The Work That Made Me: Glen Hilzinger

Glen> Since it ran on the Super Bowl for 20 years, it’s hard to characterise it simply as an ad from my childhood. Master Lock debuted its legendary “Sharpshooter” TV commercial (a remake from an earlier, unsuccessful version) on the big game in the mid 70s that ran until the mid 90s.

The premise of the commercial was not proprietary. From the 1950s “Timex Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking” to today’s “Moldy Whopper”, we’ve all seen brands abusing their products to make a point. But it’s the way it was done that stood out to me. The storytelling, the craft, the drama. A marksman, a rifle, and the oh-so-memorable slow-motion violence of the bullet strike. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would buy anything other than a Master Lock. And of course, that was the point.

As I look back, it was one of the first times I became aware of the power of a great TV commercial. 

Glen> More adman than an ad, it was Cliff Freeman. In the mid 80s, Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef” went viral before viral was a thing. There was hardly a restaurant my family could go into that my otherwise culturally illiterate father wouldn’t shout the phrase with a wink.

A master of his craft, and everything I learned to love about advertising, from Wendy’s to Staples to countless laugh-out-loud Little Ceasars commercials, Cliff Freeman’s quirky take on the world and the people who live in it laid the foundation for my sensibilities about great advertising, and more importantly, great :30 comedy writing.

Glen> It’s about as simple as it gets. Created by Nyak (MN Agency), KFC unfollowed everyone on their twitter account and instead followed the five Spice Girls and six guys named Herb, an homage to their once famous recipe of eleven herbs and spices. Long story short, the “stunt” got 2.5 billion impressions.

The reason I put the word stunt in quotes is for the very reason I keep revisiting this idea. I think about it often when we’re in creative briefings and we talk about doing a stunt. But I also think about it when we talk about doing something “non-traditional”, or something for “social media”, or something “high impact” or something “low budget”. While it is so uniquely and undeniably KFC, it’s also so deceptively simple that it defies categories.

 

Glen> My first professional project as a junior copywriter was a low-budget safety commercial for Ford. My creative director gave me a reel of running footage to pull from and started talking to me about editing and supers.

Being a total newbie, I got the gist of what “editing” meant, but thinking “super” was an adjective, I quickly realised this must be a test of my writing ability. So instead of doing something with the running footage, I wrote what was essentially a radio spot for TV. It was :30 of all black with the sounds of a family surviving a severe car crash. Theatre of the mind and all that. The client bought it, and it ran nationally.

Months later, I was chatting with a brother who lived in New York. Knowing I worked on Ford, he asked me about a disturbing Ford commercial he saw with a family getting hurt in a car crash. “Well,” I said, “see, they didn’t actually get hurt. That’s the point.” He looked at me and said, “Now that I know you did it, I won’t hate it so much.” 

Glen> From the time I first watched that bullet pierce the padlock, I’ve always loved great advertising. And been jealous of it. It’s not worth listing it all, so I’ll reference one that’s maybe a little less obvious than “Blank the Rainbow”, “The Whopper Detour”, or everything Heinz ketchup does. The nature of the question suggests it should be an example of something a little bit older, so I’ll dial the clock back seven years to a commercial that continues to speak directly to the copywriter in me.

It was a spot created by Leo Burnett, a visual delight shot by AG Rojas, for Samsung’s sponsorship of the World Surf League called “The Snail”. An allegory of sorts comparing the life of a snail to that of a surfer, the copy and delivery is both conversational and emotive at the same time. It’s one of those spots that, as all great jealousy-inducing pieces of advertising do, makes me wish I had done it. Or put better, it forces me to continue asking myself the question, “Do I have something that great in me?” 

Glen> Years ago, when I was working at Leo Burnett, a friend brought me a Trojan horse of an opportunity. It was to help save our little, local library from the clutches of the local Tea Party trying to shutter its doors by thwarting an election to secure tax funding. With my incredibly talented partner at the time, Bob Veasey, and with the help of the late, great creative director Peter McHugh, we created an idea called “The Book Burning Party” where we pretended to be an ultra-right wing political group attempting to close the library in order to gleefully burn its books.

It created outrage in the community and turned the conversation from one about taxes, to one about the merits of books, reading, and libraries. It made international news, won  numerous awards, and single-handedly put us on the map as a creative team. 

Glen> Months after I started at Luquire, Covid hit. Our client, Visit North Carolina, along with the North Carolina Restaurant & Lodging Association got federal funding for a campaign to promote Covid safety measures. We created a campaign called “Count On Me NC”, a pledge among restaurants, tourist destinations, and the public to follow the CDC’s safety protocols.

As a direct result of the campaign, a state-wide survey found that 75% of respondents said they were more likely to wear a mask. Months later, as we were celebrating the awards we had won, our client sent a heartfelt note reminding us that what we should really be proud of was not the accolades, but that we had likely saved people’s lives. That was the pinnacle of my career (so far). 

Glen> Back to “The Book Burning Party” campaign. As I reflect back on what we did to save the library, I feel conflicted. At the time of the election, there were some shady, and potentially even illegal activities among those trying to stop the library’s funding. It was those activities that I used to convince myself that our devious scheme was simply fighting fire with fire, duping an entire city into believing there was a villain afoot that didn’t actually exist.

The truth is, the world is complex. As are issues surrounding government funding. And when it comes to taxes and people’s right to vote their pocketbooks, there are arguments to be made on both sides of any funding issue. What we did was a win-at-all-costs strategy. And as I look at today’s political climate, and the win-at-all-cost mindset that seems to have become so pervasive, I cringe at the idea that I might have contributed to that mindset in some small way.