Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 12, 1993 TAG: 9301120088
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STUART ELLIOTT THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
DIG THIS, MAN - BEATNIKS ARE BACK
Hey, Daddy-o, like wow! Beatniks are suddenly well, hip, man. They're, um, coming back in all kinds of cool ads, baby. You dig?In another example of the cross-pollination of advertising and popular culture, the beatniks of the 1950s and early 1960s are becoming increasingly exposed to the consumers of the 1990s through commercials and print advertisements.
Goatees, sunglasses, sandals, black clothing, poetry readings in book stores and coffee houses, bongo music and other trappings of the so-called Beat Generation are now integral aspects of ads.
One reason beatniks are so appealing is that in an era when advertisers and agencies assiduously mine the past for arresting imagery, they are among the few figures to have escaped overexposure.
"No one had seen a beatnik for 25 years," said Lori Korchek, associate creative director at Margeotes Fertitta & Weiss in New York, "so you had a fresh visual idea."
For Cappio, a new iced cappuccino drink from Kraft General Foods, the agency created a cartoon spokescharacter named Ferdinand, a goateed, bongo-playing beatnik garbed in black from head (beret and sunglasses) to toe (pointy shoes).
Jim McKennan, a senior vice president and group creative director at Backer Spielvogel Bates Inc. in New York, called the Beat Generation "the one part of the '50s that hasn't been `retro-ized.' "The agency presented beatniks discussing a "square scene" in television commercials for the Wendy Melt, a square, patty, melt-style sandwich sold at Wendy's International Inc. restaurants.
By contrast, another '50s stereotype has just about worn out its welcome among advertisers - the "greasers" with their black leather jackets, Brylcreemed hair and so-what attitudes, lifted from characters seen in movies like "Grease" and television series like "Happy Days."
"We wanted the real '50s, not the Fonzie '50s," said Paul Basile, who is also a senior vice president and group creative director at Backer Spielvogel and created the Wendy Melt spots with McKennan.
A second reason for beatniks' appeal is that some elements of their life style are reappearing on the social and fashion scenes.
"Poetry readings are the new hip thing," said Maggie Gross, executive vice president of advertising at Gap Inc. in San Bruno, Calif., which last year produced in-house a commercial for Gap jeans featuring a beat-like poet, Max Blagg, declaiming his verse in a coffee house setting.
A third reason for beatnik chic is that the characters function well as symbols, a shorthand way to indicate to consumers that a product is meant to be so hot it's cool.
"Whether your reference is the coffee house culture of the '50s and '60s or `Dobie Gillis' reruns on Nick at Nite, beatniks are cool," said Ben Arno, a senior vice president and management supervisor at Ogilvy & Mather New York. Since assuming the Cappio account from Margeotes when Kraft General Foods consolidated agencies, Ogilvy has produced additional ads starring Ferdinand with the theme "The thrill is the chill."
With all those positive attributes, why, then, have beatniks been so scarce in ads until now?
One explanation is that the tenets of the actual Beat Generation included challenging authority, protesting social inequities and being unceasingly cynical about mass consumer culture, which by the '50s had begun exerting a powerful influence over American society. It took the passage of time to soften the imagery enough to adapt it for selling purposes.
Beatniks were labeled "nonconformists" - a precursor to the "anti-establishment" hippies of the '60s - for being ardent admirers of anyone and anything that debunked advertising and marketing, from the author Vance Packard's manifestoes like "The Hidden Persuaders" to the humorist Stan Freberg's satires like "Green Christmas."
All that made beatniks about as popular to advertisers as work was to Maynard G. Krebs, the beatnik pal of Dobie Gillis. Indeed, it was wicked parody when Mad magazine offered up mock ads in which Beat Generation celebrities endorsed products; in one, the jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie lauded Crest, spoofing the brand's slogan by calling it the toothpaste "for cats who can't brush their chops after every gig."