn the amazing powers of production value. In print, you cannot hide. People are expecting words and while you can try to distract them with an appetizing, appealing or nearly pornographic picture, you most likely have to have some words or, at the very least, a concept. Sometimes you can pair a pretty picture with some obscurity like Viva La Product Name, but such flashy absconding of any real idea rarely happens outside of the worlds of fashion, clothing, automobile, liquors, restaurants, condo developments or consumer and household packaged goods.

It’s not until one enters the realm beyond print that the true idea-avoidance power of broadcast and web are realized. Don’t have anything useful to say about that new car you’re marketing? Don’t worry, you can just make it fly or turn into a cartoon or morph into a transformer. Got nothing to say on the radio? Well don’t let that stop you from radio advertising. You can just mix a bunch of faux celebrity voices making campy commentary with a few sound effects. You could also have a techno power track accompanying the echoing voice of a guy yelling that even if you don’t have a job, you too can have a Mitsubishi from their sales manager, Mr. Value.

Thanks to the special effects gleaned from Michael Jackson’s music videos and The Matrix, you no longer need to have an idea to advertise on broadcast. You simply dress up a non-idea with an explosion of production parlor tricks.

Overproduction does not simply dwell with those who create the broadcast or web content. Often we advertisers take a non-selling point and produce it into interesting but useless content. For example, a recently viewed commercial for Subway restaurants has a laudable plot of a person who walks to the counter and orders a number six value meal. When she changes her mind and orders a number nine, the server simply turns the box around apparently in a little jab about how competitors don’t offer variety. Ha ha. But folks, seriously, out of McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Quizno’s, Arby’s and Subway, which do you feel has the least amount of distinctly different choices on the menu? Your funny joke’s on you, Subway. The spot is funny but remarkably untrue, useless and potentially counterproductive. Convince enough consumers that they deserve more choices, and they might agree.

You all know how much I love Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Their amazing crash spots for VW make you want to call your chiropractor. However, I have to disagree with the premise. VW has always been a quirky little car for individualists. The overwhelming majority of the new spots focus on safety. When consumers lashed out against VW some years back, it was not about safety, it was about quality. And while the new spots dramatically show that a VW is nearly as safe as a Volvo, nowhere is it mentioned that they improved the quality of the cars, which has made V-dub owners curse their vehicles for years. CP+B, great spots. V-dub, wrong pitch. Promise us the handle will never again break off in our hand.

So get up offa that thing and let’s talk about production value. Here some things to think about.

Does the creative work have an easily discernable premise which is not overrun by the production value?
Is the premise (or sales pitch) firmly rooted in a competitive strategy based on offering attribute and consumer perception?
Is the production congruent with the premise? In other word, does the car really need to fly to make the point?
Is the production value really a “value”? Does the benefit of the added production value justify the expense?

It’s not easy being cheesy.

It is not always easy for clients to see the blurred line between production value which is needed and production value which is a bunch of production engineers playing with their toys while you pay for it. Clients are not immersed in the business of producing television, so they must often depend on people to give unfettered advice about what is needed, what is not needed, what is a good idea and what is a non-idea wrapped up in flashy dissolves. I hope you have that trusted confidant already and if you, don’t call me, and for the price of lunch, I’ll tell the truth about production value. If you’re in the A-T-L, maybe we can go to lunch down on Marietta Street at the Somber Reptile Cajun Café. I hear they serve a mean crawfish étouffée.



Snowden Tatarski is a brand consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation of the whole brand experience. The agency offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising creative development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com