I love Christmas, the whole Christmas season. In fact, I love it a little bit too much where home decorating is concerned.
I have a wonderful stereo system with turntable, CD, and FM radio. It’s got the Victrola brand name which I like, even though I know whoever’s making these things is 42 degrees from the original Victrola company. Anyway, once Christmastime arrives, I break out the decor. And it goes….everywhere. Including right smack on the top of my Victrola. It’s prime livingroom real estate! And the lid on the turntable is nice and heavy so I know it’s safe to display things there. However, this means no record listening for 6 weeks or thereabouts.
But! Now that most of the yuletide frippery is packed away, I can listen to some records I never got around to before the holiday season. They all happen to be singles of Stan Freberg. One is “Green Christmas”, a vicious but brilliant satire on the commercialism of the holiday; “Flackman and Reagan”, a comedy bit from his late 60’s “Underground” album that has so many arcane references to California politics that I don’t think I’m catching more than half the jokes; and,most noteworthy for this essay, a set of radio commercials for Salada Tea. Listen to these….
Freberg’s early years in show business were spent in radio, doing voices (unbilled) for Warner Bros. cartoons, puppeteering for a daily Los Angeles childrens show “Time For Beany”, and eventually issuing a series of hugely popular pop culture satires on Capitol Records. Eventually, after doing lots of spoofing of the advertising business on his short-lived CBS radio series, Freberg got into the advertising business himself, establishing Freberg Ltd. (but not very). His work as an adman earned him the label “creator of the funny commercial”, even though funny commercials go all the way back to Fibber McGee and Molly.
What made Freberg’s commercial work the very best in the business was a mix of sharp, funny scripting; fantastic casting; innovative spins on the typical radio spot; and a credo that Freberg refered to as “more honesty than the client would like.” In the Salada commercials embedded above are some of the classic Freberg techniques I have been inspired by over the quarter-century I’ve been writing commercials:
-Wordplay. The phrase “Take tea and see” is misinterpreted…there’s a change of the subject… and then the misunderstanding of the phrase comes around again at the end. This kind of clever callback rewards attentive listening…and if the listener isn’t paying attention the first time, they’ll turn the radio up next time it comes around.
-Crosstalk. I’ve written before about my personal likes and dislikes with radio commercials. My biggest pet peeve is lousy, stiff acting. When people say they hate 2-voice commercials, it’s because they hear so many that sound like a 3rd grade school play. Or, if you prefer, the soundtrack of a Hanna Barbera cartoon. Those cartoon soundtracks have each line of dialogue said individually, because it’s hard for animators to time out and coordinate two animated characters talking over each other.
Radio, on the other hand, has no reason for this stilted reading. A two-voice radio commercial should sound like a REAL CONVERSATION, with overlapping, an ocassional “um” or “ah”. Freberg’s spots always have crosstalk.
-Visual Humor. Anybody who says radio can’t use visual humor is a dullard. Most of the commercials I’ve won awards for have been centered on a visual gag. A liquor store with a select whiskey so popular that a radio chopper is giving traffic updates over a crowded street. A “man-on-the-street” interviewer talks to mosquitos. Freberg’s Salada ad about using tea bags to relieve sunburn is pure visual humor. You picture the boardwalk, the sunburned man, the tea bag…
The Sneak-Up. I like commercials that sneak you into the sales pitch. Again, the “sunburn remedy” spot. It moves almost imperceptibly from the joke pitch about teabags to cool a sunburn into the actual pitch, you know….make some tea and drink it!
“More Honesty…” Freberg addresses the elephant in the room:
BYRON: Try a glass of delicious Salada…
STAN: No thanks, I’m a coffee man myself.
BYRON: Uhhhh…watch it.
I did a similar gag in an Arby’s commercial…
I think that’s about all I have to say about these radio spots. But just to wrap up with something better than my silly Kentucky colonel joke, here’s another Freberg spot: