The same psychology-flavored techniques which have enlivened the prune, revitalized Ry-Krisp, and broadened the appeal of Sanka coffee are presently being applied to a human being. He is William Lundigan, announcer for Climax! and Shower of Stars, two TV shows sponsored by the Chrysler Corporation.

On his discharge from the Marines in 1945, thirty-two-year-old Lundigan prepared to take up the movie career which he had begun in 1937 when a Hollywood talent scout spirited him away from his job as radio announcer with WFBL, Syracuse. Before the war, the six-foot-two-inch, blue-eyed young man had appeared in thirteen productions, including Three Cheers for the Irish; The Courtship of Andy Hardy; Three Smart Girls Grow Up; and—his major effort—Dodge City.

His return to Hollywood did not cause a tremor of anticipation in anybody. In 1946, he made only one picture, The Fabulous Dorseys. In 1947, he was “between jobs.” His 1948 agenda was composed of End of the Rainbow, Mystery in Mexico, and Follow Me Quietly. And so it went, at one studio or another, down to 1953; and so it might be going still and might have kept going as long as Bill Lundigan stayed six-foot-two and handsome, had not the Chrysler Corporation found itself a poor third in the automobile hierarchy of the nation, with the prospect of becoming even poorer.

In 1954, nearly a half-million fewer Chryslers, De Sotos, Dodges, Plymouths, and Imperials were sold than in the previous year. This meant a billion dollars less in sales. At one particularly dark moment Chrysler President L. L. Colbert foresaw “grim days ahead.” Then, Chrysler’s designers in Detroit unveiled their completely restyled line for 1955. Copywriters at McCann-Erickson in New York came through with “The Forward Look,” and an anonymous artist Whipped up a forward-looking symbol to go with it.

The admen were also in search of another kind of symbol—a breathing one to represent Chrysler to the nation’s television viewers. They wanted somebody with a moderate box-office appeal, strong-looking, clean-cut, definitely wholesome. At one time or another they approached Cornell Wilde, Clark Gable, and James Stewart. All declined.

A retired MGM casting director named Billy Grady had been promoting Lundigan with McCann-Erickson for many months. “Lundigan with a break could be as great as Bill Holden,” he liked to say. When a deal with Dana Andrews collapsed three weeks before the first scheduled offering of Climax!, Lundigan was haled to Detroit for a rush meeting with a roomful of Chrysler executives, and so began his career with the firm.

For a corporation which was trying to revise its public image in the direction of youth, vigor, and newness, Lundigan was a precious find. He had the perennially youthful appearance of the B-picture romantic lead. Behind him were exploitable years as a Marine and a Boy Scout in Syracuse. His face and name were familiar enough to make him a “personality” of sorts—but without any particular attributes that might overpower the personality of the latest Chrysler or the sensibilities of the family audience. He had just enough foundation but not too much superstructure. Either the new models or the new-model TV host or some combination of them (or something else) sold more than a million and a half Chrysler-made cars in 1955 and brought the company some three and a half billion dollars—a record for Chrysler sales. The firm’s public relations department has no doubts about their man’s effectiveness. “Lundigan has emerged as a symbol to millions of Americans as ‘Mr. Chrysler,’” one release announces. “His natural sincerity has brought credibility and authority to his job. It also sells cars.” The many viewers who write Lundigan about their clutch and transmission troubles have certainly accepted him. The host himself, whose fan mail has increased greatly over his Hollywood days, is quoted as saying: “There hasn’t been a single moment in these two years that hasn’t been the greatest.” As he is now earning upwards of $100,000 a year, there is no reason to doubt that the sentiment is genuine.

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Such a consensus of good tidings would have reduced most men to smug complacency. But on Madison Avenue, where the Gamesmanship is relentless, McCann-Erickson was soon busy devising a series of impressively titled tests to reassure its client that it was all true.

In February 1956, the advertising agency’s Central Research Department presented Chrysler with a problem and a proposal. “While a careful evaluation of the announcer’s suitability must be made initially,” the researchers wrote, “it is also advisable to conduct periodic checks of audience reaction to insure a high level of viewer acceptance. Now that Climax! and Shower of Stars shows have been running for about a year and a half, and William Lundigan has been featured as ‘host’ of both shows, it would be well to see just how high a level of impact and acceptance Lundigan is achieving.”

Detroit bought this, and McCann-Erickson’s researchers were unleashed on the following questions, which would define Lundigan’s suitability as the TV salesman for Chrysler:

  1. How well known is the announcer?
  2. How closely is he associated with the sponsor?
  3. How well liked is he?
  4. How convincing is he in selling the product? How does he match up with the product image?
  5. How effective is he with specific audience segments? Is he most efficient with the segment comprising our most logical prospects?

In April, the first of McCann-Erickson’s blue-bound neatly designed reports on Lundigan was issued. Not only had the agency tapped viewers’ attitudes by means of their Electronic Program Analyzer, but they had also used “attitude tests, role-playing drawing, and other projective items.” Furthermore, they brought in for comparative purposes a competitor, a fellow who delivers the commercials for another automobile on another TV show.

This was a pilot study, whose findings were to be “used as a guide in implementing a full-scale motivation study.” Its conclusions, cautioned McCann-Erickson, “should be considered tentative.” Tentatively, then, here is a picture of the ideal announcer, as he appeared to the seventy-four car-owning adherents of Climax! and/or Shower of Stars who submitted to a portfolio-full of tests at the Pix Theater in Jersey City, New Jersey, on March 29, 1956.

  1. He should appear informed and intelligent. (“A guy who has the facts and knows what he is talking about” was unanimously acclaimed by the respondents.)
  2. He should be poised and confident but not proud.
  3. He should “possess the social graces—but in limited measure. He should not be overly charming, overly cultured, etc.”
  4. Although it is taken for granted that he will not be “excessively unprepossessing,” he should not be conspicuously good-looking, either. People “do not want an announcer who overwhelms them—either physically or emotionally.”
  5. His relationship to the viewer should be that of a casual acquaintance—an equal who knows his field. (“A friend I can trust.”)
  6. He should not be an object of hero worship, a category which includes famous movie stars, successful businessmen, leaders in various professions and, in general, any “man of substance who can sway me off my feet.”

Lundigan turned out to be just as Informed, Logical, Intelligent, Bright, Gentleman-like, Cultured, Charming, Warm, Confident, and Definite as the ideal. He was slightly less Convincing than he should have been and a little too Proud. His major failings, however, were physical: he was too Good-looking, too Well Built, too Strong and too Broadshouldered. Appearance being “the area of Lundigan’s greatest deviation from the ideal,” it was suggested that some effort might be made to “de-glamorize” him.

Under the heading “Chrysler ‘Host’ Somewhat Passive,” the researchers noted that “the Lundigan image—although a favorable one—is to a great extent inactive. He is perceived by many in terms of what he IS, rather than what he DOES.” Hence, Lundigan showed up as a creature of the soft sell. This “basically inactive impression,” the researchers proposed, might be corrected by giving him “more active chores as part of the commercial.” The proposal seemed to stem from a suspicion that the non-aggressive announcer, although preferred by viewers, was not as effective as he might be at actually selling cars.

The fellow from the other show was compared with the near-ideal by simple questionnaire and by that special Electronic Program Analyzer, which worked this way: two Lundigan commercials and two of the competitor’s commercials—in that order—were spliced into a half-hour comedy program. Viewers were able to indicate their reactions via a small electronic signal box, whose switches read: (1) Like very much. (2) Like fairly much. (3) Like a little. (4) Like not at all. Their reactions were “electronically weighted” and plotted on a graph.

The competitor didn’t come out of the box very well. He was Informed, Logical, and Confident all right, but he was not so Intelligent as Lundigan, not so Bright, not so Gentleman-like, not so Cultured, not so Charming, not so Warm, not so Convincing, not so Definite. The other car manufacturer’s only solace was that his man was not so Good-looking, Well Built, Strong, or Broad-shouldered either.

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The final portion of the test at the Pix Theatre turned the lenses onto the audience. The researchers set out to find: “To which viewers does Lundigan appeal?” From their responses to statements such as “Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn,” Lundigan’s admirers were revealed as “very sensitive to social pressures. Their basic attitude is one of general conformity and compliance. These seem to be people who place great value on ‘fitting in’ with the generally current trend. . . . Briefly Lundigan appears to attract the kind of viewers who make up the large share of television viewers.” (This assumption, if it represents the judgment of Madison Avenue on America’s “middle majority” TV audience, sheds some light on the range and depth of contemporary programming.)

The fact that these people are not “power-oriented” explained to the researchers’ satisfaction why they take so well to Lundigan’s “inactive” attractions. Their passivity was proved by their unresponsiveness to statements like, “People can be divided into two classes: the weak and the strong.” In the group not particularly well disposed toward Lundigan were the “more deviant, more openly defiant, and less conservative” TV viewers. (“I like to do things that other people regard as unconventional.”) This should be of special interest to Chrysler, the testers pointed out, if they intend to reach Buick owners, “who have been generally characterized as power-oriented and striving.”

In their attitude toward motoring, Lundigan’s fans reflected “the sociability and lack of anxiety which characterized their personalities.” Not so the fevered anti-Lundiganites: “The latter appeared more tense, more ‘driven’ psychologically—more fearful.” For them cars meant “success” and “prestige,” while driving was associated with “breakdown,” “gas consumption” and “leakage.” These sick types aside, however, Lundigan had clearly captured “the broad mass of television viewers.”

The audience at the Pix, asked to draw a picture of “William Lundigan visiting you in your home,” came through with sketches that the researchers interpreted as youthful, socially outgoing, and masculine. Lundigan seemed to relay a feeling of propriety and comfort, reported the testers. Only from some “more deviant and striving individuals” (who, by now, were taking on a positively villainous aspect) did he call forth anxiety. His casualness worried them. But “all respondents, whether pro-or anti-Lundigan,” the study concluded on a high note, “pictured Chrysler-made automobiles in a very favorable light.”

In May, McCann-Erickson sent to Chrysler the results of its Immediate Recall studies on Lundigan and three other announcers: Ed Sullivan, a friend of the Mercury; Lou Crosby, who praises the Dodge on the Lawrence Welk Show; and Jack Lescoulie who does the same service for Buick on its Jackie Gleason program. On four occasions, about 220 people in fifteen cities were called within an hour of tuning off one of the programs under surveillance and were asked their opinion of the announcer they had just been watching. (This study was conducted by a firm named, typically, Qualitative Research, Inc.)

Lescoulie and Crosby, it was learned, were considered primarily as salesmen. Sullivan, the most readily identified of the four, was viewed as a showman. (“I don’t like Ed very much, but I like his show.”) Lundigan came through, once again, as an attractive but inactive personality—as “what he is, rather than what he does.” (“He has a nice voice, nice appearance, and doesn’t yell,” one lady commented. A man remembered him as “an actor from California.”) Although he attained the highest score on over-all acceptance—since, unlike the others, he aroused very few negative feelings, or, for that matter, strong reaction of any sort—he was not considered as knowledgeable about automobiles as Crosby or Lescoulie. He inspired relatively few viewers with the desire to buy a Chrysler. Significantly—and unnervingly for Detroit—his sponsor was mentioned less frequently than the sponsors of the competing shows. His recent local appearances at special events, however, it was noted, “seem to be improving Lundigan’s impact on consumers.”

(It is tempting to speculate on the appeal of Groucho Marx, another Chrysler Corporation employee—recently signed to a new contract—who doesn’t know anything about Dodges or DeSotos and doesn’t care, is anything but a passive figure, and is able to arouse all sorts of negative reactions when he wants to. Although the prodigiously inoffensive Lundigan has corralled “the broad mass” to McCann-Erickson’s satisfaction, Groucho came out second in the agency’s 1955 study of “Popularity Rating in Terms of Want to See on Television.” Lundigan was twenty-ninth in a field of thirty-nine. Groucho’s success may be explained in part by his limited social graces and narrow shoulders.)

Now the ground was laid for the climactic 76-page study on William Lundigan—the promised full-fledged Motivation Study. “It differs in method from the previous studies in that here the data have been gathered by intense face-to-face interviews with over two hundred viewers of these Chrysler shows in three cities.” Now hear this, Detroit: “In addition to the usual structured attitudinal and information items, the questionnaire contained projective tests, personality inventories, and a number of open-ended questions” which were “designed to delineate the more dynamic components of people’s attitudes toward Lundigan.” (The Advertising Research Foundation, by the way, has put out a volume called The Language of Dynamic Psychology as Related to Motivational Research, which contains 500 sure-fire terms for bowling over a manufacturer.)

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Again Lundigan crowded the ideal announcer—“particularly in the areas of social acceptability and manner”—with Lescoulie limping in second, surpassing the front runner in only a single trait—humor. A footnote, however, redeemed the Buick man somewhat: “the relatively bad showing of Lescoulie may be due, to a large extent, to the fact that respondents were viewers of Chrysler shows rather than of the Buick program on which Lescoulie is featured. Presumably, he might fare quite differently, were the sample to be made up of the Buick show viewers.” The footnote did not go on to suggest that the secret of Lundigan’s remarkable likeness to the ideal announcer was that the McCann-Erickson questionnaire mentioned Lundigan’s shows, Climax! and Shower of Stars, six times just before getting around to its questions about the ideal.

Again Lundigan’s “genteel sophistication” was found to appeal “to that segment of TV viewers which reflects the psychological orientations of the large part of our population-orientations toward conformity and reluctance to change. . . . ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ socially and attitudinally, as well as economically, is the credo for this group.” This time their drawings of a visit with Lundigan indicated “casual sociability.”

The anti-Lundiganites, who had received a superficial examination in April, were probed more deeply in May. The probers found: “. . . greater assertiveness and need for individualistic expression . . . they are non-conformist . . . dependent more on personal, emotional cues for their behavior than on social pressure . . . need to be involved in close, emotionally supportive types of relationships. . . .”

Ernest Dichter, Ph.D., head of the Institute of Motivational Research, and perhaps the most prominent retailer of Freud operating today, has instructed Madison Avenue: “The successful advertising agency has manipulated human motivations and desires and developed a need for goods with which the public had at one time been unfamiliar—perhaps even un-desirous of purchasing. . . . It is going to take study of scientific publications outside of the advertising field to keep one step ahead of your competitor and in step with the constant reorientation of the buyer’s mind.”

The people at McCann-Erickson have taken Dr. Dichter’s advice to heart. Susceptible by profession to short-lived enthusiasms, they have gone all out for Psychology—a weapon that can be turned not only on the consumer but on the client as well. In this instance, they have trained their heavy artillery of jargon on Detroit. The lesson for the car manufacturers is clear. Normal, moderately aspiring, right-thinking Americans—the very sort whose minds turn each fall to thoughts of the new model Chrysler—like Bill Lundigan. With just a little altering, this popular McCann-Erickson property will not only be undistinguishable from the ideal announcer; he will sell cars too. And for this treasure, the car-makers may thank the creative people at their advertising agency. (Hardened clients sometimes hire their own researchers, whose conclusions about ad impact can be a continuing source of pain to account executives.)

“Successful creativity usually follows a well-defined pattern,” McCann-Erickson has explained to potential clients. “The first step is immersion in factual data. Hence the creative process actually begins when the first facts are gathered. Research people must see in imagination a picture of the problem, for their findings will kindle the creative fire.”

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The admen are by no means Frankensteins—although they seem to have certain ambitions in that direction—and Lundigan is anything but a monster. He is a nice guy who has found that it comes easier to him to deliver commercials than love lines. Just now, he is being formed by one of McCann-Erickson’s creative fires into harder stuff. His public personality, as it is revealed by the words he is given to say and the poses he is directed to adopt, is being altered slightly—from a host-salesman to a salesman-host. (He may very well be shuttled back again next season, on the basis of another series of tests conceived by the restless admen. Similar journeys have been taken by better known personalities.

The ultimate dream of the admen is to turn their likeable product into a mechanized version of a centaur, so that for the twelve million families who watch Climax! friendliness toward Lundigan means friendliness toward Chrysler—or, second best, to convince Detroit that this is so. Either way, it’s a triumph for up-to-date psychology, with actor, sponsor, and, hopefully, audience all properly manipulated, as Dr. Dichter puts it, into exactly the right relationship. Everybody, that is, but us power-hungry Buick drivers.

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