Post by zuolun on Aug 10, 2015 12:56:00 GMT 7
Release the condor: There is no real link between specific "disastrous" events and the performance of the stock market ~ 20 July 2015
West chester story slam: A true story related by retired ad-man Eli Silberman ~ 13 Aug 2011
Release the condor ~ Instead of soaring into the sky, the condor plummeted hundreds of feet to its death because after years of captivity it had forgotten how to fly.
I spent fourteen years at one of the largest ad firms in the world, in New York, a company called McCann-Erickson. One of our clients was Buick.
Buick was going to introduce a new car, and they asked us to come out with the advertising campaign. And we worked on it for about two months. We had some great stuff. We all got... five of us flew out to Detroit to Buick's headquarters: big conference room, take out our big portfolios, take out the TV story boards, go through all these great commercials. And the client sat there, looking at us, and they actively etested it. They hated it.
So, we all went back to New York, and started working on another series of TV commercials to introduce this new Buick. And about a month later, a group of us fly back to Detroit, more campaigns, same conference room, take out the story boards with great enthusiasm, I present it so that the team leaves stuff. and they hated this stuff even more than the first stuff. So, we get back on the plane to come back to New York, and we're all very dejected.
And before we left, they said 'Guys, it's now May. We're introducing this car. These commercials have to run in September. We do not have a lot of time.'
So, by this time, the tension's running high at the ad agency. We come up with some more stuff. I actually came up with this idea: We go back out to Detroit, and very tentatively -- our confidence is gone, now -- we presented for the third time, and they loved it. And the idea was, very, very simply, to show a condor, which has the largest wingspan of any bird in the world, just soaring through the skies, and this would be shot out in the West, in the Monument country, with great great cliffs. On a long ribbon of highway is this Buick, beautiful mood music, superimpose the condor over the Buick, and just sheer drama, hardly any voiceover.
They said 'This is great!' On the plane back, we're celebrating, drinking gin tonics, having a wonderful time, 'We did it!', and that's why when we settled in the conference room at McCann-Erickson, there's this hot TV-film director out in L.A. we were going to use. We figured out how we were going to shoot it and all, and then somebody said: 'Wait a minute. We now have to find a condor, to film it. Oh, my God, we forgot about that'.
So, we have a worldwide search to find a condor in captivity that we can film. After two weeks, we struck gold: We found the only condor in the world_ in captivity, in a zoo in Lima, Peru. So, we call up the zoo, and say 'We're going to make your condor famous. We'd love to come down and film the condor.' And the zoo wasn't interested. They didn't want these New York ad guys coming down to Lima to film their bird.
Suddenly, somebody said 'Wait a minute. This is General Motors. General Motors has lobbyists in Washington. The lobbyists know politicians. Why don't we get somebody in Washington to call the embassy in Lima, or the consulate in Lima, to get to somebody who's on the Board of the zoo, to get permission to go down to Lima to film the condor. And that's exactly what happened.
So, we sent a location person down there. She found a great spot, outside of Lima on this cliff. And, a month later, this great film production company from L.A., guys from Detroit (our client), and we from New York, all show up in Lima, Peru. Very early in the morning, we're all on the cliff. And way off in the distance, to a dusty dirt road, we see the sun is coming up, and we see this dust coming from a truck. And, as the truck got closer, it looks like one of these Brinks armoured-car trucks, and that was the truck from the zoo.
There must have been about thirty of us, on the cliff. We had a helicopter with a new camera mount called a Steadicam, where somebody could hang out of the helicopter and film. We had a camera on either side of the cliff. The zoo truck pulls up, and there's two guys in the truck, and they're wearing uniforms that look like they're admirals in the American Navy, including scrambled eggs on their caps, and they were the zookeepers. They opened up the back of the Brinks armoured-car truck, and there, in a big cage, was the only condor in the world in captivity, and he was not looking very happy: He looked sick.
The two zookeepers struggle to get the bird to the edge of the cliff, they take him out, they have him on the thing like this [spreads arms out] on the pole, they undid the pin... the chain.
The directors says 'OK, camera on helicopter, helicopter ready.' And the helicopter is like 100 yards off the cliff. Chop-chop-chopping. Guys hanging out of it with a camera. Says 'Camera on the left, ready. Camera on the right, rolling. Camera rolling, ready. The zookeepers have the bird like this [stretches arms out], and the director says 'Release the condor!'
They go like that [flings arms forward], and, instead of soaring into the sky, the condor plummets 300 feet to its death.
And it was as if this film company from L.A., these New York guys, and the guys from Detroit, all assembled on this cliff outside of Lima to murder the only condor in the world in captivity.
Now, for months afterwards, whenever there was a real screwup at McCann-Erickson, it was followed by somebody saying 'Release the condor!'
Incidentally, this was written up in the newyorker, and made advertising history, way back when I was in New York and dinosaurs were ruling the earth.
West chester story slam: A true story related by retired ad-man Eli Silberman ~ 13 Aug 2011
Release the condor ~ Instead of soaring into the sky, the condor plummeted hundreds of feet to its death because after years of captivity it had forgotten how to fly.
I spent fourteen years at one of the largest ad firms in the world, in New York, a company called McCann-Erickson. One of our clients was Buick.
Buick was going to introduce a new car, and they asked us to come out with the advertising campaign. And we worked on it for about two months. We had some great stuff. We all got... five of us flew out to Detroit to Buick's headquarters: big conference room, take out our big portfolios, take out the TV story boards, go through all these great commercials. And the client sat there, looking at us, and they actively etested it. They hated it.
So, we all went back to New York, and started working on another series of TV commercials to introduce this new Buick. And about a month later, a group of us fly back to Detroit, more campaigns, same conference room, take out the story boards with great enthusiasm, I present it so that the team leaves stuff. and they hated this stuff even more than the first stuff. So, we get back on the plane to come back to New York, and we're all very dejected.
And before we left, they said 'Guys, it's now May. We're introducing this car. These commercials have to run in September. We do not have a lot of time.'
So, by this time, the tension's running high at the ad agency. We come up with some more stuff. I actually came up with this idea: We go back out to Detroit, and very tentatively -- our confidence is gone, now -- we presented for the third time, and they loved it. And the idea was, very, very simply, to show a condor, which has the largest wingspan of any bird in the world, just soaring through the skies, and this would be shot out in the West, in the Monument country, with great great cliffs. On a long ribbon of highway is this Buick, beautiful mood music, superimpose the condor over the Buick, and just sheer drama, hardly any voiceover.
They said 'This is great!' On the plane back, we're celebrating, drinking gin tonics, having a wonderful time, 'We did it!', and that's why when we settled in the conference room at McCann-Erickson, there's this hot TV-film director out in L.A. we were going to use. We figured out how we were going to shoot it and all, and then somebody said: 'Wait a minute. We now have to find a condor, to film it. Oh, my God, we forgot about that'.
So, we have a worldwide search to find a condor in captivity that we can film. After two weeks, we struck gold: We found the only condor in the world_ in captivity, in a zoo in Lima, Peru. So, we call up the zoo, and say 'We're going to make your condor famous. We'd love to come down and film the condor.' And the zoo wasn't interested. They didn't want these New York ad guys coming down to Lima to film their bird.
Suddenly, somebody said 'Wait a minute. This is General Motors. General Motors has lobbyists in Washington. The lobbyists know politicians. Why don't we get somebody in Washington to call the embassy in Lima, or the consulate in Lima, to get to somebody who's on the Board of the zoo, to get permission to go down to Lima to film the condor. And that's exactly what happened.
So, we sent a location person down there. She found a great spot, outside of Lima on this cliff. And, a month later, this great film production company from L.A., guys from Detroit (our client), and we from New York, all show up in Lima, Peru. Very early in the morning, we're all on the cliff. And way off in the distance, to a dusty dirt road, we see the sun is coming up, and we see this dust coming from a truck. And, as the truck got closer, it looks like one of these Brinks armoured-car trucks, and that was the truck from the zoo.
There must have been about thirty of us, on the cliff. We had a helicopter with a new camera mount called a Steadicam, where somebody could hang out of the helicopter and film. We had a camera on either side of the cliff. The zoo truck pulls up, and there's two guys in the truck, and they're wearing uniforms that look like they're admirals in the American Navy, including scrambled eggs on their caps, and they were the zookeepers. They opened up the back of the Brinks armoured-car truck, and there, in a big cage, was the only condor in the world in captivity, and he was not looking very happy: He looked sick.
The two zookeepers struggle to get the bird to the edge of the cliff, they take him out, they have him on the thing like this [spreads arms out] on the pole, they undid the pin... the chain.
The directors says 'OK, camera on helicopter, helicopter ready.' And the helicopter is like 100 yards off the cliff. Chop-chop-chopping. Guys hanging out of it with a camera. Says 'Camera on the left, ready. Camera on the right, rolling. Camera rolling, ready. The zookeepers have the bird like this [stretches arms out], and the director says 'Release the condor!'
They go like that [flings arms forward], and, instead of soaring into the sky, the condor plummets 300 feet to its death.
And it was as if this film company from L.A., these New York guys, and the guys from Detroit, all assembled on this cliff outside of Lima to murder the only condor in the world in captivity.
Now, for months afterwards, whenever there was a real screwup at McCann-Erickson, it was followed by somebody saying 'Release the condor!'
Incidentally, this was written up in the newyorker, and made advertising history, way back when I was in New York and dinosaurs were ruling the earth.
