Monday, March 16, 2015

This is all we do and we do it well

RIP Jack Prescott:
Prescott, a practicing attorney for more than 50 years until 2009, died March 4. He was 87.

In 1986, about a year after lawyers were allowed to appeal to the public, Prescott began doing television commercials. He crafted the catch phrase to get around the laws of the day that forbid lawyers from advertising that they are “specialists.”

The pitch became seared on the minds of television viewers, sometimes running 25 times a week on Channel 9, and included his declaration of being “the busiest bankruptcy lawyer in Minnesota.”

The ads worked, Prescott said in a 2002 Star Tribune interview, because he looks honest. “They seem to do better during the soaps. I don’t know why,” he said.

Actually, I think we do know why -- if you're home watching the soaps when you'd ordinarily be working, you might be encountering a bit of financial difficulty. But that's not the point of this post.

Although I thankfully have never needed the services of Prescott & Pearson, ol' Jack has been of service to my family. Jack's office is in New Brighton, on Old Highway 8, next door to a small, old school Dairy Queen that hardly has any seating, although it does have a few outdoor tables. When the kids were younger we'd sometimes eat our ice cream on the steps in front of Jack's office if the outdoor tables were occupied -- this would be in the evening, after they'd closed for the day. I'd pretend to be Jack Prescott and do his shtick line in an exaggerated voice and the kids would laugh and laugh. The kids would try it, too, but they'd start laughing before they could get the words out. It's a great memory. And I should mention that Jack Prescott was a good bankruptcy attorney.  After all, it's all he did and he did it well.

These old school pitch guys are fading from the scene now -- you haven't seen Ray "Menards Guy" Szmanda on television in a long time, either:


I'm a copywriter and I suspect we often overthink what we do. There's great value in direct expression. Jack Prescott understood that.