User:Jnestorius/Early Showers

< Hey Kid, Catch!
 * Official name is "Early Showers"
 * Alias "Mean Joe Greene" or 'the "Mean Joe Greene" commercial' or "the Mean Joe Greene Coca-Cola commercial".
 * Alias "Hey Kid" or "Hey Kid, Catch"
 * The CLIO Awards in 1979 (and hence probably also in 1980) had a huge number of awards: "256 winners, 100 in the international division and 156 in the national one"; "60 subdivisions in the U.S. television category". So what categor(y/ies) did "Early Showers" win?
 * The ad's art director, Roger Mosconi, wrote two books named Sex Sells :
 * one published in 2007 and described as a novel, starts with the story of "Early Showers": ad exec mad that creative used Greene when originally promised Roger Staubach;  ad exec mad at using Black player and had contract with Dallas Cowboys;  but Coca Cola like it;  ad execs tampered with initial test audience scores: needed 22 to pass, reported as 9, actually 44;  rival's ad tanked so in desperation showed "Early Showers", which "thirty-two hundred bottlers and their wives brought the roof down".
 * another published 2011 subtitled The True Tales Behind the Greatest Ads of the '80s.
 * McCann-Erickson,
 * "limping toward the locker room after an injury",
 * "We wanted a boy and an intimidating man",
 * "half-day shoot over three days",
 * "chug about 2.25 gallons of Coke",
 * "transformed him from brute to teddy bear"
 * homage “The Simpsons,”
 * homage “Sesame Street,”
 * homage “Newhart”
 * homage “Family Guy”
 * In 2009, Coke Zero adapted it with Troy Polamalu.
 * And in 2015, Coca-Cola brought the ad back to TV for a Nascar broadcast.
 * won both a Clio and a Cannes Lion
 * Other suggestions Tony Dorsett, Terry Bradshaw, Roger Staubach.
 * Copywriter Penny Hawkey "Wait, there’s somebody actually named ‘Mean’ Joe Greene? Can we get him?"
 * At the 1980 NFL Pro Bowl Greene got more fan notice than bigger stars
 * premiered during the 1979 Major League Baseball playoffs
 * In response to Pepsi Challenge, Coke hired Mean Joe Greene to take a sledgehammer to Pepsi vending machines at Coke corporate events.
 * Ad won Clio and Greene won Clio for best actor.
 * Greene paid $35,000 by Coke and later gifted a case of champagne. "has a $150,000 personal-services contract with Coca-Cola"
 * Hawkey preferred Greene to Bradshaw as "great big threatening presence"
 * Coke exec William Van Loan compared Greene to Othello; Stan Isaacs suggested he might better play Goliath.
 * Steelers had been in many ads since 1975 Super Bowl win, the best known being for Samsonite because of their reputation for toughness.
 * Isaacs says also an ad with "six Steelers crowded into a Ford Fairlane" but that model was discontinued in 1970 in the U.S.
 * Only O. J. Simpson rivalled the Steelers in NFL advertising.
 * Hawkey said "Let's have a kid and a bruiser."
 * Greene in 1974 United Airlines ad for widebody plane "The idea was that the plane was so comfortable that a mean, tough guy like me almost liked it."
 * Drank 18 16-oz bottles of on final day, wrapping after midnight
 * "corny" approach distinctly American, did not play as well in international versions. needed alteration to soccer "less universal than many thought". Unlike "Hilltop", which was explicitly a global campaign and message.
 * A John Fetterman ad parody from his 2016 Senate campaign resurfaced online during his 2022 campaign; some of opponent Mehmet Oz's campaign staff mocked the ad in a way that suggested they did not get the reference, causing Fetterman's campaign to retort that Pennsylvanians ought to remember a Pittsburgh icon.
 * In 2016 reunited with costar at Apogee Stadium for CBS special on greatest Super Bowl ads.
 * A few online sources mention Michel Platini, Harald Schumacher, and Dino Zoff in local versions but I am sceptical; perhaps they were in other Coke ads?
 * At 1980 Super Bowl Coke paid $700K to air the 60-second version in the first half and a 30-second version in the second half.
 * The 1981 movie was aimed at children and broadcast at 7pm. Henry Thomas played kid (Nick) as Okun had grown too much. The opening scene replicates the ad, but with unbranded cola as Coke did not pay for product placement. The ensuing "flimsy plot" sees Nick trying to return the shirt to renew Greene's enthusiasm for football. Of his performance, Greene said "to say I'm acting would be ludicrous".
 * McCann-Erickson Audiovisual collection at David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library includes tapes with items named "Mean Joe Greene":
 * 176 "Mean Joe Greene" and "Mean Joe Montage"
 * 242 "Mean Joe Greene" name for USA and Spain, plus others with qualification Zico, Maradona, Nywat for Brazil, Argentina, Thailand
 * 260 same but "dub" instead of "/Zico (Brazil)"
 * One of four campaigns awarded gold in the 60-second TV ad category in the 1980 Art Directors Club of New York Annual.