RARE John Pilger Investigation On Political Propaganda In The 1970s | Our History

If you want to eat as well as my chickens, you'll have to eat my chicken. I don't use toilet paper. Meet Jimmy Carter. Now you don't need toilet paper either. I have never felt better since I stopped using toilet paper in 1974. In the United States, more than $26 billion was spent on advertising, which was an all-time record, and the numbers for 1975 and this year will be even higher, but haven't I? There is supposed to be a recession, a crisis of confidence in the big supermarket of the West with entire cities devastated by unemployment, yes, of course, but the heart and soul of America is Hard Sell, the advertiser's ability to persuade The advertising industry has risen to the challenge of these difficult times by promoting and selling packaging with a determination that the late John D.

Rockefeller or Henry Ford would have admired. Give me your tide. Your poor. Your huddled masses longing to breathe freely. Say the words on the statue. of Liberty these days the inscription could read give me your pre-moistened sanitary tissues clinically tested to discard water give me your national Hebrew hot dog approved by the rabbi give me your chickens Frank Purdue it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken and above all give me your tired politicians who long to be president or governor or dog catcher just give me anything and I will sell it the regulations say we can make our Hebrew national beef hot dogs with frozen meat, no the government says we can use dyes artificial.

Don't they say we can add meat by-products? Don't they say we can add non-meat fillings? We can't, we are kosher and we have to answer to an even higher authority. There were some skeptics on Madison Avenue who said that. the American public would never swallow a national Hebrew hot dog, of course, they didn't count on McCabe's buns, who in their own words are the now now now advertising agency of the United States, discovered that just nine years ago they can afford it of rejecting bills of less than three quarters of a million dollars thanks to them more American bathrooms smell like Airwick more people drink caffeine-free coffee more faces use face cream more drivers drive Volvos and even Colonel Sanders is starting to worry about Frank Perdue , that tough guy with tender chickens I don't care, you know what I'm saying?

I understand that it is up to me to get the ad right. I don't care where the changes come from, but now McCabe's breads face their biggest challenge. Can they change the situation in the United States? The oldest habit: Can they enter the last forbidden area and return triumphant? Can you sell the latest in the unnecessary? Can you sell air freshener now better late than never boy? I'm just looking at this, the renovation projects now that seem to be surprising, a little surprising. It's an amazing campaign, we're selling toilet paper, well we're not selling it to replace toilet paper, dry toilet paper as we know it, because you can't really tell people how to take care of themselves, you can present it as a new concept in care. from the bathroom, but you can't tell them to throw away your old dry paper.

I mean, you know it's like saying throw away your mother because you were raised with that, it's a historical fact of life. It's cool, can you describe the impression? It is God's answer to anal problems. Oh, this is the replacement for toilet paper. Refresh, let's see. I see that it cleans better. It can be flushed down the toilet and is biodegradable. How does Stu work? Could you show me how it really works? It's definitely coming. in a dispenser and inside you have it, it works better than this, you have your spare tissues, yes, which are as it says, the premise of pre-moistening the product is to wet clean better than the drawings, the simplest terms, so I do it What I'm saying is that for all these years people have been using dry toilet paper and really haven't gotten full satisfaction from the product.

This is very exciting. I mean, what you're doing is changing a great American habit and that's a toilet. paper to something that's completely different like taking wheels off cars, you know, so I mean it's like putting wheels on wheels. Sorry, we developed some wonderful commercials, in fact Ed McCabe and Sam Scalley did them, they were just fantastic. They were vignettes of people in unexpected situations, for example, you don't use toilet paper and neither do I. Now you don't need toilet paper either. Freshen introduces the new Primoison toilet paper that leaves you cleaner than regular toilet paper.

Freshen is not dry, it is lightly moistened so you are cleaner and the cleaner you are, the better you will feel since I stopped using toilet paper. So does Clint need to be clean? This product needs to be clean and that's what we're about to convince people. and cleanliness has always been a problem in this country. We are sometimes considered a little over the top with all the cleaning products we have, clean freaks, yes, and you would think this would be a shoe-in based on that, but we still have to overcome these area repression psychological hurdles. anal that are here and I suppose everywhere in the world, but they are very deeply rooted here.

Would you say this was the last no-go area of ​​advertising? Yes, someone said every other orifice of the body. has been made public except this one and uh and now we're working on this one we have a woman in her bathroom, she's a wonderful woman, it took us a long time to cast her because she had to have a little bit of toughness, but a little bit of understanding, we wanted her to give to understand that she had a family, she had to have humor and personality and she had to really look like all those other women, that's what it says when I first saw fresh, wet toilet paper on TV.

I said I didn't do anything after 35 years. I'm not going to throw away my dry toilet paper so I didn't do it, but I found out that Freshen can do what I dry she can't do and then she does a little demonstration and what's the sheep demonstration that doesn't? what you think is thanks, this is Marvin sloze, the senior partner, and this is one of the two trophy rooms of the now agency filled with a variety of awards that Madison Avenue is awarded almost every time a company's profits increase customer, most of them here were won. by Staff Writer Ed McCabe, the Boy Wonder Who wrote the words selling Hebrew hot dogs and wet toilet paper Ed has his own place in the Madison Avenue Hall of Fame, freshen up your campaign says it makes you cleaner, but all these years We have all felt good about toilet paper.

I figure well, you've never had a choice. Yes, that's the problem too. Are you OK. It turns out that this is a superior product and that's right, there will be a lot of people. that they will never ever buy it but they won't buy it for the wrong reason, they won't buy it because they have such an ingrained habit of using dry toilet paper that they don't even want to think about anything else and they think they are clean enough, the problem is that This works better and it's a superior product and that's all we're trying to tell people is it's a new and improved way of doing something, don't make people buy from a lot of people. buy for the packaging and that's why so much money is spent on the packaging and actually because of the advertising to get the essence of the advertising, the cleverness of a commercial, uh, your talents, you write the copy, etc. ., surely I can get ahead. with that once, if I do something very slick and I go and buy it for that reason, which is a very superficial reason and the product is not delivered in some functional or usable way, they will not buy it again, yes, and if they do, It's asking a lot for me or for the people in advertising to say well, we're not going to give it to you, is it right in the middle of a recession with up to nine million people in this country out of work?

Let's say general advertising to give the American people, let's say 8 billion or 9 million unemployed, a product that some people might think was not necessary. Oh, I would love to answer that some people may think a product is unnecessary, another person may think it is very necessary. I don't think it's anyone's place to tell people what they need and I think the success of our system is that you offer them something, if they want it they buy it, if it's terrible they won't buy it, they make or break products on the market. . and I don't think it's our job to be a sensor of what the American public should have.

I think if something is dangerous and they put their hand on it and their hand falls off or something, then that kind of judgment is exercised. but regardless of whether a product is valid or not, I don't think it's necessarily right for us to make that decision, let me put it this way, what wouldn't you sell to my mother personally, you mean as a company or to me personally as well? I wouldn't sell to any politician if my partners didn't agree with their

political

beliefs and I wouldn't expect anyone at this agency to work on any

political

campaign without believing that the person they were working for or the cause was a Justin Fair: I'm not sure that it's really fair that agencies should get involved in political peddling because I think it can come down to a case between a good agency versus a veterinary agency and to me that's potentially a very dangerous thing because I think it can be packaged like we saw with Nixon, You can package a politician and make him acceptable to the people.

I think it becomes a very dangerous area and there is another example called Ronald Reagan, yes, absolutely, where is he positioned? He went straight into a box. Yeah, and he did it all, but he had it, it's like you know it's like having distribution in every supermarket, the whole world is waiting and then you open the box and it turns out there's nothing inside when you announce a politician and someone . buy the product you sell who have had it because four years with a bad product in the white house is a disaster with a tube of toothpaste that does not taste good they can change to another brand and it is not the end of their life in the world This year more than $300 million will be spent on the election of the American president and half of this will go to advertising agencies and Image Makers who specialize in selling politicians.

The importance of Image Makers was noticed for the first time. During the 1968 presidential campaign, when a group of very clever advertisers set out to sell a new product called the new Richard Nixon using techniques they would normally use to sell a package of crunchy nuts, they persuaded many voters that the old Richard Nixon was the one you wouldn't buy a used car from was dead and they produced a television picture that hid Mr. Nixon's temper and his trembling hands stopped his eyes from moving horizontally lightened his harsh gray beard and even made him smile but, above all, , they gave it that magic ingredient. credibility and the product worked he was elected president of the United States after Watergate one of Mr.

Nixon's image makers had a fit of remorse and honesty said that if a politician has given the right image at the right time he can look from the TV screen and don't say anything and the idiots will believe him Jim Sprouse is no Nixon, just a hard-working, hand-shaking, charisma-less local politician who wants to be governor of West Virginia, but Jim Sprouse has a problem in the Madison Avenue language, here is a product that has no dramatizable novelty or rather lacks that magical ingredient of credibility. As a campaign runs on election day, you have less and less news coverage because there are many candidates competing for it and the news people tend to give You guys are pretty brief, how is everyone doing this morning?

Kim Sprouse, good to see you, hello, I used one, hey, how are you? You don't have a hand to be sure it's frustrating the episode like you, so for other commercial products that you know and Obviously I can't get any in-depth programs in 30 second and 60 second ads because Sprouts was the only honest man in the whole that administration. Yeah, why don't you look at this section two? This is very poorly put together, no one can, so Jim. Sprouse needs an image maker and has hired one of the best and most expensive in the business, Charles Guggenheim, who helped change Bobby Kennedy's image from that of a ruthless opportunist to that of an all-American hero from literally kilometers of film. new and improved Jim Sprouse how important advertising is to winning political campaigns the political process is a matter of advocacy only in court I think you present your best positions and often leave out those things that you don't think are most helpful to your case and there is no hiding the fact that the political process is a promotional process.

Is it harder to work with a hero like Bobby Kennedy as you did or as someone like Jim Sprouse was? I think it depends more on personality than how well known they are. All you had to do was hang out with Robert Kennedy like you have and watch him with people you knew? He had a tremendous quality for modesty. A great sense of humor. All you had to do istalk to people close to you. to his life people than seeing him as he was with the children now capturing that on film not doing it not creating that as that quality and he existed in him but getting people's attention was our job does not mean that in the end you can limit yourself to the politician in those 30 seconds don't say anything so that no one knows anything.

I think these are terribly unfair things in the American political process in which political advertising plays a very important role. uh, I've often said that I think the political process in our country is run more by advertising agencies than any other group, that seems strange to both Americans and people abroad, but the truth is that the Americans watch more of their candidates and learn more about them and the issues in 30- and 60-second commercials than any other way after listening to everything the other Democrats have to say. I keep coming back to Jackson. I pay attention to what other Democrats say about crime and criminals. but I keep coming back to Jackson everyone has something to say about unemployment inflation and of course rumors but I keep coming back to Jackson let's have a president who knows something elect the senator elect to pick up Jackson while there is still time to save Well the 70's, if you're going to say the 70's scoop Jackson will have to wait until the 80's Jackson spent a fortune on TV commercials but it didn't go anywhere.

His image makers became so desperate that they made sure the candidate was seen only in photographs and that his voice was never heard. Jackson was simply so boring that no image-maker could rescue him from his long march back to well-deserved obscurity, one of those given money to save him, explains New York agency man Harold Pearson, but there must have been some problem with this product, I mean. The product Senator Jackson when he started the campaign was that he was not perfect because in a sense, by virtue of being a workhorse, he spent all of his time as a legislator and none of his time as a person that we find. that very few people knew about him as a person, Black Eyed Peas, where did everyone know about him in terms of his achievements and the experience of him?

But it was a job that we had to do to try to get people to know him more as a man and not less based on his experience, but also as a man, he doesn't smile like Jimmy Carter, that's a problem, no, I think that will prove to be a huge advantage, I'm not sure Jimmy Carter can stop him. smiling right now I think he has some kind of physical problem this man is a farmer he is also an engineer a father a Sunday school teacher and former governor this man is Jimmy Carter an unusual man who is now running for the Democratic nomination for president in this commercial On television, Jimmy Carter's cleverly edited images are meant only to project a certain style, a kind of calculated harmlessness, while Carter's character and politics remain invisible.

Carter, unlike Jackson, is allowed to talk in the commercials, but he doesn't really say anything more than you do. I know everyone in Congress is running for president. There is a lawyer. I have nothing against lawyers. My oldest son is a lawyer, but I think it's time to have a non-lawyer in the White House, bound in chains so the facts fit Jimmy's image. Carter's claims about his past are never entirely true. Carter says he was a farmer who worked the land himself and in his book he claims to have been a nuclear scientist, in fact he was a commodities trader (the commodity was peanuts) and an ordinary naval engineer, perhaps not . exactly a lie then they aren't exactly the truth either Jimmy Carter has come a long way since his childhood days in a small town called Plains Georgia many things that I wouldn't do to get elected and I would like you to listen closely because I mean it.

I will never tell a lie. I will never make a misleading statement. I will never betray the trust any of you have in me and I will never avoid a controversial topic. I won't be a better president. That I am a candidate, would you think that a candidate like Jimmy Carter is a difficult product to handle? I would find it difficult professionally and impossible personally. We are quite familiar with the things that he has done, in our opinion, he is not really a man qualified as a saint. office of president which is something a little bigger than the governor of Georgia.

We also find that he

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ly takes a definitive stance on important issues. He may say things like if the legislature decides to pass the bill, I will sign it. the problem is really whether you will sign or not, I mean, that's part of the job, it's his opinion and whether or not he would lead that type of fight, he doesn't take those positions. Mr. Nixon had publicists everywhere. In fact, it seemed to him that at some point J Walter Thompson was running America in the world and Disneyland properly, but look what happened with that product, um, that's not a warning to some of us that maybe advertising and Politicians should not mix well. there's no difference between bad advertising people and bad politicians and bad butchers and anything bad eh, I think I would have chosen those people in whatever profession they were in, but they promoted him a lot, I had image makers, I had advertising people promoting the product from Richard.

Nixon, that product turned out to be a bit of a No-No, didn't it? But everyone throughout the

history

of this country has had people who have helped them campaign in one way or another and have always been involved with them and Franklin Delano Roosevelt had advertising people who helped him sell him slogans that JFK made and I don't think they were worse; in fact, image-making only began in the media with John Kennedy, whose voting style was all-knowing while the substance of the man remained largely a mystery, and Jimmy Carter, whose campaign bears no resemblance between Kenny and Kennedy, would surely like to end with Kennedy's winning image.

In 1960, the Democratic Party estimated that the use of television advertising had made only a small percentage of difference in the outcome of the presidential election, but that was enough to give Kennedy his narrow victory over Richard Nixon, Jim's Key Sprouse to be elected, okay, we'll take it all, but we'll have to clean it up later, we can't get this out. Nixon had never really understood the image game, but he learned quickly from Kennedy; eight years later, it sold like soap powder and he too won by a margin of only a few percent; once again, Madison Avenue had made the difference.

In most countries. The media has the power to rip people off. The power could lie in a television picture, a headline, a clever piece of writing. In America, the land of the media, that power is now so refined and so pervasive that a politician like Jimmy Carter, the image maker's dream, he can be a serious presidential candidate without anyone really knowing what he stands for, who he is, why he's so popular, but that's the game, the Madison Avenue game of 26 billion dollars, by the way, it would only take a billion of those dollars to support all the poor farmers in the world.

They stand to be sufficient and independent of our charity, but $1 billion is actually the amount of money Americans are expected to spend on fresh pre-hydrated toilet paper and in the presidential campaign I said that both products pre-hydrate the toilet. tissue and some politicians have those two magical ingredients: credibility and elimination capacity, thank you foreigners.