Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Can't Get Enough Beaver


There are a lot of new faces at the agency where I am currently working. And it isn't often one of them is my age. Or even in the near vicinity of my age. So it took me by great surprise when I spotted someone whose social security number predates mine.

"Who is that?", I asked my current partner.

"Oh you know him, he worked at Fallon, back in the day. He had a big hand in the Evil Beaver campaign." he replied.

And with that, my heart raced.

Evil Beaver was a seminal work.

It may, some would argue, have marked the birth of absurdist theater in American advertising. Long before there was a half naked Old Spice man, or a supply room clerk who could turn telephones into Skittles with the touch of his hand, there was an overgrown nocturnal, semi-aquatic rodent fond of pisswater beer and terrorizing the early settlers of the Western Plains.

I still remember when Evil Beaver made his debut. That was a fine time to be in advertising.

Evil Beaver didn't have his own Facebook page. He didn't tweet, he had far too much dignity for that. And he didn't maliciously chew threw the cnn.com page in some client's awful idea of a page-takeover.

He simply showed up on our TVs? And when he did, we would sing the Evil Beaver song. And we would play the Evil Beaver Air Guitar. And that would be enough.

Try watching it just once.







2 comments:

Anonymous said...

so who was the creative who did it?
i forgot it started with the "this is a miller lite TV spot" at the beginning. so i guess some things haven't changed.

Doug said...

The best.