Cliff Freeman, Adman Who Asked, ‘Where’s the Beef?,’ Dies at 80

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Cliff Freeman, Adman Who Asked, ‘Where’s the Beef?,’ Dies at 80

The Little Caesars pizza chain was a single of the to start with accounts Mr. Freeman won just after starting his own company, and it remained a signature customer for 11 a long time as it fought for sector share from opponents like Pizza Hut and Domino’s.

“Well, you know, pizza is a pleasurable item,” Mr. Freeman explained to Luerzer’s Archive, an marketplace journal, in a 1998 interview. “Everyone sits around and eats pizza with each other, so you’ve acquired to have fun when you advertise it. You surely just cannot deal with it very seriously.”

A person advert Mr. Freeman devised emphasized the stretchiness of pizza cheese, to slapstick impact (a toddler goes on a wild ride in her superior chair all through the household even though keeping on to a slice). In yet another, a goofy worker for an unnamed rival chain tries to impress a client by contorting a pizza box, origami-model, into the condition of a pterodactyl (underscoring its providing of just a pizza and a box, in comparison with Small Caesars’s two pizzas for a single small value).

People commercials aided carry revenue of Very little Caesars 138 per cent from 1988 to 1993. Nevertheless, immediately after sales flattened and Tiny Caesars thought of changing advertisement businesses, Mr. Freeman finished his firm’s affiliation with the chain in 1998.

Around the several years, Mr. Freeman’s company gained a lot of Clio Awards for marketing excellence. It received for commercials designed for clients like Minimal Caesars, Philips and Outpost.com, and for a series of ads for Fox Sports’ Countrywide Hockey League protection that shown how basketball, bowling, billiards and golf would be much better if they were played extra physically, like hockey.

Neal Tiles, a internet marketing executive for Fox Sporting activities, instructed The New York Situations in 1998 that ithad chosen Mr. Freeman’s agency simply because it took “creative risks in a strategic way” on so lots of campaigns.

But Cliff Freeman & Partners lasted only 11 much more a long time. Amid a economic downturn, govt turmoil and consumer departures, it shut down in 2009.