When times are hard, a soft sell can often work better than a head-on approach.
Good article from today's NYT:
Comedians, stars of situation comedies and actors known for being funny have long been mainstays of advertising, on the theory that laughter can sweeten a sales spiel. Recently, their popularity as pitchmen and pitchwomen seems to be increasing — sometimes to the point that television viewers or magazine readers may feel that they are sitting through a set at a comedy club.
During the Depression, advertisers turned to funny radio performers to peddle their wares, among them Fred Allen, for Bristol-Myers brands like Ipana toothpaste; Jack Benny, for Jell-O; Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, for Chase & Sanborn coffee; and Fibber McGee and Molly, for Johnson’s Wax.
Another reason for the prevalence of laugh makers is their ability to woo consumers into paying attention to ads. That is important in an era when DVRs and remote controls make it easy to avoid commercials and marketers seek to attract visitors to Facebook fan pages and YouTube video channels.
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