Book excerpt: Looking back at Michael Jackson's Pepsi ad

— -- Excerpt from the chapter titled Going Orbital from the book Then We Set His Hair On Fire: Insights and Accidents from a Hall-of-Fame Career in Advertising, by Phil Dusenberry; Penguin Group, 290 pages. Dusenberry relates the incidents leading up to Jackson's participation in a Pepsi commercial in which his hair was accidentally set on fire by pyrotechnics:

Let's face it. Much of the work we do in our industry doesn't set the world on fire. But every once in a while, if the advertising gods are smiling, something you do takes on a jet-propelled life of its own and lifts off into outer space. Your idea, your client, your message go orbital.

BBDO had a long wonderful relationship with Pepsi, ever since 1960. However, by the 1980's, Pepsi had lost some of its hold on its very own Pepsi generation. It was time to go after the next generation – their youngsters.

This is what was on Roger Enrico's mind (the new President of Pepsi-Cola USA). He needed something big.

Critics say that when an ad agency resorts to celebrity advertising, it's proof that the agency is out of ideas. But we had something else in mind. Use a celebrity, but not just any celebrity, the biggest one we could find, and put him or her in a carefully scripted scenario that functions like a mini-movie, with a beginning middle and end.

We were ratcheting up the stakes – going after Michael Jackson– the prince of pop for his first-time-ever TV commercial debut.

Recognizing a mega-idea when he saw one, Roger jumped on it. It doesn't get any bigger than having the number one star of his time pitch your product.

Pepsi's Alan Pottasch and I met Michael at his Encino, Calif., home. Michael was waiting for us with his father, Joe, and his attorney. We were meeting to nail down the last minute odds and ends that arise in any elaborate production. As we settled into a pleasant pro forma confirmation of what we had agreed on, Michael said in his familiar soprano tone: "I just have three things to say. One, I don't like the storyboards. Two, I don't like the song, Three, you can't show my face."

An awkward silence followed. It is a tribute to my cardiopulmonary vitality that I continued breathing. We knew that the song and storyboard issues could be dealt with. But not showing Michael's face was a deal-breaker. Finally, Michael explained himself. "I just hate to see myself on television. How about showing just my glove? And my shoes and sunglasses."

From that moment, every raw scrap of screen time on Michael's countenance was a major negotiation. If you've got a stopwatch, you'll see we ended up with about four seconds.

As for the song, he said, "Why don't you take one of my songs? Why don't you use Billie Jean?"

"That's great, Michael," I said. "But what about the lyrics?"

"We'll make them Pepsi lyrics," he said. "Why don't we work on them together."

Suddenly I felt like $5 million.

But he still hadn't signed off on the storyboard. So I decided to act them out, and let Michael fill in the blanks with his own considerable choreographic imagination. He listened and watched with remarkable patience. "Oooh, this is great. It's gonna win every award in the book."

With music and concepts now put to bed, all that remained was the shoot itself. Easy.

That was dispelled the first day of the shoot. Michael refused to remove his sunglasses.

I said, "We're not shooting a Foster Grant spot. If he doesn't lose the sunglasses, we're shutting the set down."

Michael insisted. I persisted. Back and forth. Seconds before the final deadline, word filtered back that he would ungoggle.

The next three days went smoothly. We were at the Shrine Auditorium in Hollywood on our last day of filming. Michael and his brothers, the Jackson Five, were ready to storm onto the stage. Five thousand raucous, squirming, worked-up kids were in the audience as we prepared to film concert footage, complete with dancing and flashing lights and fireworks. The kids greeted Michael with tumultuous adulation. Michael blew kisses to his fans.

And then we set his hair on fire.