Howard Zieff, a film and television commercial director whose works included Private Benjamin and My Girl, has died. He was 81.
Zieff died Sunday of Parkinson’s disease in Los Angeles, said his wife Ronda Gomez-Quinones.
Zieff was a legendary commercial director before he successfully dovetailed into features. He is credited with helping to change the face of American advertising in the 1960s with such classic, humorous slice-of-life vignette TV spots as Alka-Seltzer’s “Spicy Meatball” and Volkswagen’s “Funeral.” In fact Time magazine described Zieff as being “master of the mini-ha-ha” based on his comedy commercials. But his work was more than comedy. It was thoughtful wit as reflected in the VW and Alka-Seltzer fare which contributed to the 1960s being dubbed by many as the golden age of advertising.
Prior to his spotmaking exploits, Zieff was known for his magazine ads, including a memorable series for Levi’s Real Jewish Rye Bread that featured an American Indian, an African-American lad and a Chinese man enjoying a piece of rye bread. Each ad featured the tagline, “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s.”
Goldie Hawn, who received an Oscar nomination for best actress for her role in Private Benjamin in 1980, said Zieff “had a special talent for directing comedies, always a rare gift.”
“What I remember and cherish most was his humor and love of laughter,” Hawn said in a statement.
Born in Chicago in 1927, Zieff grew up in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles and was a photographer for the Navy after World War II.
He moved to New York in the 1950s and worked his way up from a job as a photo assistant to become an influential commercial photographer on Madison Avenue.
He is survived by his wife and his sister.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More