Advertising lost a comedic icon on September 5. Longtime advertising legend Cliff Freeman who coined such 80s terms as “Where’s the beef?” and was the voice for Little Caesars Pizza, “Pizza, Pizza” in countless commercials, quietly passed away in his Manhattan home. Freeman was 80.
According to the New York Times, who reported Freeman’s passing, the cause of death was pneumonia.
While Freeman had not been active in the industry since 2009 after the agency shut down, his legacy will stand for generations. He leaves behind a massive portfolio of creativity that includes absurd and unforgettable commercials that drove an army of would-be copywriters and art directors into the advertising field.
“Cliff was a true craftsman. He knew funny like a sculptor knows human anatomy,” Tom Christmann, who worked as an executive creative director for Cliff Freeman & Partners, told Adweek. “He would recut a commercial himself if it wasn’t funny enough. He would jump in the sound booth and make the perfect fart sound with his mouth. And now I’ve got the image of a sculptor making fart sounds with his mouth in my head. See? That’s what Cliff does to your brain.”
Advertising’s stand-up was born Clifford Lee Freeman was on Feb. 14, 1941, in Vicksburg, Miss., outside Jackson, and moved with his family to St. Petersburg, Florida, when he was 6. His father, James, and his mother, Lillian (Pennebaker) Freeman, owned a dairy business and motels.
After graduating from Florida State University in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in advertising, Freeman joined Liller Neal Battle & Lindsey, an Atlanta agency. He moved to McCann Erickson in 1968 and, two years later, to Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, where he worked for 17 years.
A fierce disciple of comedy, Freeman grabbed the public’s attention in 1984, while at Dancer, when he wrote a spot for Wendy’s. The strategy behind the campaign was to distinguish competitors’ (McDonald’s and Burger King) leading QSR chains’ hamburgers (Big Mac and Whopper respectively) from Wendy’s “modest” single by focusing on the large bun used by the competitors and the larger beef patty in Wendy’s hamburger.
Enter the catchphrase, “Where’s the beef?”
The ad is actually titled “Fluffy Bun” and features white-haired Clara Peller, who is flanked by two other Golden Girls,m receiving a not-so-adequate burger from a competitor called “Home of the Big Bun.” The small patty propels Peller to say, “Where’s the beef?” Director Joe Sedelmaier apparently wanted Peller to say, “Where is all the beef?” But Peller had emphysema and it was too difficult to say.
Watch below:
The spot quickly became a part of the zeitgeist and rocketedPeller to instant stardom. Even Democratic presidential hopeful Walter Mondale used the “Where’s the beef?” line in his 1984 election debate with President Ronald Reagan.
Freeman followed up that spot with another standout spot, “Fashion Show,” which featured plump Russian women modeling the latest in U.S.S.R. fashion as they waddled up and down a runway:
“The entire Russian government protested it,” the diehard Yankee fan told The Wall Street Journal in 2003. “How much more reaction can you get than that?”
While also at Dancer, Freeman would coin the classic campaign for Almond Joy and Mounds’ “Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.”
1987, saw Freeman launch his own agency, Cliff Freeman & Partners, where he would team up with the likes of partner Arthur Bijur and creatives Donna Weinheim and Pete Regan. The agency would go on to work with clients including Little Caesers (for which Freeman personally voiced the “Pizza Pizza” tagline), Staples, Budget, Pep Boys, Hollywood Video, Disney-owned Go.com and many more.
Little Caesars Pizza was one of the first accounts Freeman won, and it remained a client for 11 years as it fought for market share against QSR competitors Pizza Hut, Domino’s and Papa John’s. The commercials Freeman’s agency would produce from 1988 to 1933 would lift the pizza chain’s sales by 138 percent:
And who can forget X-Ray Vision:
That’s also Freeman’s voice uttering the tagline, “Pizza, Pizza.” After reportedly casting hundreds of people to utter those silly yet descriptive words, Mike Illitch, owner of Little Caesars, finally begged Freeman to do it.
Freeman had a philosophy about how advertising worked and never changed lanes from his belief. Simply, in order for advertising to connect with people, it must entertain them first. This belief system created historic successes and drew like-minded people to the agency and to his fandom.
“Cliff has constantly performed a few of the funniest, smartest adverts on TV,” Jim Patterson, the chairman of J. Walter Thompson’s North American operations, told The Tampa Bay Times in 2005. Mr. Freeman’s work, he added, “is all the time recent and authentic.”
During his 2005 induction into The One Club of Creativity Hall of Fame, Cliff Freeman & Partners co-founder Arthur Bijur summed up Freeman’s legacy the best:
“No Cliff notes would be complete without a word about his enduring influence on the business of advertising. Somehow, he has created a petridish for infectious ideas. Cliff Freeman, both the guy and the agency, have shown legions of advertising people (inside and outside the agency for that matter) where the bar ought to be. Then some pheromone he emitted into the air infected a lot of them with an ability to reach it and even nudge it higher.
It would be impossible to add up the many disciples he and the agency helped and continue to launch. There are directors, including Steve Miller, Rick LeMoine, Kevin Donovan, Bruce Hurwitt, and agencies Venables, Bell & Partners and David & Goliath, some of whose leaders were sent forth from Cliff Freeman and Partners with holy-cow credentials. That’s not to mention numerous other talents who have already made and are presently making names for themselves on the Cliff Freeman and Partners stage.
His fame is owed primarily to his true calling. His writing. But everyone who works with him knows he is also a terrific editor, thoughtful planner and keen observer of human behavior. Most will say he is a genius. Others say he’s eccentric. Some just say funny. They are all right.
In the world of advertising, you never have to ask, ‘Where’s the beef?’ Cliff’s got it.”
Freeman is survived by his wife Susan (Kelner) Freeman, son, Scott; his sister, Chase McEwen; and his brother, Hunter.
We will miss you, Mr. Freeman. But your legacy lives on.
“Cliff, Cliff.”
