a tip o’ the hat

we learn, in a new york times obit, of the death peter wensberg, Polaroid’s senior vice president for marketing from 1971 to 1982. Back in the day, a key tool in
his strategy for the sale of a new line of instant cameras, was a series of television
commercials that broke new branding ground with the then-radical concept that effective pitches must be both "emotionally appealing and technically instructive." these spots, featuring actors james garner and mariette hartley, were so effective that hartley was commonly thought to be "mrs. james garner," though the two weren’t hitched. the ads were funny (he: you pick up the camera and shoot; she: that’s two words), memorable and, more than thirty years later, in our sophisticated, multi-media, interactive, over-manipulated-image world, are as fresh and effective as the day they first aired.