Simple promotions can often lend themselves to unusual promotion concepts. “Free Coke” consists of a plain, white rapper, a fake-bass singer and a synthesized base fiddle. This spot is what every client always wants: quick, cheap and memorable.

Often bankers sit around and ask themselves, “What is the brand of our bank?” It can be difficult to establish a unique selling position with services and facilities that are nearly identical to all your competition. Lake City Bank, an independent bank based in Warsaw, Indiana, had more branches exclusively in northern Indiana than any other independent bank (a competitor had more branches but also served Michigan, so not exclusive to northern Indiana) was in a position to brand themselves as “the home-town bank exclusively serving northern Indiana,” so in turn, all of northern Indiana became “Lake City.” This spot is part of a complete media campaign. Maybe not as clever as Washington Mutual, but at least LCB is still in business.

Here’s a little history lesson and a spot that introduces a category. Back in the 1980s, physicians had office hours weekdays and maybe Saturday morning. On nights and weekends, if you got a cut that needed stitches you went to the hospital emergency room. Needed a physical for school sports? Make an appointment for during the week during business hours.

Then, someone got the bright idea to have an medical office open after business hours that could tread non-emergency cases with less wait and less expense that the hospital emergency room. The category of “Doc-in-a-Box” was born, but it still had to be explained to the masses. The first-draft script was approved with no revisions by a committee of physicians. Incredible.

It’s a show at the Zoo. The bird trainer has big birds of prey fly right over the heads of the audience. There is an obvious opportunity for a joke about avian elimination here, feel free to compose one of your very own. It’s great fun to let Dan cut loose and have his way with a script.

Jerry Prokopowicz is one of the most intelligent people we have ever met, so of course, he didn’t have a chance in a general election. Jerry wrote this. His daughter came in for the session and voiced her character. Jerry was the researcher at The Louis A Warren Lincoln Library and Museum before the company that owned it decided to relieve itself the most significant collection of materials pertaining to Abraham Lincoln in private hands in the world.

When people referred to “long-haired music” before The Beatles, they were talking about classical music and male musicians. Not female musicians or composers. So, the Philharmonic decided to have a evening of art music composed by women. The first thing they said about this radio spot was, “Now, gender is a very sensitive subject. So, as much as we would like a spot that gets attention and is memorable, don’t do any jokes or anything, just make it a straight spot.” Alas, we could not comply.

There is nothing special about this spot, other than having a chance to hire a big baritone and put him up against a big orchestra at full tilt with brass blasting and chorus overwhelming. Had Verde called for cannons, he could have been a contender. Before there were amplifiers and synthesizers, there were very loud acoustic musical instruments and big baritones. This spot celebrates those halcyon days.

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