At Last! Marketing And Literature Get Married (sort of)

Suddenly, thanks to the Levi’s Go Forth campaign, I feel like I could go back in time to my college years. Like many an English major, I wished for a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, a record of publishing learned dissertations on obscure topics such as  “Quantitative Methods For Judging Gender Conflict In The Poetry of Robert Herrick,” and a PhD. (We all know what that stands for.)

But reality intruded. None of those wishes came true. I got a job as a copywriter and quickly learned to write about features and benefits in short words, short sentences and short paragraphs. And I never looked back, until now. Because now Levi’s is using the poetry of Walt Whitman to sell blue jeans.
“O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!”

Poets as promoters
Could this be my big chance to revive my long-neglected literati skills to create a true marriage between great literature and great marketing communications? Why not? After all, poet Lew Welch was also a copywriter; he wrote the immortal “Raid Kills Bugs Dead.” Marianne Moore was the unofficial poet laureate of Ford, working to name the model that eventually became the Edsel. And scholars believe that Charles Dickens wrote jingles for the shoe blacking company where he worked as a boy.

Wouldn’t advertising for a Garmin GPS be vastly improved by Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken?
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference”

Imagine reinforcing the Subaru “feel the love” campaign with a satisfied Subaru owner reciting Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s famous lines:
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach”

What about a new “midnight snacks” usage idea for Kelloggs Frosted Flakes starring Tony the Tiger and William Blake’s The Tyger?
“Tyger Tyger. burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye.
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

Could Comcast sell its Power Boost solution by using Shakespeare’s Macbeth to dramatize the slow download/upload problem?
“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;”

And all those Las Vegas casinos suffering in the current economy – could “what happens in Vegas” target more sophisticated travelers with lines from Coleridge’s Kubla Khan?
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.”

Sorry. Subtle won’t sell
But after careful consideration, balancing all the pros and cons and consulting with my colleagues, I believe the answer is “Naaah!” Great literature and great marketing don’t mix. Better to use the far less subtle approach of the anonymous 19th century rhyme that communicated the benefits of Carnation canned milk for cowboys out on the range, far from home:
“Carnation Milk is the best in the land.
Here I sit with a can in my hand.
No tits to pull, no hay to pitch.
Just punch a hole in the son of a bitch.”

Tags: advertising, copywriter, go forth, Levis, literature

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 7:07 am and is filed under Cool/Funny/Unusual, Fred Petrick. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.