Andrea Bernstein - Power For Living

Been watching TV lately? On the Media has, and we noticed some unusual commercials. Andrea Bernstein prepared this report.

SFX: I'm afraid for my children, I don't know how I'm going to manage. I'm afraid of what tomorrow might bring. I'm frightened of getting old I don't know how I'm going to manage without my husband...

NARRATION: This ad has been airing in Buffalo, New Orleans, Seattle, New York, and a host of other markets. It's not hawking a detox program or the Psychic Friends Network. It's not even an ad for Prozac! This is an advertisement for a book.

SFX: AD: (male narrator) Now there's a book that can help us cope with life's problems, yours free by calling this toll-free number.

NARRATION: Best of all:
SFX: AD: (male narrator)...no obligation and no one will call.

NARRATION: If you dial the 800 number listed on the screen, you'll get a book, called Power for Living, which contains testimonials from born-again Christians and urges you to develop a personal relationship with God.

NARRATION: The ad, and three others like it, feature middle to upper middle class men and women-most of them white, all of them profoundly miserable. In a second commercial for Power for Living, a thirty-something woman bursts into tears as she tells an off-screen friend that her husband just got promoted and her children are doing great. Jerry Della Femina is an advertising executive in New York City.

AX: Della Femina: Looking at that commercial, I think it's going to be an incredibly successful commercial. What are they offering? Something free and they're not going to bother you, that's a pretty good offer.

NARRATION: These are not just the kind of ads you see if you have insomnia. Their sponsor, the Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation, spent three quarters of a million dollars buying air time as of November, the last month for which statistics were available, according to Competitive Media Reports. But in December, the ad buy was upped, and Della Femina and other ad execs say the buy is now well into the millions.

NARRATION: None of the advertisements ask you to spend any money or take any action other than reading the book. We called the DeMoss Foundation, to ask about their advertising campaign. But stating a desire to quote "not seek publicity," the foundation would only fax out a one-page statement.

NARRATION: "The objective of the Power for Living project" the statement said "is to acquaint as many people as possible with the biblical account of how people can know God in a personal way."

NARRATION: Peter Donald is a staff reporter for the Palm Beach Post, who has been following the DeMoss Foundation for several years. According to Donald, the DeMoss Foundation, based in West Palm Beach Florida, was founded by the widow of a wealthy Pennsylvania insurance executive who made his fortune selling health insurance to non-drinking, non-smoking Christians. Says, Donald, the DeMoss Foundation.

AX: Donald: assets are about $450 million, they give away $30 million annually...according to the last Foundation Center estimate they were 48th in giving out of 47,000 foundations in the country.

NARRATION: And who do they give that money to?

AX: Donald: It ranges from Pat Robertson -- the American center for Law and Justice, the legal think tank, which is $1.6 million in 1997, the National Coalition for Children and Families, an anti-pornography group out of Cincinnati, which received $2 million in 1996, and close to half a million in 1997. They have a whole pro-life agenda, things that give a special emphasis to anti-abortion issues.

NARRATION: That emphasis was explicit in another ad campaign paid for by the DeMoss foundation, you may have seen it a few years ago.

SFX: AD (male narrator): All of these children have one thing in common...all of them were unplanned pregnancies, pregnancies that could have ended in abortion but their parents toughed it out, listened to their hearts, and discovered that sometimes the best things in life aren't planned. Life, what a beautiful choice.

NARRATION: The ad features beautiful, rosy-faced children leaving a church, dressed in Halloween costumes, smiling into the camera.

NARRATION: Even Kate Michaelman, Executive Director of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, had high praise for those commercials.

AX: Michaelman: I think they were very, very clever ads and very well done ads, no question about it...where they really say there's only one choice allowed women and yet they make it sound as if there's more than one choice.

NARRATION: In fact, the DeMoss foundation spent upwards of $40 million on those ads. The producer was Phil Dusenberry, architect of the "Morning in America" campaign for former President Ronald Reagan, one of the most memorable presidential ad campaigns in history. Dusenberry also produced the Power for Living advertisements. We called Dusenberry, but citing the Demoss Foundation's wishes, he also didn't want to discuss the campaign.

NARRATION:. So we asked ad exec Della Femina why he thought the DeMoss campaign was running spending tens of millions of dollars to run its commercials in prime time across the country.

AX: Della Femina: If you're in the DeMoss camp you really believe the world is against you, the media is against you...The only way to have a voice against the newscasts, against Washington, against Bill Clinton, against whomever you want to get to is to have your own voice and there's nothing better than having enough money to spend 40 million to get out your side.

NARRATION: Still, there's a difference between the abortion issue ads and the Power for Living ads, says the Palm Beach Post's Donald.

AX: Donald: People are noticing this campaign but it doesn't have the heat. When you throw yourself into the abortion debate that's going to bring heat very quickly either on one side or the other. This is a book they've been promoting for years.

NARRATION: In fact, says Donald, he first became acquainted with Power for Living at a dinner eleven years ago when he was invited to a black tie dinner at the Waldorf, sponsored by the DeMoss Foundation.

AX: Donald: You were invited to join in prayer, you were invited to fill out a card that says yes I'm interested in finding the Lord and having a relationship with God...

NARRATION: And when he filled out the card, he got a book: Power for Living.
AX: Donald...what they were trying to do was attract moneyed people and people of influence to hear the message.

NARRATION: That seems to be what the DeMoss foundation is still trying to do, with its Power for Living commercials, but on a much, much larger scale. Apparently pleased with the results of the single issue, Life: What a Beautiful Choice campaign, they're now promoting their born again Christian beliefs -trying to reach larger audience through the mass media airwaves.

NARRATION: Jerry Mosier, who has created ad campaigns for the Presbyterian church, says ads can be one way to draw disenfranchised people back to organized religion.

AX: Mosier: We did that trying to take some marketing techniques that have worked predominantly in politics to try to convince people that the church still exists and it's a place to come...

NARRATION: Still, Mosier thinks the DeMoss ads have more in common with the earliest of issue ads, those run in the mid-1980's by Exxon and the W.R. Grace corporation to try to shape public opinion on oil drilling rights and the deficit, respectively.

AX: Mosier: they had causes but they really weren't trying to change one specific piece of legislation or to call their congressman...There were bigger issues as opposed to one issue type of issue ads. It's the same thing with this spot, this kind of hearkens back to the early era. They just want to make a point They're bypassing the intermediaries. They're going directly to the people. They're doing what the evangelists did.

NARRATION: And says ad exec Della Femina, if the DeMoss Foundation wants to inspire more Americans to become born-again Christians, they're likely to do just that with this campaign.

Della Femina: The thing that people should not do about this campaign is underestimate it. It is very, very clever, It is very well done. It is put together by people who really know what they are doing. It is not to be sluffed off.

For On The Media, I'm Andrea Bernstein.
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John Carroll - Are you watching the football game, or the ads?

ANCHOR: Tonight's Super Bowl broadcast will earn the Fox television network $93 million in advertising sales, with commercial time going for more than $3 million a minute. But many advertisers think it's worth every penny, given the anticipated audience of 130 million viewers worldwide. With that many potential customers watching, advertisers often use the Super Bowl to launch new ad campaigns and new products. Apple Computer did just that when it introduced the Macintosh in its classic "1984" commercial. Nike, Pepsi, Chrysler - all have used the Big Game as a launching pad. Commentator John Carroll says this year is no exception.

Super Bowl broadcasts are the singles bar of advertising - a place to meet new people, try out a few snappy lines, and possibly make a date to get together in the future. This year's Super Bowl has the usual contingent of fresh faces, including the World Wrestling Federation, which will spend a million and a half dollars to convince us of what we've known all along - that televised wrestling is genuinely fake. Geez - next thing you know, Nathan Lane will reveal that he's gay.

Another newcomer to the big broadcast is the venerable Cracker Jack, which will use its first Super Bowl ad to introduce new package sizes.

SFX: CUT #1 FROM CRACKER JACK SPOT

IN CUE: Now Cracker Jack comes in new snack size and
OUT CUE: we're now testing the really really big bag

The ad shows a sofa-size bag of Cracker Jack strapped to the roof of a car, crushing a fan at a ballgame, and under a Christmas tree, where a young girl struggles to pull out the prize inside.
SFX: CUT #2 FROM CRACKER JACK SPOT IN CUE: Really really big bag not yet available in stores OUT CUE: 'Mommy, Mommy - I got a pony!"

M&M/Mars joins the junk food parade with the introduction of the animated Crispy M&M, who melts at the thought of being eaten. One ad shows Crispy sitting at the counter of a diner.

SFX: CUT FROM M&M'S SPOT
IN CUE: So I says to the guy, of course I'm paranoid
OUT CUE: what it's like to be hunted for food. Nobody.

At that point, a turkey sidles up to the counter. Your gobble punchline goes here.
This year's Super Bowl finally answers the question: is anything too tasteless for the Fox network to air. In fact, there is - namely the initial Super Bowl ad submitted by Hotjobs.com, an Internet job recruitment site. The spot featured an elephant sitting on a circus worker, who promptly disappeared into - well, you figure it out. Fox executives certainly did, and they rejected the ad.

But Hotjobs bounced back with a much tamer spot that shows a security guard who fantasizes about becoming a financier, an actor, or a scientist who clones go-go dancers.

SFX: CUT FROM HOTJOBS SPOT
IN CUE: Where can you find your dream job? Hotjobs.com
OUT CUE: so you'll find your perfect job. "Bingo!"

Turns out the security guard winds up as . . . a security guard, but with a better desk and uniform. If none of these ads sounds especially snappy, that's because - just like folks in singles bars - Super Bowl ads tend to try too hard.

John Carroll is a producer and media critic for WGBH-TV in Boston.
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Tony Kahn - Where's the Honor in this Honorary Award

Elia Kazan never named my father as a communist, but he might have, if they'd been friends. Both had been communists in the film industry and, back then, you named your friends and comrades in the Party to the House Un-American Activities Committee to prove you were a loyal American -- and to keep your job. When my father was named -- by friends -- he spent the rest of his life on a blacklist cut off by the industry, followed by the FBI, and unable to earn a penny under his real name. I say this by way of full disclosure, to identify myself as a victim of the Hollywood Blacklist and no supporter of the denunciations in which Mr. Kazan took part.

Ironically, both those who named names and those who refused to, offered the same reasons. They said they did it for us, their children -- to keep us from going hungry, if they didn't cooperate, or from living a lie, if they caved in. In a sense, we owe them an account of what we learned.

I learned that nothing can corrode a society faster than fear. America, the world's greatest democracy, nearly became a police state during that period without a single shot being fired. It became a nation where, to prove they were loyal Americans, people informed on each other and men and women even just rumored to be communists lost their income, their reputation, and their careers.

In voting him an honorary Oscar -- an Oscar, in a sense, not just for his work but for his life, including his participation in the blacklist - the Academy is saying the past is past. What bothers me is that we're told it was voted unanimously, without debate. The past is not just past; apparently, it isn't even worth mentioning. But it should be mentioned. Especially since, in his work, Mr. Kazan has raised the subject himself.

In the early 1950s Mr. Kazan got an Oscar for a movie he directed called "On the Waterfront," written by Budd Schulberg, who also won an Oscar for the film -- and who named names himself. The hero is a solitary soul who informs on his union bosses, a bunch of thugs who outnumber and outmuscle him ten to one. But, the people Kazan and Schulberg informed on were in such a minority they were voted out of their unions and stripped of the movie credits they had earned. In the case of the so-called Hollywood Ten, they were sent to jail for a year by a vote of Congress for refusing to name names themselves.
Now, I don't question Mr. Kazan's or Mr. Schulberg's talent, but I wonder at the emotions that made them so misrepresent the power of the enemies they crushed. To my knowledge, nothing Mr. Kazan has written or said publicly since has come any closer to acknowledging his true feelings at the time or the consequences of what he did on other people's lives.

Maybe the members of the Academy think the Hollywood Blacklist is irrelevant -- that the story of American citizens reduced to denunciation and fear doesn't sell. Maybe they think it's a story with no potential for a sequel. I disagree. If we aren't clear about how quickly and easily almost anyone can succumb to fear, then what happened fifty years ago can happen again.

And since I believe one of the best ways we as a society can learn the lessons of history is through movies, I'd like to make a suggestion that might make everyone happy - those who say the past is past and those who say there are lessons to be learned:

Go ahead and give Mr. Kazan the honorary Oscar that caps his career, but only if he helps produce a movie that takes us back to those times and shows us what he and so many others really went through before they named names. Make it vivid; make it honest; make it make us wonder what we would have done ourselves. Maybe he'd even bring the best thing about him -- his talent - to directing it. Mr. Kazan, gentlemen of the Academy, let me assure you, that would be a picture I'd pay to see.

Tony Kahn is host and special correspondent for PRI's The World and a panelist on public radio's new quiz show, Says You. He also produced, "Blacklisted: A Personal History of the Hollywood Blacklist"