I’ve often said that pretty much every endeavor undertaken by man is for the direct (or occasionally indirect) purpose of impressing a woman. Why women create? I am unsure, I am not a scientist, but I am a man… and men do strange, weird and wonderful shit to get laid.
In 1929, two bros named William Lear and Elmer Wavering took their young lovelies to the lookout in their car. What a magical night over looking the majestic Mississippi River. But it wasn’t exactly perfect. One of the women complained.
There was no music. Ergo, no vaginal entry.
And so William and Elmer invented the car radio… (and William would go on to invent the Lear Jet… and they’d help found Motorola with the Galvin Brothers)… but the point is… they invented the car radio (and I have my job in the year 2012) because they wanted to impress a girl.
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Last night I watched the most excellent of documentaries. The film is called Art & Copy and is basically about advertising. If you have the Shaw or Telus on-demand its in the Movie Central.
They told lots of great stories behind the iconic brands and advertising campaigns of our capitalist world. One story that was new to me and interesting was the story of Crocker National Bank.
Crocker was a fairly big bank based out of San Francisco. By many accounts (err wikipedia) it was a good bank, people liked it, they did good… for a bank. Spooky logo though? whoa.
In 1970 they felt that the average age of the customers was too high that in order to continue success, they needed to recruit new younger customers. They went to some San Fran advertising firm and asked what they could do to change the perception of their bank to make it appeal to young families.
The Art Director thought… how about a jingle, not just a silly jingle, but more of a song. And instead of talking about the boring wah wah wah of banking, we’ll just play the song with a video of a young couple getting married.
Tag line: “You’ve got a long way to go. We’d like to help you get there. Crocker National Bank.”
Boom. Looked like this.
Wait a minute… I know that song! That is the iconic 1970 Carpenters hit! And you’re right, because its both. The song was comissioned for the advertising campaign. Richard Carpenter heard the song and knew the song writer. He asked if there was more to the song than just the minute jingle. Turns out there was!
The Carpenters recorded the song and it showed up on their album Close to You. As the third single off the record it would shoot to number 2 in Canada and on Billboard’s Hot 100. It would show up on Rolling Stones’ top 500 songs of all time and became an immensely popular wedding song. They’d win two Grammys for this record.
The popularity of both the commercial and the hit single would prove to be distressing for Crocker National Bank and they had to cancel the campaign. Too many new young customers! People weren’t aware Crocker did mortgages and this being the 70s and not the 00s… Crocker didn’t want to hand out mortgages to young couples that maybe couldn’t afford them.
Crocker would franchise the campaign to other regional banks across the United States.
neat.
Go with yourself.
The Morning After 