Triple threat

Andy Hirsch, Randy Saitta, Marty Orzio: Mercedes mongers

October 6, 2000
Web posted at: 5:59 p.m. EDT (2159 GMT)

By Larry Keller
CNN.com/career Senior Writer

(CNN) -- A Mercedes-Benz glides through one of those car washes with the swirling brushes and the rollers. Disco diva Donna Summer croons "Love To Love You Baby."

The brushes and rollers seem to caress the car. Suds and water fairly drip with sensuality. As Summer sings and moans, a mother, father and son watch through the automated wash's window. Under the "Hot Wax" sign, glass gleaming, hood steaming, the car is almost out of the wash.

IN A LATHER Squeegee your screen and see Hirsch, Saitta and Orzio's car wash commercial Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

FRACTURED FAME Telly Savalas is in this one. Need we say more? See the "Magic" spot. Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

Suddenly the car wash's wheel track "grabs" a tire. The car stops with a shudder. It starts rolling backward into the wash. Mom covers the boy's eyes.

Have you seen that one?

How about the commercial in which several cultural icons are altered? "The Mona Lisa" has a goofy grin. Clark Gable turns and says, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a hoot."

Then you get subtitles: "Change one thing and it's not the same. But if every part is exactly right -- Magic. Welcome to the Mercedes experience."

Those are two of 21 commercials developed in the past year by Andy Hirsch, Randy Saitta and Marty Orzio, all in their early 40s. They're executive creative directors and partners at Merkley Newman Harty (MNH), a New York advertising agency.

Some of these spots are knee-slapping funny. Others are wry. Serious. Nostalgic. Many have themes, summed up in a word that appears late in a spot: "Magic," "Joy," "Pride," "Service." All are distinctive.

It's an assignment that could make many advertising professionals green. This trio purveys to the world television audience a car with which, as one commercial reminds you, drivers seem always to be "Falling in Love Again."

But to interpret one of the world's most respected line of autos to their viewership, the team first had to start with the image they inherited.

"We said to ourselves, 'You know, this is a great car,'" Saitta says.

"'We're getting into that salary bracket where maybe we can afford that car. So how come we're not really interested in it for ourselves?'

MEAN STREETS See what happens when Mercedes sedans travel in packs. Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

GUYS DON'T ASK DIRECTIONS Don't click here, don't you dare click that link to see this shameful male-bashing commercial. Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

"It was appealing to an older crowd. It had sort of a stiff, straight-laced, gray-haired, dad-mobile image. We set out to change that image. To take it off the pedestal and make it accessible to a larger audience, a younger audience."

And an audience that could appreciate flipping a motoring stereotype on its head as in a commercial the agency calls "Gang."

In it, we see a burly biker rumbling down a deserted desert road, a brittle blonde on the seat behind him. They become aware of a Mercedes tailing them, then another and another until a whole pack of the luxury cars has surrounded the couple.

"Baby, what do you think they want?" the blonde wails like an out-of-tune engine.

"Just don't look at them," hisses her trembling biker boyfriend.

The commercial ends with one word on screen: "Badness."

Hirsch, Saitta and Orzio have been working together on Mercedes-Benz and other big accounts for seven years. They all worked together at another agency, Lowe and Partners/SMS, until last year, then left en masse for MNH.

"This truly has been a partnership, the past seven years, like the Beatles, the Marx brothers -- even The Three Stooges," Hirsch says.

TURN LEFT AT PRAGUE When you set out to find "the sweetest girl I know," you should be so lucky as to be accompanied by this all-terrain barbershop quartet. Join them on the way to ... well, see the sign? Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

BIG WHEELS It takes a lot of talent to get one of these commercials on the road. Here are a few folks from the front seats of the spots we're showing you in this story. Credit where it's due.

At Lowe/SMS, the trio generated most of the commercials themselves. Their responsibilities are broader now.

"We put our thumbprint on everything that goes out of here," Hirsch says. "We still write and art direct on Mercedes, but we also supervise teams who write and art direct on Mercedes."

The car wash spot, for example, is the work of art director Mike Rosen and copywriter Jeff Bitsack. The biker ad was created by Rosen and copywriter Jeremy Postaer.

The approach seems to be working. The Mercedes-Benz commercials have earned several awards this year.

But how do Hirsch, Saitta and Orzio come up with an advertising concept in the first place?

"Sometimes," Saitta says, "somebody will come in with a very complete thought and it's just a matter of putting some finishing touches on it. Sometimes it's a fragment that somebody has. Then somebody else will say, 'What if we do this to it? What about that?'

"There's a lot of that back-and-forth. And sometimes you sit and stare at each other with no clue. There's a blank piece of paper in front of you and you wait for inspiration to strike."

There's no magic method of hastening that moment, Orzio says. "You just start attacking a problem from a different angle. Sometimes if we have a mediocre commercial in our heads, we'll put it down on paper because then we feel like we accomplished something. Then you just keep plugging until you run out of time."

TEST DRIVE
	Mercedes-Benz employees wouldn't ask a thing of their cars that they don't ask of themselves. Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

And how do they know they have a winner? Gut instinct, honed over years in the business, they say. Ultimately, however, it's not them but the client who decides if their concept is a go.

"An agency is supposed to have that kind of creative side to it," Hirsch says. "That kind of loose, 'let's brainstorm' casualness to it.

"Then we have to take these wacky ideas, put on a tie and go and sell it to the upper echelon in corporate America. They're going to spend millions of dollars on these ideas, so it's art and commerce."

A quartet makes it musically clear that it really is a long way to Tipperary in one of the most heavily aired Mercedes commercials, top. Below, a less frequently seen spot has Mercedes employees run test-track cones to prove Performance.

All three men are skilled in print ads, film and writing. But they also must have a knack for hiring others whose style will mesh with a given commercial they are producing.

"You come up with the concept. You come up with the visuals for it. Then you hire a supplier, like a director, or a photographer or an illustrator to execute it," Hirsch says.

"You try," says Saitta, "to match up the director to the personality that you're trying to achieve with your commercial. We try to take the idea from that blank piece of paper to completion."

All three men say they like the variety of the job.

Orzio: "One minute you're trying to get inside the head of somebody who's thinking about technology or the phone company. The next minute you're trying to understand how a car works. Then you're trying to figure out health insurance. Somehow you have to use entertainment to make a point and sell your product."

Hirsch: "Truly the fun part of the job is you're going from scriptwriting to music selection to dealing with directors to then going to a corporate meeting. And then you're going back and working with type, working with art or with interesting voice-over talent."

Saitta: "You get to watch it go from a typed script to this film that hopefully will move the consumer into action. It's a little like when you used to do a drawing as a kid and your mom put it on the refrigerator. You were very proud. At the end, we're very proud of the work we do."

"Only now it's not Mom, it's Citigroup, Mercedes-Benz, BellSouth -- all our clients," Hirsch says.

And unlike Mom, corporate clients pay well for a job well done.

Copywriters averaged about $56,000 in base salary and a $4,000 bonus last year, according to a survey conducted by Creativity magazine. Creative directors like Hirsch, Saitta and Orzio averaged $100,000 in salary and a $17,000 bonus, the magazine's survey found.

Good thing the pay is fine, because the job security isn't. The industry perception is that younger people have younger ideas and graybeards can be cast aside, Saitta says.

"It's a lot like sports," Hirsch says. "This is a very competitive business. It's not the type of profession that's long-lasting, that one can depend on for a long period of time. That's the scary part of it."

Little wonder, then, that these partners often find themselves working very long days. How quickly the trio comes up with a good concept and how short a deadline they face determines how lengthy their workdays are.

"You come in at 9 o'clock and you stay until you feel tomorrow is going to be a clean slate and you got the best work done that was possible," Hirsch says. "We leave sometimes at 9, 10, 11 o'clock on a daily basis. But there's still a joy to this. It's not just a job. It's never boring."

MUSH Click here to see a sled dog's dream. Play Video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

MESSAGE BOARD How driven are you to get the big accounts? Tell us how you're going for it in your career.

For Saitta, the job has definite peaks and valleys. "Sometimes it's the best job in the world, and sometimes it's the worst. When it's the best job is when you have an idea you really love, you get to execute it and it comes out pretty much as you wanted it to. That's a great high, a great feeling.

"The other side of that is you have a commercial you really think is a good concept and you just can't convince the client that's the way to go. You do get emotionally attached to your ideas, just like to your children, and you love each one."

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