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Co-editors/Writers Cathy Riely
Walter Smith
Photographer Bill Hughes
at ease
The Battalion's Entertah
ions tmertainmenf Weekly
August 16,1985
is
Sea-Dog & Chuck promote cafe
By CATHY RIELY
Co-editor
N A TOWN LIKE COLLEGE STA-
tion, clubs and restaurants come
and go. But one restaurant has
caught on where previous busi
nesses have failed. Padre Cafe
bucked the bad luck streak of Tecs
and Rosewood Junction to become a
success. And much of that success
can be traced to a local advertising
agency, Joe Buser and Associates.
Joe Buser Jr. says David Tinsley
came to the agency when he
wanted to open Padre Cafe because
he had worked with the agency on
the Tinsley's Chicken campaign.
The location of the restaurant is
the primary reason for its previous
failures, Buser says. Dominik Drive
is a difficult street to get to and the
building is kind of hidden behind
Kentucky Fried Chicken.
"So the color scheme really
helped a lot," he says. "Painting the
end of the building pink makes it
glow. It stands out.
Buser says another thing that
helped was not to say "Padre Cafe
at Culpepper Plaza." You don't want
to be known as next door to someone
, or across the street from so and so,
Buser says. You don't want to be as
sociated with the other guy, you
want them to say next door to you.
' So his father came up with the
idea of saying Dominik Drive, Col
lege Station By The Sea.
"The Dominik Drive differentiates
it from anything else in the center,"
he says. "And it disassociates it from
any restaurants in the past. The Col
lege Station By the Sea is just a litle
bit of good humor. We still get phone
calls with people asking what body
of water we're near."
Buser says that with a name like
Padre they kept thinking of an is
land. They even originally had
wanted to put the menus in bottles.
"We came up with 50 reasons why
that wouldn't work," he says.
But from that idea they came up
with the idea of people stranded on
an island. And Padre Cafe's two ra
dio characters were born. These two
have dossiers two or three pages
long, Buser says.
Buser explains the characters'
somewhat complicated background:
"They are two fellows that have
been in a boat or plane crash - we
haven't decided which - prior to
World War II. They have been there
so long that they don't know what
year it is. They don't know about the
war or anything else.
"One of the fellows is a crusty old
sailor - Sea-Dog - who talks like Po-
peye. Sea-Dog's father is an Irish
merchant marine and his mother is
a Puerto Rican cliff diver. The other
fellow is editor of Collier's magazine
-r» Charles Parsons Wentworth V.
(Sea-Dog calls him Chuck).
"The two of them are stranded on
this island and they have absolutely
nothing in common - they could not
be further apart from each other -
with the exception of the fact they
had eaten at this restaurant called
The Padre Cafe. That's what we've
built the whole gag around."
Buser says he gets a lot of ideas
from "Gilligan's Island". One com
mercial he wrote had a crate float
ing ashore.
"Everything used to float ashore in
'Gilligan's Island,'" he says. â–¡
MTV's influence has spread to ad industry
By CATHY RIELY
Co-editor
M USIC TELEVISION PUTS
unknown bands in the na
tional spotlight. It creates
trends in clothing and hair styles.
And now it influences the advertis
ing industry.
The advertising industry is big
money. U.S. advertisers spent more
than $88 billion in 1984, will proba
bly spend more than $96 billion this
year and will pass the $100 billion
mark in 1986, according to Advertis
ing Age.
With all this money being spent,
advertisers want to make sure their
ads are effective - and agencies are
paying attention to the success of
MTV. It's music and visuals are cre
ating new trends in advertising.
Some commercials now include
product information in the lower left-
hand corner of the TV screen, where
MTV viewers have been trained to
look for song titles and band names.
And some commercials have rock
stars touting products, such as the
Honda scooter ads with Adam Ant,
Grace Jones and Lou Reed.
One of these commercials uses not
only a rock star, but his music. The
commercial featuring Lou Reed
shows clips of New York City street
life while segments from Reed's hit
"Walk on the Wild Side" play in the
background. At the end of the com
mercial Reed lounges against a
Honda scooter, takes off his sung
lasses and says, "Hey, - don't settle
for walking." Only five words are
spoken -none directly related to the
product. The Honda logo appears
. on the screen for a few seconds, and
that's it.
P RODUCING A NON-COM-
mercial commercial is exactly
what the executives of the ad
vertising agency of Wiedan and
Kennedy had in mind for the Honda
ad, Advertising Age reports. They
wanted to produce something closer
to the style and feel of music videos.
The agency hired someone who has
worked with music videos to edit the
film footage. Editor Larry Bridges
had worked on Ricki Lee Jones' "The
Real End" and Michael Jackson's
"Beat It."
While MTV's success has inspired
advertisers to use rock stars and
their music in ads, more than music
video look-alikes have come out of
MTV's popularity.
Composer Shelton Palmer, who
also owns a music production com
pany, says MTV has helped music
reach a creative peak in advertising
today.
"There is a renewed interest in the
creative use of music, partially due
to the influence of MTV," Palmer tells
Advertising Age. "This is the most
. incredible time for advertising -both
see MTV page 2