Mrs. Bitterworth

The day I realized that you can’t believe everything you see on TV remains one of my most vivid childhood memories. I was four years-old and running around the grocery store. This was before parents had to worry about their kids getting kidnapped. I'd volunteered to get the syrup as long as my dad agreed to let me have Mrs. Butterworth. I remember careening around the corner and down the aisle, my mind full of what I would say to Mrs. Butterworth when I finally had a chance to have a tête-à-tête with her. You see, I was fascinated with the animated maple syrup diva.




See, my world would come to a stand still when a Mrs. Butterworth commercial came on the air. I don’t know what it was about those ads, but I’d stop whatever I’d been doing and stare at the TV and listen to every word Mrs. Butterworth would utter. I would laugh and feel like I’d just visited a favorite relative—the warmth of her grandmotherly goodness like pancakes fresh off the griddle. Freud might say I adopted Mrs. Butterworth as my surrogate grandmother since I was never fortunate enough to have had one of my own.

Anyway, so I get to the display shelf and see the bottles of Mrs.Butterworth syrup, and I start talking to them. No response. I am crushed. I start to cry. Somehow, I find my way back to Mom and Dad and pour out my heartache. Mrs. Butterworth didn’t really talk or move like she does on the commercial. Could it be that TV had…lied to me?

Now this was back in the 60s (yes, I’m in my 40s and hotter than ever, thank you very much) at about the same time that Juan Valdez made it on the scene. By now, I’m a jaded five year-old, but Juan did have a certain allure for me as that’s when I became cognizant of the world outside the United States. Somewhere south of Baltimore, MD was this really earnest guy who spent his whole life picking coffee beans at just the right time so that my mom and dad could have the best coffee in the world everyday. It wasn’t until I was in high school or maybe even college that I learned Juan Valdez was a fake, too. If I had been a coffee drinker I would have switched to Kona.




Now there’s a new Juan Valdez. In April of 2006, the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia produced a reality show to find the new Juan. This was a top secret mission. La federation wanted no hint of what they were doing to leak to the press until they’d found the perfect Juan with the perfect mustache. They found Carlos Castaneda, a real coffee grower. Juan, I mean Carlos (or is it really Juan?) now travels the world, attending coffee related events. Juan’s been to Europe, Russia, Japan and the US and apparently he’s got an adoring fan base of older women who think he has perfectly revived the Colombian cultural hero.

And isn’t that what these fake people are supposed to do? If you buy into them as authentic spokespersons, (spokesbottles in Mrs. Butterworth’s case) then you’ll buy the product. But therein lies the rub. The Mrs. Butterworth ads spoke to me in a way that the real product certainly could not. That ad made a four-year old feel so good that she influenced generic-buying Dad into coughing up the extra dough to bring Mrs. Butterworth home. But the expectation the commercial pumped into my impressionable young brain could never be met by the real product. I left the supermarket with brand X syrup to spite her. Now, I can’t even look at her anymore. Betrayal—at any age—runs deep, and much like Mrs. Butterworth's thick, rich syrup, it runs slow. Such is the loss of innocence. So I take my hat off to the Federation - at least Juan Valdez is a real coffee grower, even if his name is not Juan, and he can only speak Spanish, but hey, at least he speaks. In your face, Mrs. Butterworth.


Gay Pinder, Director of Program Development

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“Mad Men” and the Writings of a Mad Black Woman

FLASHBACK – It’s last November (that’s November of 2006) and I was in New York at an Ad Week function where Mark Cuban was a keynote speaker. He asked how many in the assembled groupage of advertising executives had HDTV. When just a smattering of hands went up, he looked shocked. But not as shocked as I looked mere moments later when I turned around to see for myself and came to the sobering realization that I was the only African American in the room of about 100 people.

FAST FORWARD – July, 2007. AMC Network debuts their original series, Mad Men, which chronicles the exploits of Madison Avenue ad guys in the 1960s. A couple of things you’ll notice about that show, everybody smokes (sorry Disney), the clothes are awesome and there are no black people. Gee. I guess nothing’s changed in 40 years.

Now I know the ad industry has come under fire lately for the lack of minorities-- particularly blacks--at the executive level, but I wanted to do a little informal digging around as to why this is. I mean blacks have an estimated buying power of $679 billion so one would think the industry would be interested in having folks from that market represented in their boardrooms. So I started reading and making some calls. I talked to a friend who is the CEO of a black-owned agency in DC. He felt the onus for lack of black representation lay, in part, at the door of corporate racism.

Case in point. I found an article in Black Enterprise written by Brian Wright O’Connor in March of 1993 that quotes Charlie Rice, associate creative director with Caroline Jones Advertising Inc., a black-owned agency in New York. Reportedly, Mr. Rice had received dubious words of praise while employed at a general- market firm that, in essence, congratulated him for being able to think like a white man. On a scale of 1 to 10 on racist comments, this has got to be a 9. Not quite Imus worthy, but obviously showing a complete lack of understanding of the African American experience.

What the decision makers at general-market firms are slow to appreciate is that blacks have to know how to “think like a white man.” Now don’t start getting all ruffled, and think I’m going to get all militant on you, but it’s the truth. Successful African Americans in all fields have learned to maneuver in two different worlds. You could say that we are bi-cultural and even bi-lingual. We have to know how to talk the talk in the boardroom and we have to know how to “keep it real” in various parts of the African American community. How many Connecticut commuters could really hack it and feel comfortable at an all black function? Us black folks? We have to excel and do what we do even when we’re the only black person in the place.

Some people don’t understand why just the fact of being black makes our American experience so different. I came from a middle-class family. I went to private school. My mother sent me to Europe during my senior year in college. Some people might say that I come from a privileged background and I might agree, but even with that I have certainly experienced out-and-out racism, having been called the “N” word once and I’ve definitely encountered cultural insensitivity more times than I care to count. I say it’s more than time to turn the tables and expect Madison Avenue to better reflect the markets it sells to. Perhaps if we can encourage a more balanced atmosphere, companies like Intel won’t have to apologize for their sorry excuse for an ad (pictured left). And if you don’t get why that ad was an issue, and you’re in this industry, well… call me, and I’ll explain it to you.

--Gay Pinder, Director of Program Devlopment

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Reality Shows Come of Age?

MTV’s the Real World debuted in May of 1992, introducing to millions of viewers the sexual mores and antics of America’s youth. Now about to celebrate it’s 20th season, the Real World isn’t reeling in the viewers quite like it used to and MTV is finding that the short-attention-span audience it spawned is paying attention (for the next 5 seconds at least) somewhere else.

It was the Real World that made me a regular MTV watcher back in the day and it was the Real World that turned me into a reality show junkie – except now I don’t watch them on MTV. The issue is that while MTV has remained the same, its loyal viewers from fifteen or more years ago have grown older. We find ourselves much more intrigued by people who’ve actually lived more than two fully grown years on the planet.

Case in point… My new favorite guilty pleasure is NBC’s Age of Love, the series that pits 20-somethings against 40-somethings in the quest for the attention of a 31-year-old gorgeous guy. I had the opportunity to watch this show with the daughter of a friend. As the women in their 40s continued to impress tennis pro and bachelor Mark Philippoussis with their conversational skills, poise and self-confidence, my 23 year-old friend yells out, “That’s not fair! Those girls are dumb.” Before I knew it I replied, “Do you think it was that hard for the producers to find eight dumb girls in their 20s?” Now before I get a lot of hate mail from the younger set, let me just say for the record this was not a very PC thing to say, and I know not all 20-somethings have the IQ of a pretzel, but hey, you do have Paris Hilton. Can you blame me?

Anyway… It occurred to me that MTV and these young women had a lot in common. They each assumed that youth would win the day but are quickly learning that there’s a whole lot of competition out there.

--Gay Pinder, Director of Program Development

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