Lawyers, Chairs and Hyundais

Abraham Lincoln once said, “A lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client.” I have to wonder what Mr. Lincoln would have thought of a lawyer who appears on television doing his own commercials. Judging by the ones I’ve seen it’s a wonder any plaintiff gets a penny in a lawsuit against a corporation with these mannequins representing them.

Wooden doesn’t begin to describe the way your average personal injury attorney (read ambulance chaser) comes across. These people generally make the late “Old Man of the Mountains” seem downright engaging on a comparative personality scale. And at least one lawyer that I can think of, although I can’t remember her name at the moment, looks like she’s making a hostage tape. That deer-in-the-headlights, fixed-on-the-camera gaze makes me wonder if she was able to break free from her captors and escape from the studio.

But lawyers aren’t the only ones doing their own commercials. Unfortunately.

It would appear that somewhere along the way somebody passed a law requiring the owners of furniture stores to do their own commercials and, whenever possible, do them badly. It started with radio commercials by Elliot and Barry of Jordan’s Furniture and, as these things go, they weren’t that bad. There actually was something about their not quite professional approach that helped them to stick out during the interminable commercial clusters that have become a part of radio. Eventually they moved over to television and, since they were successful, people started imitating them.

Now things have gotten completely out of hand. Bernie & Phyl’s, Bob’s Discount Furniture, Cardi’s, Rotman’s, Ippolitos and others are all showing up on the tube with way too much enthusiasm for ottomans. Now the primary point of having these people do the commercials is to make you feel like you are getting to see the people in charge, bond with them personally, and buy from them because you relate to and, I guess, trust them. Considering we know Elliot and Barry and Bob and Bernie and Phyl by their first names it probably works.

Of course Elliot and Barry (I hear one of them retired but I never knew which was who and besides I don’t really care) and Bob own only slightly more of their companies than you or I do these days, but they stay around because that advertising approach works and gosh darn it, people like them! It also worked for Frank Perdue who sold chicken mostly because he looked like one I believe.

Car dealers overdo the whole I’ll do my own spots thing too. I blame them all on Ernie Boch. Ernie made a living smashing windshields and selling Ramblers and shouting “Come on down!” He was bad enough. Now his son, Herb Chambers, everybody who works for Ira whatever and too many others are doing the over, over, and further over, the top screaming–at–me-in-my-living room commercials themselves. On the rare occasions when it’s not the car dealer himself mugging the camera it’s some trained, my-voice-is-so-deep-I-have-to-carry-my-balls-to-work-in- a-wheelbarrow announcer who’s demanding that I buy my car somewhere or other.

I could go on. I usually do. Ask my wife. I understand that it’s tough for an advertiser to break through the clutter of advertising and do something that people will remember enough to affect their actual spending decisions. And being annoying can make a really lasting impression. We all have at least one in-law or one cousin to prove that. Howie Mandel has made a whole career out of it.

But I’m asking Bob, Elliot (or Barry-whichever), Bernie, Phyl, Ernie Jr., all of you who do your own commercials to at least consider spending a few of the bucks you made on that last dinette set or that used Hyundai, to go out and hire a few professionals to design and build a really imaginative campaign concept that will make me remember you and what you do in a positive way. There are a lot of people in advertising who can do this for you and with the economy in the crapper they might even cut you a deal just to put food on the table.

Just don’t go to the people who do the W.B. Mason commercials. They deserve to starve.