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THE MEDIA BUSINESS: ADVERTISING

THE MEDIA BUSINESS: ADVERTISING; A wacky campaign pushes the envelope for abrasive humor.

THE MEDIA BUSINESS: ADVERTISING; A wacky campaign pushes the envelope for abrasive humor.
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January 26, 1995, Section D, Page 20Buy Reprints
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THE characters are just this side of obnoxious, but funny. And more important for the advertiser, they sell.

The characters are the almost-abrasive men and women in the television commercials for Staples, the national chain of office-supply superstores. Sales for Staples in the fiscal year ending Saturday are expected to rise 67 percent, to $2 billion, in no small part due to the advertising campaign of Cliff Freeman & Partners of New York.

The Freeman characters for Staples have included a smug husband who loses a bet with his wife and a father overjoyed that his children are going back to school.

But perhaps the most endearing character, at least for city dwellers, is the refugee from the rat race portrayed in a commercial now being broadcast nationwide. A middle-aged woman sits in her home office as morning sunlight spills on her neatly organized desk.

"Working in the city can get to you after a while," says the woman, who appears to have spent a day or two grinding her teeth. "I commuted for 20 years until one day I just snapped and started working out of my house. I thought it would be a nice change of pace."

Suddenly, she notices something astir outside. She slams her hand down on the desk and screams, "Hey you! Get off my lawn! I don't care if you are the mailman!"

As the woman continues to rant, price tags start popping up above printers, computers and other office supplies while an announcer calmly declares: "Staples has everything you need to work out of your home. The guaranteed low price on over 5,000 office supplies."

The commercial ends with the campaign's theme: "Staples. Yeah, we've got that."

If this kind of offbeat humor has a kind of familial resemblance, it is because the Freeman agency, with billings of about $150 million, also devised the Little Caesars "Pizza! Pizza!" campaign, whose characters have perfected the stare-into-the-camera-as-lunacy-reigns look.

It also comes as no great surprise that some of the same people at Freeman worked on the Wendy's "Where's the Beef?" campaign of the mid-1980's, the queen of the almost-abrasive school of advertising.

All of which was a godsend for Staples, the No. 2 office-products chain, which had problems settling on a message, grabbing customers' attention and competing with Office Depot, the No. 1 chain.

"We really thought our audience would enjoy the tone and sense of humor of the Little Caesars ads, so we hired Cliff Freeman," said Phyllis Wasserman, vice president of advertising at Staples, who picked the agency from among 50 competitors last February.

Staples, based in Framingham, Mass., had tried mostly radio ads and a few vertigo-inducing television commercials shot from the point of view of a shopping cart. But all the spots foundered on what seemed a hard rock of fact: office supplies are boring.

Market research, though, found that one of four Staples customers had a family member operating a home business. And shooting inside someone's home enabled Staples to avoid staid scenes of store aisles, said Arthur W. Bijour, executive vice president and creative director at Freeman.

But the agency had to confront an unpleasant fact: a common reason for working at home is that the person has either been laid off or dismissed.

In one Staples spot, a smug husband behind a desk says into the camera: "My wife and I are talking about having kids. And my wife says to me, 'Why is it the woman who always has to stay at home? Why not the man?' "

And in a voice dripping with "fat chance," the husband tells the wife that if she can find a job that pays for the house, the car and the groceries, "I'll quit my job and work out of the house." Suddenly, a baby cries, and the blood drains from the new father's face. He dashes off in panic.

Perhaps the most daring Staples spot was the back-to-school commercial broadcast in August. Filmed in a Staples store, of all places, the commercial pulled out the stops in abrasive bravado.

As the Christmas song "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" plays in the background, an overjoyed father in baggy shorts and loafers dances down the aisles.

"They're going back! It's back-to-school time at Staples," shouts an exultant announcer. A disconsolate little boy and girl mope behind the loony dad, who then joyrides on a shopping cart.

"It tapped into a real emotion," Mr. Bijour said. "It's nice to get the kids out of the house. And boy, sales really skyrocketed."

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section D, Page 20 of the National edition with the headline: THE MEDIA BUSINESS: ADVERTISING; A wacky campaign pushes the envelope for abrasive humor.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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