Word: adman
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...judges looked for ads that broke new ground. The Ally & Gargano agency's Federal Express ad shattered taboos against making fun of the customer. One runner-up, adman Hal Riney's first Bartles & Jaymes wine-cooler commercial, scored with tongue-in-cheek humility. Another winner, Wendy's 1984 "Where's the Beef?" slogan, created by Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample, became a political zinger in the hands of Walter Mondale. But as the 1984 election proved, even advertising has its limits...
...least good craft. Maas, who has skillfully dovetailed law-and-disorder in best sellers like Serpico and The Valachi Papers, proves adept at joining history to melodrama and to convincing plot twists with slightly implausible characterizations. A middle-aged New York City adman named McGuire turns into a modified James Bond to investigate the disappearance of a headstrong son, a Harvard student who was mixed up with running guns to the I.R.A. McGuire's metamorphosis may strain credulity, but his motives are authentically rooted in strong parental emotions...
...heroic adman learns that his son was set up to preserve the effectiveness of a British-run mole in the I.R.A. Maas cuts a clear line between his sympathy for the Irish cause and his aversion to cold-blooded violence. There is ice, too, in the veins of Britain's counterterrorists, and hypocrisy in the Republic of Ireland, whose constitution includes all of the Emerald Isle in its national territory. As one insider puts it, "It was an open secret that given its domestic economic woes, the last thing the republic's leadership wanted was to take on the burden...
...trouble developing an overall message, it failed to devise an advertising strategy. The so-called Future Group, the campaign's talented ad team, struggled through August without direction. Hundreds of scripts languished unmade, including several excoriating Bush. Meanwhile, internecine warfare broke out among the team's big egos. One adman even sought to purge Dukakis' closet of tacky ties and ill-fitting suits rather than focus on creating a national ad campaign...
...that produced more bitterness than ads. Among those produced was a semicoherent series ridiculing Bush's handlers. Although they are certain to form the core of Kennedy School seminars for the next four years, they baffled viewers. "His people weren't ready for the big time," said former Dukakis adman Ken Swope of the operation. "They weren't ready for hardball...