ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 1, 1996 TAG: 9612030135
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NATALIE ANGIER THE NEW YORK TIMES
You know a commercial has plucked a nerve when the most startling thing about it is not the sight of wild chimpanzees aping famous lines from movies like ``The Godfather,'' ``Star Wars'' and ``Animal House.''
The really shocking part of the new advertisement for Home Box Office on network television is the shot of Jane Goodall, doyenne of primatology, sitting in her cabin in the Gombe Preserve, Africa, writing up field notes about the ``inexplicable'' behavior of the chimps. Seems they have been imitating Marlon Brando and John Belushi after peeking through her cabin windows at her television set. ``Dr. Jane Goodall, HBO viewer since 1978,'' the final tag line tells us.
Why in the name of Godzilla is Goodall, who has always projected a sense of quiet, even self-effacing dignity, hawking a television movie channel?
For the stubbornly snobbish, the reaction is indignation: Is nothing sacred? Have even scientists sold out? For others, the commercial burnishes Goodall with the glow of wit: Even scientists have a sense of humor!
Whatever the reaction, the commercial has provoked much chest-pounding over who is willing to advertise what, and how the audience responds to a familiar figure from film, music, art, politics - or science - in the unfamiliar position of huckster.
Bob Dole, the former presidential candidate, appeared in a print ad for Air France in November (he donated his $3,000 fee to a community center for the elderly). Ed Koch, the former New York City mayor, plugs Dunkin' Donuts' bagels. Michael Jordan becomes a thesaurus entry for Nike. Richie Havens sings plaintively in a travel ad.
We love celebrity endorsements, in part because we love doing the quick mental calculus of where the personage must be in the arc of his or her career to agree to the spot.
Our reactions may be colored by our feelings about television, commercials and capitalism generally, but a few rules apply. When sports stars pitch athletic goods, it is a sign of their Olympian stature. When an icon of '60s rebellion warbles for tourism, you know he needs the work. And when a scientist like Goodall shows up, well, uh
``My first response was disbelief,'' said Frans de Waal, a renowned primatologist at the Yerkes Primate Research Center in Atlanta. ``I thought, Is this real? Does Jane know about it?''
Yes, it is real, and Jane knows about it. She even got paid $100,000 to do it. ``When they first approached me, I said, `You must be joking!' I was totally horrified,'' Goodall said in an interview. ``But when they ran through what they wanted to do, I realized it was actually fantastic.''
She liked the idea that the creators of the commercial, Michael Patti and Don Schneider of BBDO in New York, would use real chimpanzees in Gombe, not trained chimps dressed in cute clothes.
``Entertainment chimps are often cruelly treated,'' Goodall said. ``It dawned on me that here is a way to show how animals can be used in advertising in a nonexploitative manner.'' Besides, she said, ``The HBO thing is hilarious. If you can can make someone laugh, you make the world a better place.''
The fee, she said, is ``enough money to keep our biggest chimp sanctuary in the Congo running for a year. There are people who said we should have gotten more, but we didn't know.''
Joshua Gamson, a sociologist at Yale and the author of ``Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America,'' sees the ad as a brilliant example of advertising's fundamental desire - to put a fresh twist on the tried-and-true.
``Advertising works by ferreting out new things, ways of selling that are familiar but on the edge,'' he said. ``It's the spread of the celebrity system into fields where it hasn't been before. We're seeing it now in academia, certainly in the arts, and in nonprofit organizations, with things like the high-profile AIDS Awareness campaign.''
These pitch people are, in the phrase of Joshua Meyrowitz, a professor of communication at the University of New Hampshire, ``our new media friends.'' Or, as Madison Avenue puts it, they are commercial ``virgins.''
Goodall's reputation is not likely to suffer. For one thing, she has contributed too much to biology for too long. For another, any colleagues who resent her newfound market appeal already resented her fame as a primatologist. And the chimps looked awfully glamorous banging their sticks on the ground and chanting, ``Toga! Toga!''
Sometimes appearing in an ad can lend a public figure some panache, particularly if the spot plays off the person's fame. O.J. Simpson succeeded in the Hertz commercials because they showed him doing what he does best: running for his life. Tina Turner is in a $20 million ad campaign for Hanes hosiery, a natural move for the possessor of the greatest set of legs this side of a centipede.
Dan Quayle made delicious use of his most infamous gaffe, the misspelling of the word ``potato,'' by appearing, wordlessly, in a commercial for Wavy Lay's potato chips.
Some commercials are so hip that celebrities are insulted when they are not asked to appear in one. The pasha of cool, Spike Lee, directs blue jeans commercials and appears in milk mustache commercials. Indeed, everyone wants to be shown wearing one of those white mustaches: Kate Moss, Lauren Bacall, Danny De Vito, Pete Sampras all do it; why not me?
The campaign has been so successful that for the first time in 20 years, milk sales are going up, according to the sponsor, the Milk Industry Foundation.
Not every act of mercantilism helps. When the director Orson Welles became a pitchman for Paul Masson wine, many of his fans saw it as an act of desperation, a sign of how far the giant (in every sense) had fallen. Cher admitted that she probably harmed her career by doing infomercials for a skin-care product line.
When Geraldine Ferraro, a former vice-presidential candidate, was in an ad for Diet Pepsi - which she did because, she confessed, she needed the money - she received a drubbing for being mercenary.
There are stars who cherish their reputations so much that they refuse to do any sort of product flacking - at least not in America. Woody Allen has written and directed ads for a grocery store chain, but only in Italy, and Sharon Stone has pushed Pirelli tires and Freixenet champagne, but only in Europe.
Lest anyone conclude that these entertainment demigods are driven by simple plebeian greed, note that Stone's Pirelli fee will go to the conservation of rubber trees everywhere.
LENGTH: Long : 116 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. Michael Jordan and 2. Jane Goodall: One a sportsby CNBstar, the other a scientiest; both peddle products. 3. Cher admits
that she didn't boost her career by doing infomercials.