Great Public Service Advertising is Not Dead

There is Even Redemption for Coleman Sweeney, the World’s Biggest Jerk.

John Fraim

Midnight Oil Studios (May 8, 2024 / 12:38 am)

Great advertising like that done by Ogilvy & Mather and Goodby Silverstein & Partners in the 80s is a thing of the past in our age of network programming overfilled with forgettable pharmaceutical advertising. Usually, all one sees are happy people with some disease or condition that has been helped by a pill they are taking. They are singing and dancing or riding in a convertible. Everyone is happy.

This two minute PSA ad to get organ donors was an unusual way of getting organ donors. It was a topic that few wanted to talk about.

Then, a hot ad agency called the Martin Agency (thank goodness there is still relevant and great advertising going on today) decided to go contra against the grain for raising money for organ donors. They would create the repugnant jerk of an organ donor rather than the model organ donor previously appearing in general advertising for organ donors.

We watch his jerkiness the first part of the commercial as the narrator (in an unusual Rod Serling type of voice) relates the life of Coleman Sweeney. Most of us laugh at his life at a jerk as the agency has created. Then, suddenly, while complaining about a few cents overcharge on a breakfast Coleman Sweeney leans over, the restaurant tries to arose him. He is gone. She is nervous but quickly pulls his wallet to so the police can find his name and inform relatives. Even a jerk has relatives.

On his driver’s license, the nurse sees that his name is Colman Sweeney and he is a registered Organ Donor as there is a little imprint on his driver’s license.

The tone of the story has changed in midstream. The story of a few minutes was certainly enough time to tell his story. But Coleman dies a little over a minute into the commercial and the tone changes.

The voice of the narrator continues in his authoritative style but now the actions of Coleman Sweeney have been replaced by a number of people who have received various Coleman Sweeney organs. It has changed their lives. He is a hero to them. At the end, they are at his funeral. Gathered around his grave. Some interesting words at the end of the commercial.

* * *

It was an incredibly effective commercial and spawned a number of others. Certainly a part of the effectiveness was the beautiful writing, production and acting job done by the Coleman actor. Yet much of the commercials effectiveness happens on more of a deeper, hidden, subliminal level. What the commercial does is turn around humor expectations of the audience.

For the first part of the story, the audience has been baited to see and laugh or smile at this unbelievable jerk of a person in life. The events of his jerkiness are smart and they communicate his jerkiness quickly as needed in the tight time space.

But then, their humor is abruptly confronted in the second part of the commercial. The audience is presented with the death of Coleman and his donation of his organs and the receivers of these organs. The confrontation of Coleman the Big Jerk to Coleman the Big Hero Organ Donor represents two people in the mind to the audience.

* * *

Here, employing a interesting psychological condition on the reader, the film gives the audience hardly any time to see the development of Coleman the jerk to Coleman the hero. It seems to happen almost instantaneously after the waitress sees Organ Donor on is Drivers License.

For a few seconds, the viewer’s mind is off the rail for the type of category they are pegging Coleman for. At least the category of humor as a broad category. The brilliant little few minutes from Martin Advertising in Tampa make the story all the more real because it is born against exceptions of genres and categories in stories. It close to doing this in a very shot amount of time. And doing it beautifully so we think of things a little differently. We see what is being sold (here asked for regarding donations to an Eye Institute that worked from organs) in a new ways. It is an ad here for an Eye Institute in Tampa but it is truly an an for all organ donors.

* * *

In the end, it tells a very unusual story of the change of a person from a jerk in life to a hero in death. The fact that a jerk all through life can be a hero to a number of families when he passes away. The abrupt change of story direction in the middle confronts the audience unexpectedly out of their expectation of the usual character development along the standard Hollywood screenplay lines.

Not only is it an interesting story on its outside but one that throws out of whack the entire Hollywood screenplay formulas for the most part by creating the possibility of going from jerk in life to hero in death. But then hey, this is really one extreme (but true) part of being an organ donor.

Brilliant copywriting for the narrator (with that vaguely familiar Rod Serling voice). This copywriting. Such a lost art in today’s advertising. That of copywriting. I read books by all of the great ones from the early days of advertising. I remember a book by John Caples particularly well. I read books by David Ogilvy about his copywriting. Listen to his summation of this life and then its after effects.

These type of existential questions have not been explored all that much in Hollywood screenplays. Its presented very effectively in the PSA commercial with beautiful acting and copywriting. The story line and board have been set up very effectively with just the right scenes to show us who Coleman Sweeney is. The ones at the end of the film, the scattering of parts of Coleman Sweeney. A hero to these people.

The Martin agency in Tampa, and Jason Woody in Tampa. Both heros for other places begging for organ donors so that others might have their lives changed for the good. From the organs of a bad person. It seemed not to matter.

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Justine Griffin (Reporter)

Tampa Bay Times (August 10, 2016)

Organ donation is no joke. Jason Woody gets that of Tampa’s Lions Eye Institute for Transplant & Research. It’s his job to persuade people to become organ donors. And like everybody else, DLA is having trouble reaching millennials.

So his agency decided to try something a little different. Something edgy. Something funny. Something profane. The result is a 2-minute, 47-second video featuring the world’s biggest, um, jerk. (The video uses another word that nearly rhymes with tadpole.)

The jerk is Coleman F. Sweeney, played by actor Thomas Jane (who starred in the movie The Punisher, which was filmed in Tampa). In the new video, he throws a stranger’s wet laundry out of a dryer at the laundromat to avoid paying for his own load. Along the way, he pockets a pair of lace panties. He honks and hollers incessantly at an elderly woman with a walker and a nurse’s aide crossing the street in front of him. He shoots his neighbor’s dog with a paintball gun. He opens the door to trick-or-treaters wearing only a Speedo and holding a bottle of tequila (and he takes their candy).

Then he’s in a diner, arguing with a server over whether extra fries should be included in a $1.99 early-bird breakfast — and dies of a sudden brain aneurysm.

* * *

But he dies a hero.

Actor and comedian Will Arnett, the narrator of the public service announcement, explains: 

“Coleman Sweeney had registered to be an organ donor. Nobody knew what caused Coleman to do it, but there it was. Generous and majestic,” Arnett says. 

Sweeney’s liver goes to a father of two. His heart to a teacher who taught for 25 more years. His tendons to a staff sergeant who would walk again. And his corneas to his 82-year-old neighbor, who “could finally see the crap that her dog made in the side yard and pick it up.”

The commercial is funny, smart and more than a bit inappropriate. But its message is clear: Even a jerk can save a life.

* * *

The PSA, which went live Friday, already has more than 1.2 million views. Forbes and Upworthy have written about it. It has become a more successful campaign than DLA’s recently announced partnership with Apple. That deal will allow iPhone users to sign up to be an organ, eye and tissue donor from the health app that comes with the release of iOS 10 in October.

“It was nothing in comparison” to the exposure DLA has gotten from the video so far, Woody said.

The Martin Agency is responsible for the video. Martin is a high-profile advertising agency known for campaigns like the Geico caveman and lizard. Martin offered its help, and DLA gave it “free rein” to come up with something that would help them reach a younger audience. The ad creation and production were donated to DLA for free. 

“We have to look at how we reach all our constituents. Now we have Gen X and the millennials,” Woody said. “The heartfelt stories of a mother getting a new heart … doesn’t work with everyone. People still hear those stories all the time.”

So far Woody is elated by the buzz the video is creating. It’s available to view online only and won’t run on local cable stations.

“This is going to be tough to one-up,” Woody said about what’s next for the DLA. “But based on the public’s reaction, I think we’ll find ourselves pushing the envelope more.”