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Perdue's plucky legacy

His ads ruled roost and ruffled feathers

Frank Perdue died last week and, before we tip our hat and simply say, "Tonight he sleeps with the chickens," we should take a moment to acknowledge and honor his indelible place in modern TV advertising history.

From his early life as a humble chicken mogul on the eastern shore of Maryland, Perdue rose to become a television star, specifically, the star of ads for his own company.

This is an achievement few corporate owners can claim, for which there is a reason. Most ads starring corporate owners are awful. Godawful, really.

So were Frank Perdue's, in spite of the fact that during the 20 years he filmed some 200 of them, he went from being rich to being insanely rich.

He did that by making Perdue Chicken a brand name in a field where everything pretty much looked and tasted alike, and no question, the ads helped.

That said, the ads were still painful to watch. They remain annoying in memory. Moreover, they doubtless encouraged other owners to make their own painful ads, notably that other giant of this field, ice cream magnate Tom Carvel.

You saw Tom Carvel talking about Fudgy the Whale and even small children wanted to wait until this guy had backed away from the ice cream cake before they dug in.

Dave Thomas of Wendy's got better as he went on - making hundreds of ads can have that effect - and his writers had the good sense to sprinkle in some humor.

Alas, there was no such redemption for Leona Helmsley, whose "Queen of the Palace" ads made a night there look like a date with Mommie Dearest.

In the bigger picture, what's puzzling about many owner ads is that a sophisticated multimilliondollar business comes off looking like Murray's Novelty Shop - though occasionally that's a good fit. With Sy Sperling's "Hair Club for Men" ads, for instance, you never got the sense sophistication was much of an issue.

A few corporate chiefs do know how to play a camera: Hello, Martha Stewart. Lee Iacocca wasn't bad, and neither were Charles Schwab or Colonel Sanders, obviously coming from opposite ends of the Madison Ave. spectrum.

But they're the exceptions: Witness the current eHarmony ads featuring Dr. Neal Clark Warren. While eHarmony may be a wonderful operation, there's just a little too much of the car salesman in Dr. Warren.

Still, he's no Frank Perdue. No one today is. But precisely because of the legacy Frank Perdue left, I would bet two legs and a gizzard that we will someday see his like again.

Originally published on April 9, 2005

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/298181p-255132c.html