You Can Always Judge A Woman By Her Parts.
How I survived advertising boot camp with one line and some hose clamps.
“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.” Mark Twain
Back in the early eighties, I was sent on J. Walter Thompson’s annual training course. It was at a resort outside of Chicago, about ten minutes from the old Playboy Mansion. Some of us were more interested in the Playboy Mansion than the training course. We should’ve failed miserably.
Nobody really wanted to go on these things. Right from the start, we were told this was a boot camp, and like most boot camps, there would be a strict adherence to discipline, long hours and, as I found out, a fair amount of crying.
One young account guy from the Holland office burst into tears when his strategy was called “rubbish.”
Well, it was rubbish, but you still hated seeing him all goopy.
If we used non-words like, ah or um, everyone would clap. If we didn’t maintain eye contact, same thing.
The next day was spent learning presentation skills, something I needed more than most. I wasn’t good in front of people, or behind them, for that matter. The first exercise had us standing in front of the room where we had to speak for five minutes. If we used non-words like, ah or um, everyone would clap. If we didn’t maintain eye contact, same thing.
Needless to say, we were all appalling. So was our instructor. We found out later he had a stutter. We clapped, anyway. After you’ve been humiliated the way we had, frankly, you didn’t care who we hurt.
The crying really increased the third day. Some guy from Detroit said he was great at presenting. He got in front of the judges, swaggering about, calling everything a “hot button.”
The judges told him he didn’t know a hot button from a rib of beef. He stuttered and stammered so much after that, he finally ran out of the room.
We were all becoming emotional wrecks. The JWT executives finally had to sit us down, explaining what a boot camp was. “We’re here to help you improve,” one executive said, “not decide whether to fire you or not.”
That helped, since we all figured we were getting fired.
“Well, somebody didn’t get the message, did they?” the copywriters replied, holding up a pair of panties he’d found on the mansion’s lawn.
It reduced the tension so much, in fact, two copywriters from the New York office decided to hitchhike to the Playboy Mansion. They came back a few hours later, saying the place was deserted.
“Hef moved to Los Angeles eight months ago,” one of the judges said.
“Well, somebody didn’t get the message, did they?” the copywriters replied, holding up a pair of panties they’d found on the mansion’s lawn. On closer inspection, they turned out to be men’s bikini briefs.
Maybe Hef’s. Probably not.
The following morning, we were put into groups, and told we’d be presenting a full campaign the next day. To make matters worse, each team leader had to go to the front and take an item out of a paper bag. Only we couldn’t sell the item as it was. We had to come up with a new use.
In our case, the team leader pulled out hose clamps.
How were we going to sell hose clamps as something else?
And do it by eight o’clock the next morning?
“What about earrings?” one woman in our group said. She held them up to her ears. “We can sell them to women whose husbands are car nuts.”
Not a bad idea. Maybe these women were being ignored. With these hose clamps in their ears, they could call him in from the garage, stand there in a slinky dress, and he’d be panting like a bison.
We all started scribbling like crazy, throwing out lines like, “Get him to notice you again.” Meanwhile, the art director was drawing these beautiful line profiles. They reminded me of New Yorker cartoons.
“What if we make it tongue-and-cheek?” I suggested.
I didn’t actually have a line, but the whole group was sitting there staring at me, so I figured I’d better say something. “What about,” I said, “You Can Always Judge A Woman By Her Parts?”
As soon as everyone saw that, it clicked. We were happy as, well, bison.
Nobody laughed like I’d hoped, but the art director was already putting it in above one of her drawings. As soon as everyone saw that, it clicked.
I’d like to say we were in bed by ten, but even when you’ve got it — or think you’ve got it — then the second guessing starts. Were women really going to start wearing car parts? And were we restricting our audience to unhappy housewives with car nut husbands?
By midnight, everyone was blaming everyone else, me in particular. They decided I was a sexist pig. They were even thinking of changing the entire campaign, until one of the judges heard all the racket and crying.
“What’s going on in here?” he said.
So our team leader explained the strategy. He frowned through most of it, until the art director showed him the ad. He went into hysterics. In the four days we’d been there, I hadn’t seem him — or any of the judges — even smile. Here he was practically falling on the floor.
The next morning, we presented, and the entire judging panel broke out laughing, too. So did all the other teams.
We were a hit.
Very often, what seems far-fetched, is exactly what’s going to get people’s attention.
It just goes to show what one line can do. And I don’t just mean advertising. Very often, what seems far-fetched, is exactly what gets people’s attention.
I’m not saying it always happens that way.
But sometimes it does. Especially if you have the right parts.
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Robert Cormack is a satirist, blogger and author of “You Can Lead A Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive).” You can join him every day by subscribing to robertcormack@medium.com/subscription.
