Cover Story
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Marketing Masterminds, continued ...
• Jon Gothold
DGWB Advertising and Communications partner and executive creative director
If
you watch TV, it’s hard to imagine that you haven’t seen those
Wienerschnitzel commercials featuring The Delicious One – the little
hot dog that goes running around the streets, chased by people who want
nothing more than to gobble him up. And few people know that little guy
better than Gothold.
WHAT YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT THE
DELICIOUS ONE CAMPAIGN: TDO, as we refer to him, has become a part of
pop culture. There are toys and antenna toppers, stickers, children’s
books, calendars and life-size costumes so he can appear at public
events.
The Wienerschnitzel commercials lead a very active
afterlife on the Internet, and he has become a topic for college
professors in states that don’t even have our restaurants. Whenever I
tell folks that we have the Wienerschnitzel account, they usually say,
“Oh, I love that little running hot dog guy!”
The Delicious One
has made the transition from advertising to being an object of desire.
It doesn’t get too much better than that in our business.
WHAT
YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT YOUR JOB: I get my greatest satisfaction from
working with other talented people on a common goal and seeing what we
come up with. I’m proud to have been one of the original creators of
TDO, but it was a team effort all the way. I really don’t feel that
anything I might have done on my own is as great as the things I have
come up with as part of a very talented team at DGWB. I just love the
spark that happens when great minds collide; there’s nothing quite like
it.
FAVORITE TV COMMERCIAL AND WHY: One of my favorite
commercials of all time is the Apple 1984 commercial, which introduced
the Macintosh computer. Although I had nothing to do with creating that
spot, I did help play a role in getting it on the Super Bowl.
At
the time, I was working for an event marketing company in Los Angeles,
and we had the Apple account. We were responsible for the introduction
of the Macintosh to the Apple sales force at the end of 1983. We did
all the staging and creative elements that would be shown to the sales
force and the trade show prior to the consumer launch. Steve Jobs had
been the driving force behind the 1984 TV spot and wanted to use it as
the launch spot for consumers, but he was getting tremendous pushback
from the other top brass at Apple because it didn’t show the product –
your classic advertising stalemate.
Together with Jobs, we
worked up a scheme. Jobs got the naysayers at Apple to agree to a bet:
If he could get the sales force to support the spot at the role-out,
then Apple would agree to run it during the Super Bowl. They took the
bet.
The day came. Jobs got up on stage and whipped the crowd
into a frenzy with one of his most impassioned speeches ever. Then we
dimmed the lights and ran the spot. Before the commercial was finished,
a spotlight went on, and we slowly lowered a Macintosh computer from
the ceiling above the audience. We had it rigged up so that it was
turned on, and you could hear its mechanical voice saying “Hello. My
name is Macintosh.”
Needless to say, the place erupted. Jobs
handily won the bet, and 1984 was the beginning of the Super Bowl as
the advertising medium we know today. We had figured out a way to get
the product into the spot without putting the product into the spot.
FUNNIEST
JOKE YOU KNOW (But keep it clean): A guy moves up to a remote section
of Alaska to open a liquor store. He’s been there six months and hasn’t
really met anyone, least of all a woman, and he’s very lonely. One
night, he hears a knock on his door. He opens it up, and there before
him is a wild-eyed, bearded grizzled old mountain man.
“Howdy, friend. My name is Chester, and I’m yer neighbor. I’d like to invite you to a Christmas party.”
“That sounds great,” replies the man.
“Well, I have to warn ya, there’s gonna be a lot of heavy drinkin’.”
“That’s OK” the man says. “I own a liquor store, and I know a thing or two about drinking.”
“Well, there’s gonna be a lot of fightin’, cause that’s just how we do things in Alaska.”
“I’m an ex-Marine. I think I can take care of myself,” the man replied.
“And there’s gonna be some pretty kinky sex.”
“Well,” the man said, “I’ve been here for six months all by myself, so that sounds OK to me. What should I wear to this party?”
“Well,” the old mountain man said, “It don’t matter much, cause it’s just gonna be you and me.”
Marketing Masterminds, continued ...
• Jon GotholdDGWB Advertising and Communications partner and executive creative director
If you watch TV, it’s hard to imagine that you haven’t seen those Wienerschnitzel commercials featuring The Delicious One – the little hot dog that goes running around the streets, chased by people who want nothing more than to gobble him up. And few people know that little guy better than Gothold.
WHAT YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT THE DELICIOUS ONE CAMPAIGN: TDO, as we refer to him, has become a part of pop culture. There are toys and antenna toppers, stickers, children’s books, calendars and life-size costumes so he can appear at public events.
The Wienerschnitzel commercials lead a very active afterlife on the Internet, and he has become a topic for college professors in states that don’t even have our restaurants. Whenever I tell folks that we have the Wienerschnitzel account, they usually say, “Oh, I love that little running hot dog guy!”
The Delicious One has made the transition from advertising to being an object of desire. It doesn’t get too much better than that in our business.
WHAT YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT YOUR JOB: I get my greatest satisfaction from working with other talented people on a common goal and seeing what we come up with. I’m proud to have been one of the original creators of TDO, but it was a team effort all the way. I really don’t feel that anything I might have done on my own is as great as the things I have come up with as part of a very talented team at DGWB. I just love the spark that happens when great minds collide; there’s nothing quite like it.
FAVORITE TV COMMERCIAL AND WHY: One of my favorite commercials of all time is the Apple 1984 commercial, which introduced the Macintosh computer. Although I had nothing to do with creating that spot, I did help play a role in getting it on the Super Bowl.
At the time, I was working for an event marketing company in Los Angeles, and we had the Apple account. We were responsible for the introduction of the Macintosh to the Apple sales force at the end of 1983. We did all the staging and creative elements that would be shown to the sales force and the trade show prior to the consumer launch. Steve Jobs had been the driving force behind the 1984 TV spot and wanted to use it as the launch spot for consumers, but he was getting tremendous pushback from the other top brass at Apple because it didn’t show the product – your classic advertising stalemate.
Together with Jobs, we worked up a scheme. Jobs got the naysayers at Apple to agree to a bet: If he could get the sales force to support the spot at the role-out, then Apple would agree to run it during the Super Bowl. They took the bet.
The day came. Jobs got up on stage and whipped the crowd into a frenzy with one of his most impassioned speeches ever. Then we dimmed the lights and ran the spot. Before the commercial was finished, a spotlight went on, and we slowly lowered a Macintosh computer from the ceiling above the audience. We had it rigged up so that it was turned on, and you could hear its mechanical voice saying “Hello. My name is Macintosh.”
Needless to say, the place erupted. Jobs handily won the bet, and 1984 was the beginning of the Super Bowl as the advertising medium we know today. We had figured out a way to get the product into the spot without putting the product into the spot.
FUNNIEST JOKE YOU KNOW (But keep it clean): A guy moves up to a remote section of Alaska to open a liquor store. He’s been there six months and hasn’t really met anyone, least of all a woman, and he’s very lonely. One night, he hears a knock on his door. He opens it up, and there before him is a wild-eyed, bearded grizzled old mountain man.
“Howdy, friend. My name is Chester, and I’m yer neighbor. I’d like to invite you to a Christmas party.”
“That sounds great,” replies the man.
“Well, I have to warn ya, there’s gonna be a lot of heavy drinkin’.”
“That’s OK” the man says. “I own a liquor store, and I know a thing or two about drinking.”
“Well, there’s gonna be a lot of fightin’, cause that’s just how we do things in Alaska.”
“I’m an ex-Marine. I think I can take care of myself,” the man replied.
“And there’s gonna be some pretty kinky sex.”
“Well,” the man said, “I’ve been here for six months all by myself, so that sounds OK to me. What should I wear to this party?”
“Well,” the old mountain man said, “It don’t matter much, cause it’s just gonna be you and me.”