Buddy Lee - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Buddy Lee was an advertising

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

mascot

Mascot

The term mascot – defined as a term for any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck – colloquially includes anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name...

for Lee Jeans

Lee (Jeans)

Lee is a brand of denim jeans, first produced in 1889 in Salina, Kansas. The company is owned by VF Corporation, the largest apparel company in the world. Its headquarters is currently in Merriam, Kansas, just outside of Kansas City, Missouri...

. The doll

Doll

A doll is a model of a human being, often used as a toy for children. Dolls have traditionally been used in magic and religious rituals throughout the world, and traditional dolls made of materials like clay and wood are found in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe. The earliest documented dolls...

, a promotional item for the company from 1920 to 1962, was brought back as the star of television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

advertising

Advertising

for the company's Lee Dungarees line from 1998 until the mid-2000s.

Early years

Sales manager Chester Reynolds, later Lee's board president, came up with the idea of using a doll to "model" miniature versions of the company's clothes for store displays. The 12½-inch composition dolls first appeared in the windows of Dayton's

Dayton's

Minneapolis-based Dayton's was among the leading department stores in the United States for nearly a century after its founding in 1902 by George Draper Dayton. In 1969, the Detroit-based J.L. Hudson Company merged with the Dayton Corporation to form the Dayton-Hudson Corporation, adding 21...

flagship store on Nicollet Mall

Nicollet Mall

Nicollet Mall is a portion of Nicollet Avenue running through downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Working as a pedestrian and transit mall, it is also an upscale shopping and dining district...

in Minneapolis, then were used at stores nationwide.

Lee encouraged stores to sell the dolls after the displays were taken down, and later provided the dolls for retail sale, including versions dressed as a cowboy, Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...

deliveryman, railroad worker and gas station attendant. Starting in 1949, Buddy Lee was produced as a 13-inch hard plastic doll.

Although female versions of the so called Betty Lee doll surface from time to time, there was no official Betty Lee doll ever made by the D. H. Lee Company, they never made any female doll at all, these dolls instead are composition Carnival dolls (term used by collectors - dolls sold at Carnival's as prizes) that look similar to the Buddy Lee doll, this information is direct from the historian who researched the Lee company archives in 2008 for a special Lee company function on the Buddy Lee doll.http://www.dollreference.com/buddy_lee_doll50s.html

The Buddy Lee dolls were discontinued in 1962 because they were no longer profitable. By then, Buddy Lee had become the second-highest-selling doll in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.http://www.minneapolismolinecollectors.org/displays/buddy.html

Television advertising

In 1998, ad agency Fallon McElligott

Fallon Worldwide

Fallon Worldwide is an international advertising agency headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota with affiliate offices in London, Singapore, Hong Kong, São Paulo and Tokyo. It is a subsidiary of Publicis.-History:...

brought back the doll, along with the 1940s Lee tagline "Can't Bust 'Em," to promote the Lee Dungarees line, aimed at 17- to 22-year-old males. The main campaign was preceded by guerrilla marketing

Guerrilla marketing

Guerrilla warfare is about waging small intermittent attacks on different territories of the opponent with the aim of harassing and demoralising the opponent and eventually securing permanent footholds....

techniques, including movie trailer-style teaser spots, unbranded posters of the doll, and a 6-minute mockumentary

Mockumentary

A mockumentary , is a type of film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictitious setting, or to parody the documentary form itself...

, "The Buddy Lee Story," which was aired in segments during late-night cable television

Cable television

Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...

.http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BDW/is_21_40/ai_54741430 The 1998 TV spots — "Car," "Twister" and "Parachute" — were directed by Spike Jonze

Spike Jonze

Spike Jonze is an American director, producer and actor, whose work includes music videos, commercials, film and television...

while Phil Morrison

Phil Morrison (director)

Phil Morrison is an American film director best known for the Academy Award-nominated feature film, Junebug.In 2006, Morrison directed the "Get a Mac" advertising campaign for Apple Inc..-External links:...

helmed the 1999 TV spots: "Actress" co-starring Sarah Michelle Gellar

Sarah Michelle Gellar

Sarah Michelle Prinze , known professionally by her birth name of Sarah Michelle Gellar , is an American actress, singer and executive producer...

, "Animal Guy" co-starring Jack Hanna

Jack Hanna

John Bushnell "Jack" Hanna is an American zookeeper who is the Director Emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. He was Director of the zoo from 1978 to 1993, and is viewed as largely responsible for elevating its quality and reputation. His media appearances have made him one of the most...

, "Blues Guy" co-starring Bobby Womack

Bobby Womack

Robert Dwayne "Bobby" Womack is an American singer-songwriter and musician. An active recording artist since the early 1960s where he started his career as the lead singer of his family musical group The Valentinos and as Sam Cooke's backing guitarist, Womack's career has spanned more than 40...

, "Sergeant" and "Fans".

The comedic ads touted the unmoving Buddy Lee as a "Man of Action." The doll was usually presented as a heroic figure who survived all manner of certain doom, prompting his human co-stars to marvel at the durability of his jeans. Three nemeses for Buddy Lee — Curry, Roy, and Super Greg (the latter portrayed by Sacha Baron Cohen

Sacha Baron Cohen

Sacha Noam Baron Cohen is an English stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and voice artist. He is most widely known for his portrayal of three unorthodox fictional characters: Ali G, Borat, and Brüno...

). — were introduced in 2000 through Web sites and appeared in three TV spots directed by Fredrik Bond.http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/soa/Can-t-bust-em/0,139023166,120108076-1,00.htm

The following year, Lee Dungarees ads adopted a heroic folk theme song for the doll and the tagline "Be Like Buddy Lee." Besides "Apartment," "Street" and "Suburbia" directed by Ulf Johansson & Mats Lindberg from Traktor

Traktor

Traktor is a DJ software package developed by Native Instruments. The most recent version, Traktor Pro, offers seamless looping, effects, automatic beat-gridding of tracks, advanced beat detection and Sync Lock for automatic synchronization of tracks, a 4-channel mixer, emulating the Xone:92...

and "Barbershop" directed by Craig Gillespie, this series also included a special unbranded ad — directed by Fallon art director Harvey Marco and aired on behalf of the American Red Cross

American Red Cross

The American Red Cross , also known as the American National Red Cross, is a volunteer-led, humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and education inside the United States. It is the designated U.S...

after the September 11, 2001 attacks

September 11, 2001 attacks

The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...

— in which the doll sports a rolled-up sleeve, bandage and "I Gave" sticker to promote blood donation

Blood donation

A blood donation occurs when a person voluntarily has blood drawn and used for transfusions or made into medications by a process called fractionation....

.http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing-advertising/advertising-television-advertising/834527-1.html

2002's campaign consisting of the TV spots "Cheese" and "Emu" was directed by Dante Ariola while Chris Smith helmed 2003's "Trailer," "The Chase" and "Hall of Mirrors."

In November 2004, the doll starred in "Buddy Lee: Guidance Counselor," a Jon Nowak-directed series of three 6-minute sponsored segments on otherwise commercial-free episodes of MTV2

MTV2

MTV2 is a cable network that is widely available in the United States on digital cable and satellite television, and is progressively being added to analogue cable lineups across the nation...

's interactive show Control Freak. Viewers voting online for videos on the show were also asked to choose one of three outcomes for the Buddy Lee segments.http://www.commercialalert.org/news/featured-in/2004/10/coming-episodes-of-control-freak-on-mtv2-dont-have-commercials-but-they-do-pitch-lee-jeans

In 2005 Buddy Lee was promoted as a write-in presidential candidate for the 2008 election.

Early years

Television advertising

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