Mornings With Barney by Dick Wolfsie (e book reader .TXT) 📕

all these years, even though so few wanted his face. His magnets are probably worth much more today than Barney’s. But that’s because they were so rare.

Not a week goes by that people don’t boast that they still have a Barney magnet on their fridge. What a testimony. There’s Barney next to kids, grandkids, and family recipes on the appliance door. People see Barney every day, just before they indulge in a forbidden snack. Barney would have appreciated the appropriate use of his image. Can you think of a better example of product placement?

I did come up with one. It began with a phone call from a local clothing manufacturer. He was looking for some promotion for his sports apparel business that produced a line of madeto-order clothing featuring team logos and school names.

The guy was asking me for some free publicity, which was not an uncommon request. The sales department adored Barney. They also enjoyed being in the black financially and were seldom happy when a TV segment could potentially have been a paid ad. I always felt that in some way everybody was “selling” something. So it was hard to distinguish between hawking a product and those just spreading a point of view.

If the sales manager questioned why I had booked a certain segment, I often made the case that being on Daybreak might convince a potential advertiser of the power of television because inevitably those few minutes on the air with me and Barney led to company recognition and business. That would result in a greater chance the guy would become a client and cough up a few bucks. That was the tune I sang my entire career. This particular request, however, did seem to cross the line. A visit to a facility where people manufactured shorts and T-shirts just wasn’t good TV.

With this in mind, I politely explained the problem with doing the segment. Just as I was about to hang up, the proverbial lightbulb went on. There was a way to make it good TV.

“Tell you what,” I said to the owner. “I’ll do a show about your company if you’ll agree to make a line of underwear with Barney’s picture plastered all over each pair.”

“Are you serious?”

With that ringing endorsement, I convinced him this would be a great promotion. The shorts would be priced inexpensively so our viewers would order on impulse. We’d call them Beagle Boxers. (Boxers! Get it? Like the breed of dog.) And we’d take phone orders during the show.

He was hesitant, concerned that too many sales at the price we agreed on (ten bucks) would mess up waiting orders for other clients, especially because the boxers required labor-intensive stitching. I comforted him. “Don’t worry. We couldn’t possibly sell that many. I mean, what man would want a beagle on his underwear?” Somehow, I never felt guilty when I shaded the truth. My gut told me this was a great idea.

Three weeks later, we did a show from his plant, explaining how the Barney boxers had gone from design to production. We displayed the original concept on the computer, then showed his seamstresses and tailors in action completing each pair at their sewing machines. The whole setting had a kind of sweatshop look to it, which concerned me, but as was often the case with live TV, once you’re there you have to make the best of it.

The shorts completed, we wrestled a pair on Barney. This had to be the most humiliated he had ever been. He didn’t howl at me for a week. But Barney was always a good sport about wearing stuff: hats, shoes, scarves, earmuffs. Over the years he had a Santa suit and even a Harley biker outfit, both made just for dogs. The only thing he resisted wearing were those silly reindeer antlers. He did have some sense of style.

As soon as we mentioned on camera that the shorts were for sale, the switchboard was slammed. Even with the extra personnel the owner had hired, his staff couldn’t keep up. To his credit, he knew he could not cut off the calls at the agreed time, so we extended the hours viewers could order. “I’ll take calls until noon,” he relented. I have never seen a man so unhappy selling underwear.

By noon, over 1,000 pairs of shorts had been sold. His employees, who assembled the boxers by hand, worked overtime the next two weeks filling the orders for Father’s Day, an upcoming date I had conveniently forgotten to remind the owner of. As it turned out, I was correct when I said that most men would not want beagle underwear. However, a lot of women did want to buy their husbands beagle underwear, whether they wanted a pair or not. Let that be a lesson to all of you going into sales and marketing.

Rumor has it that there was a minor baby boom nine months after the shorts were delivered. Not true, but it’s the only reference to sex in this entire book. To this day, at fairs and book signings, men tell me that they still have their pair of Barney Boxers. Once a guy said he was wearing them. I took his word for it.

Concerto for Four Paws

There is no real magic bullet when it comes to advertising. Even Super Bowl ads, despite the huge investment, have come up short. The research is clear: Just because you remember an ad doesn’t mean you will buy the product. Or even remember what product the ad was touting. Being from Indianapolis, I love that ad with Peyton Manning for ... for . . . not a clue. See what I mean?

Up until Barney arrived on the scene, I had never done a TV commercial. Not one. First, I was technically a newsperson both at the NBC and CBS affiliate. As a rule, reporters don’t have the luxury of extra income in this area. It poses a conflict of interest. Suppose