I remember the days when many people had favorite radio and television commercials, ones that went the extra mile for being clever and entertaining.

Maybe it’s a reflection of my age, but current commercials don’t seem to measure up to the best of the past. When they try to be funny, they aren’t especially amusing.

The emu commercials are a good example. The misadventures are silly but not exactly captivating. Viewers have to make a serious leap to focus on the product.

There are examples from the past that I still remember after many years. It’s not possible to name all of them, but I can give you a sample.

My two favorites with chewing gum we’re Freshen Up and Big Red. Freshen Up was “the gum that goes squirt.” Big Red had that “bold clean bite, and the big strong flavor that’s bound to hit you right.”

For beverages my favorite was the Nestea Plunge. Friends and I plunged backwards into the water at the Marshall pool just like people did in the commercials. It made Nestea seem refreshing.

For meat products it’s the Oscar Meyer Weiner song. It includes the phrase “I wish I was an Oscar Meyer Weiner. That’s what I’d truly like to be.”

A classmate of mine in elementary school even used the song as part of a short story. It was about a boy who was granted three wishes. He wasted the first one and had to use the second one to undo it. He saved his third wish and thought about it a lot, until the day he heard the Oscar Meyer Weiner commercial on the car radio and started singing along with. He lived out his days as a hot dog.

Cleaning products are usually not especially glamorous, but Bounty made a good effort to get its point across. It combined a paper towel demonstration with Bounty’s nickname as the Quicker Picker Upper.

The competition was a generic product. It was clearly not as thick or as absorbent.

It was effective because of how it’s annoying to have a paper towel that fails to pick up a mess. Consumers were likely to s reach for Bounty in hopes of avoiding that.

Restaurants had their fair share of slogans. Good examples were “remember the Embers” and “McDonald’s makes me happy.”

The one that seems to have the most staying power is the Burger King phrase “have it your way.” It focused on the customer, expressing a commitment to making menu items the way individuals wanted them.

Those are enough examples to show how advertising can become a creative process. If you look through an old Saturday Evening Post or Life Magazine you can find a lot of large colorful ads. They played a part in keeping the magazines profitable.

Sometimes you can find news in ads; like when someone wants to advertise a groundbreaking, a new business or new employees.

Having news in ads is all right. It’s important, however, to make sure we don’t go overboard with having advertising in news.

If the main purpose is to sell a product or service, it’s usually something a vendor should promote in paid ads. That’s especially true if one or more local competitors offer the same thing. There could be exceptions if the product or service is a totally new item. Each case should be carefully considered.

I enjoy collecting inexpensive advertising items. One of my larger collections is a set of old calendar mirrors that contain the phrase ‘turn this over and meet a friend of ours.” Customers turn it over and look at themselves in the mirror.

The old print ads are popular in frames. The only drawback is that they have to be cut out of magazines or newspapers. I’d rather own the whole edition. The old ads and the news and feature items leave a good multi-faceted impression.

Advertising has always been aimed at selling a product or service, giving it some kind of special appeal for the average consumer.

It can also inform or entertain, or possibly both. A little creativity can still sometimes go a long way toward marketing innovation.

— Jim Muchlinski is a longtime reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent