9 April 2020 (Brussels, Belgium) – Brief backstory: at its height in the 1940s and 1950s, the now-defunct Calvin Company of Kansas City, Missouri was one of the largest and most successful producers of advertising films in the United States. With “Your Name Here” (1960), Calvin Company offered a wry, tongue-in-cheek satire of its own advertising style. Beginning with a generic retelling of human history before transitioning to a jingoistic story of American exceptionalism, a narrator declares that, for all our collective striving, ingenuity and brilliance, happiness still somehow eludes us. So what’s the solution? A more satisfying tobacco-smoking experience, of course. Or more leisure time. Or whatever it is that your product, service or institution offers.
While today the self-aware commercial is a genre unto itself, it’s somewhat jarring to see the form so cleverly executed in this peculiar short, released at the dawn of the Mad Men era – a time when exceeding earnestness in advertising was very much still in fashion.
I know a bit of the backstory because Ted Kasner (now a ripe old 94 years of age) used to work for the Calvin Company and he was my advertising mentor who got me into Ogilvy which still subsidises my media trips to Cannes Lions.
The following version of the film has been touched up. Aeon’s video programmer and producer Tamur Qutab provided digital enhancements to the picture and sound:
The original (longer) piece from 1960 is here: