Perhaps the ultimate endorsement story popped up the other day though. The new Catholic pope, Pope Francis, has been dragged into the world of rampant consumerism with his holy endorsement of an inappropriately gifted Harley Davidson motor cycle by signing the fuel tank and the accompanying leather motorcycle jacket and having them auctioned off by Bonhams. Thankfully the proceeds, some $500,000.00 AUD went to a charity, otherwise the Argentine pontiff might’ve joined an unhealthy number of previous Popes implicated in quite un-ecclesiastical behaviours through the ages.
I almost forgot about Spectrum’s brush with celebrity endorsement. It was circa 1971/2 when we were approached by composer and then jingle writer Bruce Smeaton to record a jingle he’d written and feature in a TV ad for Camel cigarettes! Absolutely no due diligence needed here you’d think. We forget that smoking cigarettes hasn’t always been so reviled, but even then it was considered to be at least a dirty habit and Camels were the bottom of that dirty pile – which is probably why they were having an advertising campaign now that I think of it. Anyway, I was just tickled to be asked to do it in the first place and that there were posters planned as well as TV and movie theatre exposure.
Our ad was one of a series which featured a harried agent coming up with various scatter-brained ideas to advertise Camel cigarettes. In our segment we were not especially convincingly dressed as Arabs and wheeled in on a trolley to sing ‘If you wanna be a groover, a real big mover, smoke Camel, it’s a toke of a smoke’ before being wheeled out again. We thought it was funny.
By the time it had occurred to me that perhaps cigarettes weren’t the best thing for Spectrum to be associated with, we’d already recorded the jingle at Armstrongs (see the Aztec Music Milesago re-issue) and filmed the commercial at The Film House, directed as I recall by none other than Fred Schepisi with Chris Lofven (who produced the I’ll Be Gone and Eagle Rock film clips) wielding the camera, and the posters had been printed.
I think I saw a couple of posters** on the wall of a shop on the corner of Glenferrie and Riversdale Roads in Hawthorn and I can’t remember if I ever saw the ad on the telly, but in any case the whole shemozzle had no discernible impact on our career, such as it was.
We did reincarnate the Camels to appear as a support to Spectrum and The Indelible Murtceps at one of our shows at Cathedral Hall where The Camels extended the thirty second jingle to the unbearable tedium of five minutes, but apart from that and the original recording there is no record of it ever happening, so I guess we got off lightly.
I’ve just come back from a couple of weeks sojourn in NZ, introducing
Maria to a number of my Kiwi friends and rellies as well as to New Zealand’s
distinctive and becoming landscapes – because although Maria’s
travelled extensively she’d never visited the Land of the Long White
Cloud. Predictably, the fabled long white cloud was the first thing she saw
of New Zealand as we wafted towards Christchurch on the crest of the jet stream
from Melbourne.
Once we’d crossed the largely cloud-blanketed Southern Alps we descended
into the usual turbulence over the patchwork quilt that is the Canterbury
Plains. A couple of children arced up as a result. One of them plaintively
addressed her father between heartfelt sobs. ‘Daddy, daddy - I really,
really, really want to get off this plane.’ Daddy‘s reply was
inaudible but it was most likely to the effect that there wasn’t much
chance of that and that she’d better get used to it because there was
more flying to come. Once more the querulous voice. ‘Daddy, daddy –
I really, really, really don’t want to fly on another plane.’
A few minutes later the one-sided conversation concluded with a poignant ‘Daddy,
daddy – I really, really, really, really, really..’ and simply
tailed off.
*Kidman said she was
‘excited to be part of the growth of a small Australian family-built
company dedicated to good health and well being’. http://www.swisse.com/au
**If you’ve got one, I’d love to see a copy
I thought you might
be interested in these two Camel ads.
I guess they're just about as good examples as you get of
the Big Lie technique, pioneered of course by one Adolph
Hitler. If you're interested you can go to YouTube
for some
typical TV and film ads of the era.