Bob Giraldi on Shooting Michael Jackson
The legendary director shares his views on the birth of mega-star ad campaigns.
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Bob Giraldi Looks Back on Making Advertising History: When you did the Pepsi spots with him, celebrity advertising wasn’t quite what it is today. What was the atmosphere like when you were shooting those spots? Well, you’re talking about Michael Jackson, you’re talking about Pepsi and you’re talking about BBDO. You can’t think of more Type-A, high-profile segments of each individual group than those. He’s the King of Pop, Pepsi is probably the highest profile advertiser of that time and BBDO was the agency that more or less invented the celebrity spot as we know it, especially the way that Phil Dusenberry did them. So if you work your way down that list, there were some pretty active egos at work there, me included. So between us, everybody had something to say, something to offer, something to want, something to not want—looking back on it, it’s sort of amazing it got produced in the first place.
What did people in the business think about your work on this campaign? A lot of producers were respectful of the fact I was among the first to get those kind of assignments, and that’s just part of my history. The genius of the spots however is in the talent of Michael. I just played a role—I earned it, I guess, by being one of the first crossover commercial directors to do music videos. I was fortunate, but it would be the same as if I saw someone today and congratulated them for working with Beyonce. Times change, and it was my time then. How has celebrity advertising changed?
But the fact remains that at that time this was not something that big stars jumped into. In fact, I remembered when we did the coming out party for Pepsi and the Jacksons at Tavern on the Green in New York. Pepsi threw this press party, and the Jacksons emerged from the dressing room to come out to answer questions with shades on. And that was the first time that anyone ever saw them with shades on. And as you know, they then went on and wore them, and Michael wore them for years. And I have a feeling—I asked Michael to take them off for the commercial shoot, because he even wanted to wear them then—but I have a feeling it was them saying, ‘Yeah, we’re the first to go commercial, and we’re being paid handsomely for it, but we’re still not comfortable looking you in the eye.’ I think there was a distance created with the shades that was needed in order for them to sign that contract. That’s not that necessary now, is it? No. Now everybody uses endorsements. We name our stadiums after advertisers. We didn’t then. The Pepsi tour wasn’t born just yet, it was coming. Did Michael travel with a big entourage then? No. One of my nicer memories was scouting for the “Beat It” video in the back of a van. We went to downtown L.A. to check out some locations, and he wanted to come on the scout. And he came with us as we checked these places out, and he was very accessible. He just had this guy, very firm but low key, who was responsible for his security, and that was it. Years later I’d see pictures of him showing up at places, and the entourage was unbelievable. It couldn’t help but grow. It’s just the way it is. |
Just about every reference to Michael Jackson in the business press in the days immediately following his death last week talked about his impact on advertising, particularly his work with Pepsi back in the 1980s. Those spots were arguably the biggest celebrity ad campaign in the history of advertising at that time, and perhaps the first to leverage the cultural impact of pop music stars in the age of music videos. The Jackson campaign for Pepsi set the stage for all that followed, from the Ray Charles work to the Cindy Crawford spots to Michael J. Fox. To find out what it was like at those heady times, we called legendary director 
That said, I’m proud of the two spots I did with them, especially about the spot where Alfonso Ribeiro was dancing the moon walk and bumps into Michael. That was a pretty cool spot back then. That was the first one we did. The vibes on that were good, and people knew we had something going. On the next spot is when we had the accident (Jackson’s hair caught fire during the shooting of the concert spot when fireworks went off as part of the stage spectacle), and that threw everything into a dither. It was what you might call high profile. Based on our success with the first spot, everybody wanted to have a piece of that history, since it was the first time a star of that magnitude endorsed a project.
I don’t know if it’s changed all that much. I mean, back then I was doing Miller Lite spots—the “Tastes great, less filling” campaign—and we took retired athletes and tried to make them into actors. And that’s not really too different than what you see today. I know for sure, today’s celebrities are traveling in much bigger entourages—a lot more aides and a lot more bodyguards. 
