Long before Mad Men, and before I got into branding in a big way, I had an interest in advertising. One of the greatest send-ups of the industry was the 1990 Dudley Moore starrer Crazy People, set in the advertising industry against a politically incorrect—actually, cruel and inaccurate—look at mental health. It’s one of those films that could never be made today, and for good reason. But there are some gems in it, as Moore’s character, Emory Leeson, embarks on “honest advertising”. It gets him committed to a facility—who ever heard of an advertising agency telling the truth, right?—until his ads become a hit, welcome by consumers who don’t want BS.
I came across this wonderfully copywritten and set ad from a PR professional in London trying to sell his Nan’s 1981 Volvo 244DL:
It’s bloody good. The copy kept me engaged—like all good ads used to—and he’s done a reasonably good job with the Volvo Broad headline typeface (it was wider back in the day). The body text type should be Times rather than Baskerville, but considering the exact cut of Times isn’t available digitally (to my knowledge; it’s for larger text, and has very short descenders), there’s no wonder he opted to use another family.
It got me thinking: I’ve often posted the Crazy People Volvo ad in comments, as a humorous response. However, the ad doesn’t exist in a decent res online. The only ones that have wound up online are from screen captures from the movie. This 22 kbyte file is actually the best one around, save for one on the Alamy stock photo website that I found after the fact:
I couldn’t re-create the image—I assume the only person who has it (or had it) is the art director of the film, or the photographer that was commissioned—but maybe I could have a go at the type?
The digital Volvo Broad had to be widened 25 per cent, and I didn’t attempt to match the kerning.
The body type was the interesting one. I opted for Times Headline, since it wasn’t at a text size, but as I discovered, Volvo used a particular cut that had short descenders and was slightly condensed. I tried to match the leading.
Therefore, here it is, offered under Creative Commons with attribution to me for the typesetting, please, while noting the image is not mine:
Back in September, The Dominion Post claimed on its front page that I have an ‘accent’ that is holding me back. It was a statement which the editor-in-chief subsequently apologized for, and which she had removed from the online edition—you can judge for yourself here if the claim was a falsehood. Still, despite having lived here for 37 years and having grown up here, I thought I had better take lessons from the great actor, Steve Guttenberg, on what a New Zealander sounds like, since evidently I was still too foreign for a newspaper reporter.
Head to around 49 minutes for Steve in the persona of Lobo Marunga, from Auckland, in The Boyfriend School, which aired in New Zealand as Don’t Tell Her It’s Me. Forget Sir Ben Kingsley in Ender’s Game.
My thanks to all those on Twitter and Facebook who complained to the newspaper back in September. The plus side is turning fictions like this into what they should be: a source of humour and entertainment.
Two years ago, I blogged about The Paradise Club’s unavailability on DVD and the reasons behind it.
As a show nearly forgotten after 20 years, perhaps it isn’t surprising to find there are no Facebook fan pages for it. There is the one that Facebook generates from Wikipedia, but that’s it, as far as I can tell. The rest are for some adult clubs. Maybe one of them is for the below location in Wellington, New Zealand.*
But it’s Facebook, right? Surely anyone can set one up?
So, here ’tis, one member strong: www.facebook.com/pages/The-Paradise-Club/227119843968264. Considering the Wikipedia-based one has 75, it might be nice to see a few more faces at mine. I realize my earlier post was hit by a number of Paradise fans, so this is a sort of shout-out to them.
Meanwhile, the Alarm fĂĽr Cobra 11 Facebook group has dipped to 1,859 members, thanks to Facebook defaulting to spamming all members. The Lucire one has stopped its drop, and is rising again, though after four or five messages explaining how to remove oneself from Facebook’s default spamming.
As one friend on Facebook commented: it shouldn’t be my job to write these posts. Facebook should have informed its users better. But, as usual, transparency is not one of Facebook’s strong suits.
* Not that I went in. Not after that time I went to the Ponderosa bar on Blair Street in Wellington and said, ‘I’m Hop Sing. Is Ben around?’ and got a totally blank look from the bartender. You’d think that if your logo was one of the Cartwright brothers (it looks like Adam), someone would have informed employees how the name came about.