When Archer-Daniels Midland Corporation, the largest agribusiness in the universe, hired David Brinkley as its commercial spokesman, it seemed controversial. Brinkley, a TV newscaster of some 40 years' experience, was being held to a standard of "objectivity," since he was a "journalist." Furthermore, ADM was a continuing sponsor of Brinkley's Sunday morning public affairs program, This Week.
But that died down quickly. Before Brinkley retired, the ads were prefaced with a statement to the effect that what followed was not objective and hence not journalism. Even now, the ads sometimes contain tiny printed provisos. Besides, as some more perspicacious commentators observed, what Brinkley did on This Week hardly qualified as journalism anyway. And of course, TV news has always been in the back pocket of big biz, so who cares?
Well if Brinkley isn't a journalist and isn't objective, all ADM gets for its money is a cranky old fart who some people used to recognize. If he lives long into his 80s, Brinkley will be the next Wilfrid Brimley (the Quaker Oats guy).
All that is ancient history in advertising time. The reason I bring it up now is that I've recently started watching the Sunday shows again, and the ADM ads continue to impress.
The ads always contain copy that demonstrates with the precision of Thomas Aquinas ADM's proper place in the Chain of Being, atop all agribusiness, feeding the entire world, generally dominating all as the benevolent dictator of food. They hold on to this position through scientific advances in pursuit of the twin aims of nutrition and profit. When their noses are tickled by the pungent odors of the farm, they smell opportunity, they smell progress, they smell money.
But no one listens to that.
You'd think ADM would be a little more hip; after all, they're a trillion dollar business - they can afford smart kids from the best advertising schools. Why Brinkley? Why not George Stephanopolous? Not only do more people recognize Stephanopolous, but he has an obvious advantage in sex appeal. Why the boring, inflated copy? Why not something quippy?
Simple answer: The words and spokesman are inconsequential; Brinkley works cheap and the copy was written by a receptionist. Not that ADM is low-balling on PR. On the contrary, they're a corporation with staggering market savvy. Just look at the pictures.
For one thing, they are unearthly gorgeous images, filmed with devotion to every detail. How many mornings do you imagine the film crew must get up before dawn, set up their equipment and wait for sunrise, hoping finally to capture the perfect misty, dewy Iowa daybreak? And how much do you think they offer the farmer in the shot to wait for that damp day to drag the harvester along the side of that perfectly breast-shaped hillock, while the rest of his corn crop stands there?
Even the mundane experience of food is transfigured. One of my favorite ADM images is of a busty waitress in a diner lifting plates of food from the counter - plates at least 14 inches in diameter, piled 3 inches deep with food of every color.
Encoding the ideology of processed food into images of plenty, you say? Bosh. ADM is so far beyond ideology it's painful for their strategists to think at such low altitudes. Plus there's nothing ideological about food. Instead, the ads reach the mythological depths of the human encounter with food: food as security, as safety, as erotic object. Nothing about sticking the label of ADM on these images lends credence to the benefits of technological advancements in agriculture touted in Brinkley's slow drawl through the script. In fact, the images run directly counter to both, and reveal instead the deep longing, the unsatiable craving, the unholy lust human beings have for bountiful, excessive food.
To get that message across, to reach us where we live and breathe, ADM has to short-circuit critique by feeding it an overload of stuff. That whole ethical/political brouhaha is just so much intellectual cotton candy; the real meal is on the table, steaming, ready-to-eat, delectable. Listening to the ad copy and attempting to sort out the argument leaves plenty of eye-space to be filled up. Not listening to the copy leaves the situation unchanged, the images still potent. Open wide.