MARKETING: Polyester pitchmen had it right

CHICAGO - Nick Celozzi and Maury Ettleson were fighting a bad case of the giggles.

Outside their Chevrolet dealership in the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst, Ill., they tried to keep straight faces for the taping of one of their infamous TV commercials. But take after take broke down in howls of laughter.

After six attempts, the pair kept it together long enough to belt out the familiar Celozzi-Ettleson tag line: "where you always save more money."

"When you start laughing, you can't stop. Maury had this high-pitched voice, and when I heard it, I thought it was funny," says Celozzi as he watches the outtakes from the 1983 commercial in his Elmhurst office.

"We had a lot of fun," says Ettleson of the commercials that made him and his former partner local celebrities. "People still remember them."

Can't get them out of their heads is more like it. Jingles and tag lines from Celozzi-Ettleson and at least a dozen other local car dealers still ring in the ears of Chicagoans old enough to recall their 1970s heyday.

"Singing Ford Man" Harry Schmerler's rendition of "Rock-a-bye My Baby," Bob Rohrman's trademark roar, the Long Chevrolet kid's grating cries of "Extra! Extra!" and Erwin Weil's invitation to "a beautiful place in the country" - all are hard-wired into the brains of consumers who have tuned out today's barrage of blander commercial messages. They weren't pretty, polished or even particularly professional, but they connected with viewers and moved a lot of metal.

Celozzi-Ettleson's spots helped make the dealership the top-selling Chevrolet franchise in the United States. The dealership spent $1 million annually on TV commercials.

Today, independently produced dealer commercials are fading from the scene, victims of higher airtime costs and the fragmentation of the TV audience. In their place has come a slicker but less distinctive format produced by local dealer associations.

"The days of those dealers are gone," says Mike Sedivy, a partner in Chicago-based Cantele Sedivy & Associates Advertising Inc., whose clients once included Celozzi-Ettleson. "Most of the advertising is done by the manufacturers or dealers associations, and most of it is factory footage."

But the blow-dried, polyester-clad pitchmen of yesteryear may hold the answer to today's most perplexing advertising problem: how to break through the clutter of commercial messages bombarding consumers from an ever-expanding array of media outlets.

"Those old ads, while somewhat annoying, can be great for brand awareness," says ad executive Mike DiMaio, who has worked with car dealers and is with Chicago's Burrell Communications Group.

"Annoying" is a mild term for the effect of Little Timmy, the Depression-era newsboy in knickers and a floppy cap who screeched "Extra! Extra!" for Long Chevrolet in Elmhurst. But he put the now-defunct dealership on the map. Sales shot up from 150 cars a month to 800 after the spots first aired in the 1970s, says former owner Jim Long.

"There was such a dislike for the commercial that it worked," Long says. "People came in talking about that commercial. They came in and said, 'I hate that ad.' It was like magic."

In contrast to today's focus-group-tested, committee-vetted advertising, the auto dealers' commercials were ad hoc, often concocted by the dealers themselves. Long found his inspiration during a family vacation.

"I was down in Florida watching goofy ads on TV, trying to figure out a scheme," says Long, who now sells BMWs in Westmont, Ill. "I looked over and saw my nephew, Timmy, who was about 12 at the time. He had on this cap that I used to wear while driving my convertible to keep my balding head from getting sunburned. He had rolled up his jeans, and they looked like knickers. That was it. We wanted to make him look like a newsboy."

They made the spots on the cheap, spending only about $1,500 on production but about $125,000 a month to buy TV time.

"TV was a lot different back then," Long says. "You could advertise on three stations and get nearly 100 percent of the market. Today, it is so spread out."

Production values weren't much higher at Long's chief rival, Celozzi-Ettleson. Celozzi was the idea man, writing his own scripts but occasionally falling back on improvisation.

When he dreamed up the "where you always save more money" tag line, Celozzi envisioned dollar bills raining down on him and Ettleson. During the filming, an employee stood on a ladder and tossed armloads of bills when cued.

"But being new in the acting of commercials, we had a lot of takes and couldn't get our timing right," Celozzi says.

Filming stopped as the crew collected bills off the floor after every botched take. After the umpteenth mistimed greenback shower, the frustrated dealers scooped up wads of cash and waved them at the camera, creating their now-famous gesture.

Amateurish in their delivery and shameless in their showmanship, the dealers connected with viewers in a way that professional spokesmen rarely do. They came across as regular guys who fit in with their largely middle-class clientele.

The spots allowed customers to size up not only the dealers but sometimes the cars themselves. Every Friday night during the 1970s, a caravan of cars pulled out of the Bert Weinman Ford lot on Chicago's north side and rolled down Addison Street to the WGN-TV/Channel 9 studios, where they would serve as props in a two-minute spot that spokesman Linn Burton taped each week. Saturday morning, they'd be back on the lot, ready for sale.

"It was all done as if it were a live performance," says Ron Patris, a sales representative and producer for WGN who attended some of those tapings. "Linn Burton did all those ads off cue cards for the whole two minutes. He was very good."

So good that many viewers believed Burton was actually Bert Weinman.

"Everybody thought he was my dad," says Lee Weinman, son of the retired Bert and president of the dealership.

The younger Weinman says he can't afford his father's brand of advertising: "We used to have two-minute ads. That's unheard of in today's world."

A rare dealer who still appears in his own commercials, Erwin Weil of Weil Oldsmobile-Cadillac in Libertyville, Ill., ("I'll make it worth your Weil") was reluctant when his ad agency suggested 10 years ago that he take to the airwaves. He still seems ambivalent about his celebrity.

"I'm not one for the limelight," Weil says. "I know a lot of other dealers like it, but I don't. I guess I came off good. At least they said I did."

He's more certain about the results. "It's expensive, but it has a lot of reach," he says. "You get what you pay for."

But the likes of Weil and Al Piemonte of Melrose Park, Ill., are the last of a breed as more dealers opt to stay in the background or shift their commercials to local cable channels. Joe Rizza advertises heavily on TV, but uses mainly automaker-supplied stock footage. About one-third of his company's $5 million advertising budget is spent on broadcast and cable TV ads.

Though Celozzi and Ettleson sold their dealership and parted ways in 2000, both remained in the car business and made cameo appearances together in ads for Bud Light and Domino's Pizza.

Ettleson still appears in commercials for his La Grange Cadillac-Buick-Oldsmobile dealership, but they're gimmick-free. "It takes on a different message and a different approach," he says. "And we're not spending the kind of money we once did."

This year, Celozzi closed his Ford-Chrysler dealership in Waukegan, Ill., and declared bankruptcy after a former business partner was indicted on fraud charges. He hopes to get back into business soon with a dealership in Chicago Heights.

While watching the old videotapes in his Elmhurst office, Celozzi is clearly moved. "It's really nice to go down memory lane," he says. "I had a good run. I'm trying to get going again."

Kevin Davis writes for Crain's Chicago Business, a sister publication of Automotive News.