Maybe it didn't make your calendar ...

Maybe it didn't make your calendar of really big terminations for 2006, but there's something you should know. It's not a sly really. We're not intentionally hiding anything. for what purpose would we? So here goes: Packaged profitables giant Procter & Gamble's concealed antiperspirant turned 50 this year. Who knew a deodorant could be to such a degree old? Well, now the secret's without that Secret has been in succession store shelves for a whopping five decades.

To commemorate this momentous anniversary in the realm of underarm protection, P & G turn rounded to Leo Burnett to make known a campaign that purports to exhibit to what happens when friends or family members share unexpect or surprising shroudeds with each other. Better this for an anniversary, wouldn't you say, than a certain quantity of analytical discussion of how clandestine cuts down on perspiration.

Interestingly, individual Jessica Yu directed this series of five commercials. Yu took abiding-place the 1997 Academy Award for best documentary (for the 35-minute film "Breathing Lessons") When Yu accepted her Oscar she revealed to the world a unseen of her own, namely the dres she was wearing that night preciousness more than the film that earned her like a prestigious award.

Watching these concealed commercials, it is apparent Yu was trying hard to establish a feeling of great intimacy between the controls in each execution -- a closenes that would make it easy for the parties involved to bare secrets.

For the chiefly part, that feeling of connection is readily evident and interesting.

What works against the commercials, however, is something that is repeatedly a problem in testimonial denomination ads: Real people with actor credentials being hauled in head of the camera and directed to act like real populace "Acting real" rarely works, and these underhanded spots are a good example of on what account

"Married Him," for instance, features sum of two units women of a certain age. individual of the silver-haired ladies is seen coming clean about her brother, whom she reveals she had to bribe to accompany the other woman to the junior prom flat so, the man eventually damage up marrying his date.

It's an awkward, steady mildly humiliating secret that's revealed in "Married Him," nevertheless both women nonetheless respond with chortles that, given the information proffered up, seem oddly unsettling and way across the top. As a end the commercial comes off feeling excessively stagey and a little off-putting.

A man and wife of spots in the series, including the same where one friend reveals the actual age of the other, are a tad more natural. on the contrary altogether there are too many mannered drifts and theatrical pregnant pauses in this work to give the campaign the totally natural, real feeling it appears to want to project.

Lew's view: B-

e-mail: llazare@suntimes.com

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