I'm retiring from AdReview for a lot of reasons, converging more or less by coincidence on my silver jubilee. The whys and wherefores follow, about 2,500 words below. For the moment, however, permit me to do a little reminiscing, some ruminating and some recapitulating. Let's travel to 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev took over the U.S.S.R., when Rock Hudson died and when the New Coke, the Tommy Hilfiger brand and AdReview were born. Mike Tyson had his first pro fight. Arab terrorists and the Unabomber committed murder and mayhem. The big movie was "Back to the Future." Ad agencies commanded a 15% commission. The New Orleans Saints sucked.
This gets a bit confusing, but I'd been recently hired from USA Today, where I was the advertising columnist, to do an Ad Age feature that had nothing whatsoever to do with advertising. It was a human-interest column syndicated to daily papers around the country, about American eccentricities -- a beat that led to a parallel career on public radio and eventually a collection titled "Waking Up Screaming From the American Deam." But over at our archrival, Barbara Lippert's Adweek Critique was generating a big following and I was seen as a potential answer. So, at Fred's request, I wrote a review about a Budget Rent-a-Car commercial starring the late midget celebrity Herve Villechaize. The sensitive headline (written by someone else, as all have been): "Budget's Villechaize Spot Comes Up Short."
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