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Length Matters

In advertising – particularly for TV and radio – the speed of today's film and video has made us impatient with even one word too many.

But every rule has its exceptions.

The commercial on the left was part of a campaign to make viewers feel good about United Technologies. It intentionally defies length conventions, taking extra TV time to spin provocative ideas.

A client who specifies a copy-dependent approach like this needs an especially confident wordsmith. Here, copy carried the entire load. It was up to me to knock the ball out of the park.

My Partial Client List

Client List - Bill Henderson Freelance Writer

If you like what you see here...

It's a quick dose of the way I'm thinking about the challenges and rewards of marketing communication in today's internet-driven business environment.


United Technologies
90 second public image spot, "Lincoln"
Varied Directions, Inc. Rockport, ME

Video

STILL: FAMOUS PORTRAIT PHOTO OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

BEGIN LONG, SLOW ZOOM IN

ZOOM ON LINCOLN'S FACE CONTINUES...
LASTS THE ENTIRE DURATION OF SPOT

Audio

NARRATOR (VOICE-OVER):
Some words about history. You know this man. We all do.

But not as well as we'd like to think.

We know him from his stiff form portraits.
And the biographies and history books that describe the power of his personality.

But books and photographs have two crucial limitations.

They don't speak, and they don't move.

In in a human personality, speech and motion are the elements that turn a frozen image into a living figure.

Today our whole culture is being recorded, in sound and motion, with an intimacy that history has never before known.

Unfortunately, we'll never watch a videotaped interview with Abraham Lincoln...

But from the 20th Century on, History is going to move...
speak...
be alive...
And help us better know who we...and are.

Because technology is a response to the continuing needs of life.

And we're United Technologies.