By BY SANDRA GARCIA
In an effective message about body-weight obsession that’s both humorous and slightly unsettling, Leo Burnett Co., Toronto’s latest :30 in the "Look Good On Your Own Terms" campaign for Kellogg’s Special K stars a pasty-faced Chatty Cathy look-alike droning crash-diet dogma every time her cord is pulled. The absurdity of a doll that diets is used as a subtle, albeit eerie, way to encourage women to eat right all year, rather than doing so only as a post-holiday afterthought.
In "Diet Debbie," which looks like something straight out of early 1960s advertising, the title character appears in a number of situations-walking on a treadmill, jumping rope-while announcing, "I have to lose 20 pounds by February." Her dull eyes blink robotically-you expect her head to start spinning at any moment. The spot is accompanied by a generic jingle that chimes: "Introducing Diet Debbie: She crash diets!" A voiceover booms, "She’s making resolutions!" A Cindy Brady-esque child with a perma-grin plays with Diet Debbie, oblivious to its mantra, offering the doll a spot of tea, but Diet Debbie abstains, saying, "Only celery for me." The juxtaposition of Diet Debbie’s singsongy voice and her twisted message fills you with a tingly feeling of dread, and just when you think Debbie can’t possibly do or say anything more sinister, she appears in workout gear, doing Jane Fonda calisthenics and asking, "Am I thinner yet?" At the end of the spoof we get the classic product shot, with all of Diet Debbie’s accessories neatly displayed (treadmill sold separately), before the surreal black-and-white world finally fades to black and a simple message appears: "Why do we do this to ourselves every January? Why not just eat sensibly all year?"
"One of the ways to talk to women and not make it seem like we’re waving our fingers at them is to use other vehicles to say the message," explained Leo Burnett art director Kelly Zettel. "Instead of having a woman saying she hates her body, somehow it’s a little easier to swallow when you have a different vehicle saying it to you." The agency has been carrying out this positive body-image campaign for Special K since last year, when it produced ads that used a similar technique to underscore the absurdity of body-image obsession. You might recall the humorous"Bar Guys," which featured a bunch of guys in a bar issuing complaints about their bodies, including one man trying to come to grips with the fact that he has his mother’s thighs. In the case of Diet Debbie, the point is a bit more tactical: It talks specifically about New Year’s resolutions, and it began airing Dec. 30. The campaign, created in Toronto for the Canadian market, has been picked up by Leo Burnett Co., Chicago, and is now airing in the U.S.
Part of developing the new ad included a national telephone survey conducted for Special K. A poll of 1,007 adult men and women revealed that 76% of Americans believe women are more likely than men to make New Year’s resolutions. Nearly half (47%) of women said an important goal for 1999 is to lose weight, and among the women polled, almost one quarter said they would like to lose 30 pounds next year! With so many delusional women out there, Leo Burnett is trying to expunge the traditional practices of the weight-loss season.
Creating the Diet Debbie character was tricky on a couple different levels. The agency had to be careful to send the right message, especially when a little girl appears in the spot playing with a doll that crash diets. To keep the gods of political correctness happy, the little girl actress appears in none of the shots in which the doll speaks. According to Zettel, the commercial looks dated so that people will understand right away that it is a parody. "As a rule, all the stuff for Special K is shot in black and white, so it kind of made sense to make it a bit of a retro-looking thing, and we also didn’t want little girls thinking that it was a real spot for today," she said.
It was director Francine McDougall via Avion Film Productions, Toronto (McDougall is represented in the U.S. by bicoastal X-Ray Productions), who found a ’60s Chatty Cathy doll and used it as a model for the Diet Debbie character. "It’s funny, when you pull Chatty Cathy’s string she says, "Feed me,’ " laughed McDougall. Toronto-based special effects doll-maker Ron Stefanuck designed the spot doll with Chatty Cathy in mind; after casting several molds of the head, he arrived at the right look. Commented Zettel, "At first her mouth had this creepy, joker look to it, so we changed it."
To create a genuine ’60s feel, McDougall took hints from a reel of children’s toy commercials from the ’50s and ’60s: She found they were all quite similar. "They all had a little girl in the same kind of outfit, with the same kind of hairdo, and it was usually in a bedroom and the acting was always the same-bad. It was quite astounding really," she said. Part of staying true to the period meant composing an infectious jingle that haunts you long after the spot is over. "At first, the spot was supposed to only have a voiceover, but when we watched the old commercials nearly all of them were jingles, and that’s when it changed," said McDougall. Taking cues from the old school of jingle-writing, music arranger Doug Riley of The Einstein Brothers, Toronto, nailed it.
According to freelance producer Jennifer Base, McDougall did a huge amount of testing with black-and-white Polaroids to see how colors would appear in the spot. Coloring the set in hot pink and bright purple translated into the same medium gray tones characteristic of 1960s television-and the over-the-top look of the bedroom really appealed to the young actress. "In commercials from the ’50s and ’60s, everything was so obviously a set. They never even tried to make it look real," mused McDougall, who had painted a picture of a tree with a smiley-face sun and placed it outside the girl’s bedroom window. "Unfortunately, that shot didn’t make the final cut."
Damon Wayans and Damon Wayans Jr. Explore Generations, Old School vs. New School, In “Poppa’s House”
Boundaries between work and family don't just blur in the new CBS sitcom "Poppa's House" starring father-and-son comedy duo Damon Wayans and Damon Wayans Jr. They shatter.
"It's wonderful to come to work every day and see him and some of his kids and my sister and my brother and nieces and nephews. They all work on this show. They all contribute," says the senior Wayans. "I don't think there are words to express how joyful I am."
Wayans plays the titular Poppa, a curmudgeonly radio DJ who's more than comfortable doing it his way, while Wayans Jr. plays his son, Damon, a budding filmmaker who's stuck in a job he hates.
"My character, Pop, is just an old school guy who's kind of stuck in his ways," says Wayans, who starred in "In Living Color" and "My Wife and Kids."
Pop yearns for the days when a handshake was a binding contract and Michael Jordan didn't complain if he got fouled on the court. Pop laughs at the younger generation's participation trophies.
"It's old school versus new school and them teaching each other lessons from both sides," says Wayans Jr., who played Coach in the Fox sitcom "New Girl."
"They (the characters) bring the best out in each other and they're resistant initially. But then throughout the episode they have revelations and these revelations help them become better people," he adds.
The two have worked together before — dad made an appearance on son's "Happy Endings" and "Happy Together," while son was a writer and guest star on dad's "My Wife and Kids." But this is the first time they have headlined a series together.
The half-hour comedy — premiering Monday and co-starring Essence Atkins and Tetona Jackson — smartly leaves places in the script where father and son can let... Read More