Advertisers Try a New Way of Looking at Things

Advertisers Try a New Way of Looking at Things

The Braille Monitor

October,

2003

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Advertisers Try a New

Way of Looking at Things

by

Bettijane Levine

From the Editor: The

following story appeared in the July 24, 2003, edition of the Chicago Tribune.

Remembering our struggles in the past decade to rid American entertainment of

blind characters like George in the ABC program "Good and Evil" and

Mr. Magoo as revived by the Disney movie studios, readers should find the information

in this article refreshing and positively remarkable. We can only keep our fingers

crossed that this trend will continue and that blind actors get a real chance

to make their mark in programming and films as well as in commercials:

Guy and girl enjoying themselves

at a party. They're good-looking, hot, in their twenties. Guy excuses himself

and makes his way through the crowd. Oh, but wait. He's got a white cane; he

must be blind. As he begins to wash his hands in the bathroom, he gently feels

around the sink and faucet. Back with his date, he tells her, "You should

see the bathroom."

That's

a thirty‑second TV commercial for Kohler, which, it would seem, makes

bathroom fixtures so unusual you don't need to see them to appreciate them.

Kohler

is not alone. With little precedent TV seems suddenly populated with blind people.

And not in regular programming. Three current commercials for major corporations

feature visually impaired characters as central figures. What's more, the ads

show these people in the social swim--looking good, in control, even exceedingly

hip. It's what spokesmen for the visually impaired have been seeking from the

media for years: inclusion. Yet it's difficult to imagine the ads were created

solely as a bow to social consciousness. Advertising is, above all else, about

selling products and making money.

So

why would a faucet company, a car maker (Pontiac), and a liquor brand (Crown

Royal) suddenly decide that blind people are the way to capture viewers' attention?

The

answer, in part, is that the first order of every day at an ad agency is to

find unusual ways to purvey its clients' wares. By using a blind person--someone

not commonly seen on TV-- the agency would be pushing the boundaries of conventional

advertising, making the product stand out from all others. (Little did each

realize that two other agencies were tapping the same premise.) As it turns

out, in each of these cases creative minds were also trying to illustrate the

exquisite sensory pleasures provided by the product--pleasures that go beyond

the visual.

Jonah

Bloom, executive editor of the industry magazine, Advertising Age, thinks

the ads are right on target. "A blind person in an ad is a useful vehicle

for getting a message across. You are immediately telling the viewer that there

are other senses involved, other pleasures to be derived that aren't visual.

How else can you so easily convey that message?"

Sanjay

Sood, assistant professor of marketing at the Anderson School of UCLA, says

he can't remember another time when blind people have been featured so prominently.

And even if it's not a conscious attempt to break down barriers, he says, the

results are just as beneficial. The barriers fall, to some degree, just by showing

blind people in the mainstream of life instead of showing them as stereotypes.

"Maybe it even adds to the credibility of the product," Sood says.

"It

used to be an unwritten rule to only show the exact types of people you're targeting

and to idealize them--so that viewers never saw anything that wasn't ideally

happy, ideally beautiful, ideally perfect. But in the quest for attention, advertisers

are willing to push the envelope much more than they used to." That said,

the result of these ads has been exhilarating to some who are sight‑impaired.

Their representation in the media has been so dismal and unrealistic for so

long, they say, that many are thankful to finally be portrayed more accurately,

even if only to sell a product.

In

fact, the American Federation [Foundation] for the Blind presented its 2003

Access Award to the Wisconsin‑based Kohler company "for cleverly

offering a realistic and positive portrayal of a blind person in its television

commercial," even though the winning ad did not use an actual blind actor.

Kohler did, however, appear to have its finger on the pulse of today's young

generation of blind people.

The

ad shows blind people as folks who can party, dance the night away, even look

hot and cool if they choose to. Blindness precludes none of that, of course--although

the media still tends to portray blind people as isolated, fearful, helpless,

imprisoned in an endless night. Think Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman:

an older guy who sits alone in his room, mad about being blind.

The

ads are a step forward but far from enough, says Tom Sullivan, a blind actor,

author, and musician who is also an avid skier and golfer. People with visual

disabilities, he says, have been almost totally excluded from film and TV. When

they are hired, he says, it is to play roles in which their blindness is the

focus of the plot. "The real breakthrough will come when a show like `The

Practice' hires me to play an attorney, and my blindness is never mentioned,"

he says.

"It's

all so ridiculous and antiquated," agrees blind actor Rick Boggs, who was

a television spokesman for Airtouch Cellular for two years. Among his gripes

are that blind men are usually presented as bland, straight‑laced, naive,

and not very masculine. Boggs says he isn't wildly enthusiastic about the new

commercials, especially the two that didn't use blind actors. At the Airtouch

auditions, he says, "they interviewed about 150 blind actors before choosing

me. So don't tell me there's no pool of talent."

David

Crawford, senior vice president of GSD&M, in Austin, Texas, which created

the Kohler ad, says he would have used a blind actor, but the spot was done

in a whirlwind during the last commercial actors strike. "We had to film

in Canada; we had a lot of last‑minute logistics to take care of. Casting

a blind actor was seriously discussed" but not implemented.

How

did they come up with the idea? "We dreamed up dozens of ideas to pitch

to them, each one playing off the company's motto: `The bold look of Kohler.'"

One of the team members thought it would be neat to show that the design is

so individual you can tell it's a Kohler just by touching it, Crawford says.

Graham

Button, creative director at Grey Global Advertising in New York, says that

when blind actor Peter Seymour auditioned for the Crown Royal commercial, "he

was so obviously right, so handsome, debonair, self-assured--and such a great

actor, we would have given him the job whether he was sighted or not."

The

ad, which takes place in a bar, features Seymour--a blind guy so cool, so perceptive,

and so hip that he's an object of envy as other guys watch him order and sip

Crown Royal while he observes the action. Somehow he knows that two great-looking

women are admiring him, and he says, "I think the one on the left likes

me."

Button

says the ad is successful because it uses a person with heightened sensory awareness

to convey the exquisite pleasures offered by the product: the taste, the smell,

the tingle as it's swallowed.

And

in somewhat the same vein Chemistri, the marketing firm that does Pontiac car

ads, used an actor playing a blind person to illustrate the particular joys

of driving a Grand Prix.

Brian

Durocher, senior vice president at Chemistri, explains: "We asked ourselves,

how do we illustrate the sheer pleasureful impact of driving this car. How do

we illustrate the Pontiac tag line: `Fuel for the Soul'?" Their solution:

A commercial filmed in the desert with a man and woman in dark sunglasses, driving

full throttle through the sand. The woman is at the wheel, obviously enjoying

the sensation. She stops the car, opens the door, and extends her cane. That's

when you realize the driver is blind.

Durocher

says the commercial is successful, he believes, because it initially expresses

the joy of driving that car. Then it stops you short when you realize the driver

is blind.

And

then it hits you again when you imagine the sensations that driver experienced

that have nothing to do with eyesight: the car's power, its sensitivity, its

strength.

Durocher

says he, too, would have used a blind actor--but the driver had to be able to

"make her mark" during the filming so the car wouldn't stray off camera.

He says he consulted with the Michigan Association for the Blind on every aspect

of the commercial.

"One of the first

things they told us is that driving was a common fantasy for the visually impaired

and blind people. And most of them have tried it--in safe areas, of course."

The association approved the ad, said it helped shatter stereotypes of the visually

impaired, and public feedback has been positive, Durocher says.

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