The Girl In The Water Ad

Dean Guitars was only a few years old. While we had almost instant recognition with the luck of a few key artists playing Dean Guitars onstage right at the inception of our company, we were still struggling to gain market acceptance with the strength of the "Big Two" guitar companies. I knew I had to change my focus and was looking for an ad concept. With the "Big Two" being merely an appendage of corporate conglomerates, I knew if I could send the right message, people would see Dean Guitars for what it really was. A guitar company owned by a young rocker that had been playing guitar since the age of ten. A contemporary who lived and breathed the "rock dream" just like his guitar buying audience.

There I was in search of a concept, in route home to Chicago from LA and paging through one of those useless airline magazines. I see an ad with some girl standing in the water holding a drink in her hand touting some liquor company. I said to myself, "she should be holding a Dean Guitar!" When I got home, I met with my marketing director and told him my idea. He was dead against it. It was at this meeting that I made the decision to relieve him of his duties and personally take over the marketing of Dean Guitars. By this time, the factory was running well and didn't demand all of my attention.

I called my photographer "RK" as he was known (who worked freelance for Playboy and happened to be the brother of Hugh Hefners ex, Barbi Benton) and asked if he could pull of the ad. He said yea but it is in the middle of winter in Chicago. We figured we could shoot the ad in an indoor pool and strip in the background. Now came the hard part. We had to find the girl. We even hired models and did tests wearing a bathing suit, kneeling in a huge barrel of water in Playboy studios in Chicago. None of the girls looked the part. Then after a couple months of looking, I receive a call from RK, "I found the girl!" She was in from Atlanta shooting a Playboy cover. He shot some Polaroid's, showed them to me and he was right. I had to fly her back to Chicago and we scheduled the shoot at home a couple blocks from my house where they had an indoor pool. There were thousands of watts of lights all around the pool and if any fell in I believe she would have been fried. There was a light on the diving board shining towards the camera to imitate the light that would be created by the sun. There were people in the pool making waves. And then there was this beautiful model with my Custom Caddy Style Dean V.

There were over 300 shots taken and believe it or not, there were only two that I could consider for the ad. However, the two that I had were everything I had hoped for and the rest was simply a coin toss. RK went to the beach about 5 am one fine morning in Chicago and photographed the sun rising (the sun rises over Lake Michigan in Chicago) to make it look like sunset and had the photos mechanically stripped together. FEEL THE DIFFERENCE is all I wanted people to do at the time.

I knew once people felt the difference, they would choose Dean. Now the ad ran and I had no idea of the controversy it would cause. The letters to the editor of all of the magazines (especially Guitar Player) were pouring in and they were getting published. The letters against were way stronger by about 90-10% and came in for several months. Jim Crockett, the Publisher of Guitar Player did an article about the Dean ad and people responded to him for several more months. The Dean ad dominated the letters to the editor of Guitar Player magazine for the better part of that year. Even Playboy magazine picked up on the controversy and ran a photo of the ad with my response in one of their columns. However, in the midst of all of this talk and controversy, our real audience loved the ad. Dean Guitars became a household word. Now over twenty years later, I still hear about this. I can honestly look back and say, "that is the ad that made Dean Guitars famous."

Dean B. Zelinsky

Founder, Dean Guitars