Vault Week Part Two

Today's blast from the past comes courtesy of Bill Hornstein.

This was a little mini-campaign that came in Year Two of the ABC Yellow extravaganza.

After we made hay of defending television and celebrating the general boobiness of the boob tube, we had to get down to the heavy lifting of promoting the shows. This proved to be quite difficult as the shows the network had decided to air were frankly not quite airworthy.

Stilted, stagey sitcoms that had that vitamin aroma one often finds in an home designated for assisted living.

No one was standing around the water cooler the next day talking about the hijinks seen the previous night on shows like Hiller and Diller or Over the Top (which sadly was not an over-promise).

As the agency of record, we were not asked to do the typical slice-and-dice network promos that have become to bladders what Pavlov's bell was to a dog's salivary gland.

The network asked for something more conceptual.

And for better or worse -- worse as you'll soon see -- we rose to the challenge.

It's not easy to promote three crappy sitcoms in twenty seconds and have it ladder up to the Wednesday Night Comedy Showcase that the client had hoped would become appointment TV. Particularly on a budget of $5000.

Check out the first of three spots.

That's right there were two more in this painful series. Thankfully, they're in a part of the vault that is currently inaccessible.

I'll never forget the look on the client's faces when we presented this little trilogy.

"They're not funny," said the client.

"They're not supposed to be. We were going for unfunny." I replied.

"And you have succeeded fantastically."