I’m as much a fan of Frankfurt-School Marxism as any recent liberal-arts college graduate; but two months after starting a new career as a junior-level account executive — a position that makes me a sublieutenant of consciousness, at best — I’m still not completely persuaded by this view of ad pro as hegemon. (Then again, I wouldn’t be, would I? If there is such a thing as “false consciousness,” its giant brain must lie at the corner of 18th and Madison.) Some of my industry colleagues, however, are clearly delighted with the idea. “All advertising people should read Mr. Ewen’s book,” gloats an article in Advertising Age, “if only to discover how powerful, how elitist, how successful we really are.”

It’s not hard to understand why ad men get such a kick out of this portrait of themselves as evil geniuses, the bully boy enforcers of late commodity capitalism. For years, they’ve had to suffer through Hollywood’s depiction of their business as a sinkhole of soulless conformity, a mausoleum for deadweight yes men slinging crunch-a-licious, Flavor-ific prose. Think of Darrin on “Bewitched”: the sine qua non of the American salaryman, he spends his days dreaming of $5,000 bonuses and is given to such diclassi utterances as “Today the Bliss Pharmaceutical Company — tomorrow the world!” Or the bibulous Joe Klain in “Days of Wine and Roses”: A caricature of hangdog submissiveness, he swills martinis, rustles up hookers for clients and grimly braces himself for the loss of all his key accounts. “I spent a lot of time on that account,” grovels a severely hungover Klain, upon hearing that his hard-drinking ways have just cost him his Covington Farms client. “Perhaps, Joe — too much,” ominously reproves his all-seeing boss.

After these dreary chronicles of organization-man abasement, what a relief to pick up a book like “Captains of Consciousness” and encounter ad men of diabolical vigor and potency, men who reinforce corporate hegemony, prop up the cash nexus and still find time to write couplets for Luxor soap. Can you imagine the meek-hearted Darrin marshaling the nerve to say “boo” to a goose, let alone cunningly weave the commodity system into the interstices of our lives? I didn’t think so.

The only television show to truly incorporate the Marxist critique, which sees advertising as a synecdoche for all that is debauched and evil in American culture, is Aaron Spelling’s “Melrose Place,” with its searing portrait of wayward account executives who are more than willing to cheat, cook the books, turn tricks, even kill, all in pursuit of those top-drawer accounts. At the redoubtable Amanda Woodward Agency, which serves as the setting for these TV-M misdeeds, sex and perfidy are considered business as usual, and the account reps needn’t dip into the slush fund to procure prostitutes for clients, as, happily, many are prostitutes themselves. To be sure, when the bottle-blond ad babes let fly with lines like “You thieving whore, these are my clients,” it may not be the most articulate indictment of commodity capitalism of the Clinton era. All the same, the show does manage a critique of Madison Avenue mores that makes Herbert Marcuse look like a Rotarian toastmeister. Consider the following scene, the centerpiece of last season’s cliffhanger finale, “Who’s Afraid of Amanda Woodward?” As the scene opens, Amanda, who is played by Heather Locklear, is unveiling with her usual fanfare a new campaign for a long-standing client, Ted Kroger. “And now,” says Amanda, “the pihce de risistance. Four 30-second spots during the ’98 NFC Championship Game.”

“Very nice presentation, Amanda,” says Kroger. “Now, let’s hear the damage.”

“Fifteen million,” Amanda says. “Not a penny more … A good agency is your partner, Ted. You benefit; we benefit.”

But what’s this? Also seated at the table is Sydney Andrews, a repentant streetwalker just hired by the agency to serve as its “efficiency coordinator” (a lady of the night turned TQM martinet — only on “Melrose”). And in the end it is Sydney, the flame-haired deviant, the disrupter of bourgeois sexual arrangements, who proves herself the group’s moral compass. Rising to her feet, she declares her boss’s figures to be “grossly inflated … Mr. Kroger, you are getting fleeced here, to the tune of $5 million.” Ted Kroger, understandably riled, tells Amanda she has “until the end of the week” to come up with some new numbers. As soon as he leaves the room, Amanda turns on Sydney, asking her what on earth she could have been thinking. “I know a snow job when I see it, Amanda,” Sydney retorts. “And so does Mr. Kroger.” Amanda tells the righteous fleshpot to get off her high horse: “This whole business is snow jobs — blizzards of snow jobs. You just tossed out our whole profit margin.”

Seeing that she has no future in Amanda’s vice-laden boutique, Sydney gathers together her troops, a rebellious coterie of art directors and copywriters, and proudly announces the formation of “a new company — our own agency. Let’s put the bitch out of business.” Stuart Ewen couldn’t have said it better! Alas, though, Sydney’s schemes end in tears when her agency, Sky High Advertising, devolves into yet another high-class call girl ring, and the blizzards of snow jobs give way to, well, you can imagine.

On the other end of the verisimilitude spectrum is “thirtysomething,” the whining yuppie drama that won plaudits for capturing the mysterious folkways of agency life. In the late ’80s, knowledge of the show was de rigueur inside the industry; articles in Brandweek and Advertising Age breathlessly tracked plot developments and offered the fictional ad-hunks earnest advice (“Michael, keep down that overhead!” urged Advertising Age.) It’s not hard to see why. Whereas the profession of advertising tends to be portrayed as a schlocky business, all blaring jingles and crass gimmickry, “thirtysomething,” with the help of on-staff consultants from the uber-hip L.A. agency Chiat-Day, conferred upon it the voluptuous sheen of high art. Michael Steadmen and Elliot Weston, the show’s protagonists, were not middlebrow hucksters but squeamishly sensitive craftsmen, fiercely protective of their snack-cake oeuvre. No jaundiced chit-chat about profit margins and blizzards and blizzards of snow jobs here. Instead, lots of sitting around in shirtsleeves, brainstorming, describing advertising concepts as if each bore the fire of pure genius:
“I’ve never seen such a well-considered and executed preliminary presentation.” “It’s the core concept. Everything else suggested itself.” “Seminal ideas will do that. And this is a seminal idea.” And so on.

For a while, everything comes up roses at the “Michael & Elliot Agency,” an Edenic space where human qualities are celebrated, workers’ ingenuity rewarded and consumer insights swapped over upscale takeout. But halfway through the show’s run, the duo lose their biggest account in a client merger, and are forced to close up shop. In a true-to-life twist, Michael and Elliot pack up their toys and head over to “DAA Advertising,” a soulless, heartless mega-agency owned by vulpine smoothie Miles Drentell. There, their artistic muse is promptly extinguished by the rule-bound preachments of Drentell and his collaborator, creative director Carl Draconis, who loves nothing better than to pick on his golden boys for “getting ahead of the data” and for running afoul of the organizational chart.

But in a memorable three-episode arc, goodness triumphs and faith is reaffirmed, as Michael and Elliot vanquish the evil Draconis in a high-stakes battle over the future of O-Boy pies. It all starts with a marketing epiphany. As Michael and Elliot sit watching a nerve-jangling commercial for “The Goop,” a high-tech snack that kids squeeze out of tubes like Day-Glo toothpaste, they realize that their humble snack treat cannot compete with such ultra-hip fare. An O-Boy pie, Elliot laments, “doesn’t squeeze out or roll up or turn into something cool. It just sits there and then you eat it. How boring.” Michael and Elliot then realize that the future of their brand lies in a bold new concept: retro-snacking. “Throwing O-Boy pies in the kids’ market would be suicide,” Michael muses. “What we should do is reclaim the old market … Position O-Boy as an adult product, a nostalgic, guilty pleasure. It’s a completely new approach.”

But when they call a meeting to present their idea to the agency’s creative director, the rule-bound technocrat Carl Draconis, things don’t go as planned. The meeting gets off to a sour start when Elliot accidentally sits in Draconis’ chair, and has to be reminded that “creative director gets center chair.” In a foul mood, Draconis proceeds to drive a stake through the heart of retro-snacking. “Where’s your research?” he asks. “Where’s your analysis? You’re proposing a radical new approach — why? Because it amuses you? It’ll give you a cleaner stage?” Never mind that that’s usually all the justification a creative would need. Draconis declares he has had just about enough of Michael and Elliot and their brazen, rule-breaking ways. “You’re too far ahead of the research,” snivels the buttoned-down conformist, who is memorably played by Stanley Tucci. “I will not squander the time and resources of this organization on vanity projects.”

Undeterred, Michael and Elliot take their big idea straight to the top. “In English — let’s sell cookies to the grownups,” Michael tells agency president Miles Drentell, as heroic music swells and builds. “Let’s use the long life of the brand to reactivate buyers who have aged out of the target group.” Drentell is blown away, calling the approach “brilliant.” “All we have to do is sand off the edges … We’ll work out a television campaign, produce a spot and see how it flies with a focus group.” He then turns to Draconis. “You were against this, weren’t you? This concept of retro-snacking and this approach … I understand you thought it was — non-viable.” Draconis blanches. “Can we have this discussion in private?” he asks. It’s too late. The creative director is toast. “You made a mistake,” Miles thunders. “For reasons I neither can nor wish to comprehend, you tried to block one of the best conceptual takes on a new account I’ve ever seen. And if it weren’t for Michael and Elliot’s tenacity, I never would have seen it.” In the next scene, a workman is shown expunging Draconis’ name from the black granite directory, as the victors croon over their cherished snack cakes. “Come with me, my little chocolate lovelies,” purrs Elliot. “If you knew what we had in store for you, your creamy fillings would be all aquiver.”

My agency, Mad Dogs & Englishmen, bears no resemblance to the venerable megalith DAA; actually, with its feng shui consultants and roving hordes of Jack Russell terriers, it looks a lot more like Michael and Elliot’s noble, doomed creative arcadia. All the same, I was curious to know what my co-workers thought of the show — in particular, the climactic plot twist involving retro-snacking. When I showed the scripts around, reaction was mixed. Though my colleagues were impressed by the show’s genuineness, and thought it credibly portrayed the opposing forces of hot creativity and cold research at a big agency, they also spotted a few glitches. The character of Carl Draconis, the dorky creative director, was considered particularly wide of the mark. “I’ve never met a creative director who cares that much about the business issues, let alone the center chair,” says Judith Grey, a senior art director. “They usually want to be in the beanbag chair in the corner, and want to be told what to do, as opposed to telling everyone else what to do.” Michael Fanuele, deputy planning director, agreed. “The whole thing is just bizarre,” he said. “Usually it’s the creative director who wants to poke around and challenge the research and challenge the status quo.” But Fanuele also faulted the good guys for being unnecessarily provocative. “Michael shouldn’t have spent all that time banging his head against the wall,” he said. “He should have just gone to the research department and fabricated some numbers to get it by the creative director.”

But here’s something really interesting. One of our clients is Yoo-Hoo, which, when you think about it, isn’t all that different from O-Boy. And it turns out that, when we were first handed the account back in ’97, our first strategic insight was — retro-snacking! “It’s totally something we considered for Yoo-Hoo, which is another one of those nostalgic treats,” said Fanuele, the lead planner on the account. “We thought we would target people in their 30s and 40s and 50s. People who used to love Yoo-Hoo, and now don’t.”

What went wrong? Well, it seems the Draconian Carl Draconis might have had a tiny little point. Retro-snacking, while conceptually neat as a pin, is revealed to be a complete dud by even the most preliminary market research. For one thing, Fanuele explains, “it turns out the amount of money you’d have to spend to re-create the brand for [boomers] is pretty much cost-prohibitive.” And for advocates of retro-snacking, there is another, chewier problem. It turns out that teenagers drink by far the most soft drinks, and eat the most convenience-store snack treats, of any demographic out there. And so, if you don’t have teenagers consuming you, you really can’t survive as a soft drink — or as an O-Boy. Which is why, after reviewing the research and analysis, Mad Dogs reluctantly abandoned retro-snacking. “We decided that adults who’ve got a nostalgic love affair with Yoo-Hoo are, potentially, a great secondary target,” Michael told me. “But if you’re going to live in a convenience store environment, you really need teenagers on your side. You’ve got to fish where the fish are.” As it turned out, the teen-centric approach was definitely the way to go — you’ll be happy to know that according to the latest numbers, Yoo-Hoo now dominates its category of “shelf-stable non-carbonated chocolate drinks.”

If it’s true that art imitates life, and life imitates bad TV, I suppose any one of these cultural signifiers could turn out to be the template for the new me. My life could become a long, slow slide into gray-flanneled pathos, as Yoo-Hoos give way to triple vodka martinis and a daily grind of meaningless, alienating labor. It could become “Melrose Place,” a tear-stained roundelay of sex and duplicity. Or, who knows, it could even be “thirtysomething,” a fairy tale of hip corporatism, complete with Ivy League colleagues swapping irony-drenched insights over O-Boy pies.

Considering these options, I think I’d just as soon be a heartless arbiter of transitory hegemonies. And you know what that means. Today, shelf-stable non-carbonated chocolate drinks — tomorrow, the world.

Examples of vintage Burma-Shave road signs, including a blue South Dakota version. (Ray Crockett photo)

These red ads (one state, South Dakota, insisted that they be dark blue to keep them from conflicting with the red reserved for warning notices) usually consisted of five signs. For example: “DON’T PASS CARS/ON CURVE OR HILL/IF THE COPS DON’T GET YOU/ MORTICIANS WILL/BURMA-SHAVE.”

Some slogans touted Burma-Shave as a pre-aerosol “brushless” shaving cream—a cream you could scoop out of a jar and lather onto your face without relying on an old-fashioned brush and moistened soap in a mug.

("Thoroly"? I guess if the word doesn't fit the composition, change the spelling. . .)

In 1925, Clinton Odell, a Minneapolis lawyer, took the liniment his father created and transformed it into a brushless shaving cream. He named his company Burma-Vita—Burma, because most of the essential oils in the liniment were from the Burmese portion of the Malay Peninsula, and Vita from the Latin for “life”: “Life from Burma.”

Some of Burma-Shave’s primary “brushless shaving cream” competitors were Barbasol and Noxema.

The company was sold to Philip Morris in 1963, and all the signs were removed soon thereafter. As a testament to the campaign’s cultural significance, a set of signs was donated to the Smithsonian, where it still resides. But the brand eventually petered out. After being sold yet again (this time to the American Safety Razor Company) and then reintroduced in 1997, it never regained a hold in the market.

A history of the Burma-Vita Company, written by Frank Rowsome Jr. and illustrated by Carl Rose, was published by the Stephen Greene Press in 1963.

By the early 1960's, the rising costs of road-sign maintenance (as well as new and more effective ways of advertising) sounded the death knell for the Burma-Shave signs.

The following pages from Frank Rowsome Jr.’s book list all the road-sign Burma-Shave phrases produced from 1927 to 1963.

The soft drink that would be known as 7Up was created in 1929 by Charles Leiper Grigg in St.Louis as part of his “Howdy” line of sodas and was originally called “Bib-Label Lithiated (it contained the mood stabilizer lithium citrate until 1950) Lemon-Lime Soda.” It was almost immediately re-labeled “7 (7 natural flavors) Up Lithiated Lemon-Lime,” and then finally just “7Up”.

The first 7Up logo from 1929.

In terms of logos, an original winged trademark soon gave way to the red squared logo that lasted until the late 1960s that coincided with that period’s brilliant “Uncola” re-branding campaign. I always felt they had GOLD in that Uncola moniker. . .

A 1935 7Up label before the Howdy Company's name was changed to 7Up in 1936, followed by two Howdy beverage labels.

By the late 1940s 7Up was the third most popular soft drink in the United States. By the time the 1950s rolled around, the company had employed extensive branding techniques to keep the momentum going. The following three binders contain examples of what was offered to the bottlers and distributors to reinforce the product’s presence.

A catalog of 7Up sales/marketing items circa 1954.

This page includes tipped-in glossy paint chips.

These next three pages would NEVER fly with the HR Dept in 2012. . .

Before everyone had TV's in their home, it was common to go out to watch television.

7Up Sales & Promotion Merchandise Catalog circa 1954 - 59.

(would love to have those binders. . .)

Actual cloth swatches included.

More swatches.

1959 "Salesmakers" Catalogue

2 actual decals using the older logo with the woman reaching for bubbles- love the way the color is broken down into separate shapes and levels.

Actual booklet attached.

"Fresh Up Freddie" was the 7Up mascot created in 1957 by ad agency Leo Burnett and Walt Disney to help sponsor the Disney "Zorro" TV series.

Here’s a link to more info on “Freddie”: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/fresh-up-freddy.html

Remember, it's from 1959. . .

Ditto. . .

2 mid-1930's 7Up bottles.

Left: 1940's bottle with 8 bubbles on label. Right: 1950's bottle 7 bubbles.

"Like" was introduced in 1963 as a diet version of 7Up. It contained Calcium Cyclamate which was determined to be a carcinogen in 1969. "Like" was discontinued in that same year and Diet 7Up was introduced in 1970 sans the Cyclamates. This bottle is dated 1964.

Late 1960's/early 1970's can.

"The Uncola".

As a final footnote, I was lucky enough to work on spots for 7Up International using the Susan Rose/Joanna Ferrone character “Fido Dido”! Here’s one of my favorites done while I was at the Ink Tank Studio in N.Y.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JpHjeGXyw8

Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2012.

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Even dead, Jackson is a massive draw. He’s currently the subject of a global Cirque du Soleil tour with the horror movie title “Immortal.”  And Pepsi knows that overseas – especially in markets like Asia — his brand is as ubiquitous and American as well, cola.

Bringing back the dead is a peculiar – if increasingly common – gambit. Now that the earth has run out of living celebrities, they’ve had to revive Tupac to perform at Coachella  and Grace Kelly to make kissy face with Charlize Theron to sell perfume.  They even had to dig up Martin Luther King Jr., to pitch for Mercedes-Benz.

There comes a time when a celebrity passes into our iconography. Today, seeing the images of Elvis and Marilyn and James Dean in different pop culture contexts barely seems any stranger than fake Abraham Lincolns selling cars in February. And why wouldn’t Jackson’s people wring a few more opportunities out of his incredibly lucrative image? Somebody’s got to pay for all those $10 million mansions.

Senior PepsiCo marketing executive Frank Cooper told the WSJ that the new campaign will be both “respectful” and “forward looking.” It may be respectful. But there’s nothing “forward” about the dead. Jackson’s image survives as an easy symbol of pop music, but the man whose life ended from propofol intoxication three years ago, whose doctor is currently serving time for involuntary manslaughter, couldn’t seem less like the right spokesman for the notion of “living for now.”

Shockaroonie, some people found this offensive. The ad went the wrong kind of viral, with a social media explosion of negative feedback. It’s not that comedy with a racial element is always wrong wrong wrong. The Jewish Hank Azaria is currently in his third decade of playing the Indian Apu Nahasapeemapetilon on “The Simpsons,” and nobody seems to be outraged about this. Kutcher’s incredibly unnuanced performance isn’t that, though. On his blog, writer Anil Dash explains it perfectly –  “a fake-Indian outfit and voice” constitute “the entire punchline” of the clip. And, as he eloquently put it, “I can’t imagine I have to explain this to anyone in 2012, but if you find yourself putting brown makeup on a white person in 2012 so they can do a bad ‘funny’ accent in order to sell potato chips, you are on the wrong course. Make some different decisions.”

And so that’s what Popchips is trying to do. On Wednesday, in a “message from Keith” on the company’s website, its founder, CEO and foe of proper capitalization Keith Belling wrote, “we received a lot feedback about the dating campaign parody we launched today and appreciate everyone who took the time to share their point of view. our team worked hard to create a light-hearted parody featuring a variety of characters that was meant to provide a few laughs. we did not intend to offend anyone. i take full responsibility and apologize to anyone we offended.” That’s a constructive, self-aware response to a potential public relations disaster. (Kutcher, who in recent months has been tainted by his hasty Twitter support for Penn State coach Joe Paterno and a divorce that featured rumors of unprotected extramarital sex, has so far had no comment on the problematic ad campaign.)

It’s a positive thing that Popchips understood its mistake and made an immediate effort to rectify it by pulling the ad. That step forward is mitigated somewhat, though, by the a large number of “get over yourself” responses on Anil Dash’s blog. We’ve still got much work we need to do in this country around issues of stereotypes and sensitivity, folks.

You don’t have to look any further than the entire Popchips campaign to see what I mean. Its remaining “World Wide Lovers” include the stoner Brit “Nigel,” who’s “seeking higher planes of consciousness” (GET IT????), the effeminate German “Darl” — a swishy riff on openly gay designer Karl Lagerfeld — and the dumb redneck “Swordfish.” In the end, there’s also regular old, newly single Kutcher, who describes the other guys in the club as a “freak show.” Hey, geniuses at Popchips – you’re still perpetuating gross generalizations. Also: They’re not funny. It’s a great big snack-loving country. Being cool about brown people – and gay people, and people others would call “white trash” – shouldn’t be such a crunch.

The FCC rejected a push by the industry to water down the measure. But the rule as passed also has serious limits. For example, the data will not be searchable or uploaded in a common format.

The rule will first apply to affiliates of the four major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox) in the top 50 TV markets. All other stations will have until July 2014 to come into compliance.

“[L]arge areas of some swing states, like Virginia, Missouri, Wisconsin and Michigan, could see an influx of advertising in markets outside of the top 50,” the Sunlight Foundation noted in an analysis today. It was also not immediately clear exactly when the rule will go into effect for the top 50 markets.

Then there’s the crucial question of the format in which the files will be available. FCC spokeswoman Janice Wise told ProPublica that the commission is not creating a searchable database of the political ad files.

“We’ll accept whatever [file] format they provide,” she said in an email.

That will make it much more difficult to analyze the information.

Wise said there are no specific plans to make the database searchable.

By opting to allow stations to submit political data in any format, the commission departed from a recommendation made last year by in an FCC working group report.  The report called for the political file to be put online and that “as much data as possible [be] in a standardized, machine-readable format” that “could also enhance the usefulness and accessibility of the data.”

Also not clear is how the broadcast industry, which vigorously lobbied against the rule, will react.

“[W]e will be seeking guidance from our Board of Directors regarding our options,” the National Association of Broadcasters said in a statement decrying the vote.

In March, the industry group submitted a filing with the commission raising “serious questions about the FCC’s authority” to require stations to put political ad data online.

“That was written as a legal memorandum, which is code for, ‘We’ve lawyered up and we’re ready to sue over this,’” says Andrew Schwartzman, a longtime FCC watcher at the Media Access Project.

The broadcasters’ group declined to comment beyond its statement.

On a Thursday earnings call for Belo Corp., one of the companies that has been fighting the disclosure measure, CEO Dunia Shive suggested that broadcasters would continue to fight the new disclosure rule.

“I don’t think the conversation is over with respect to being able to continue talking about if we will ultimately have to include ad rates online,” she said, Broadcasting & Cable reported.

Belo spokesman R. Paul Fry told ProPublica that the company merely “want[s] to continue the dialogue on this subject.”

The FCC also said today it would review the new rule after a year to see if any changes need to be made before all stations will be required to come into compliance in July 2014.