The Original Tik Tok-- From 1970s Philadelphia!

Tik Tok has become a media phenomenon, going from zero to more than one billion users in six years. While it began as a place where people share silly videos of dances or stunts, it's now become a forum for all sorts of messages, commercial and otherwise. When you have one billion users making short-form (thirty second or less) videos there's an avalanche of content, increasingly relevant to an ever-growing audience--Google has taken note that the Tik Tok search engine's growing rapidly, focused exclusively on Tik Tok content that bypasses the inevitable page or two of paid Google ads and ad word paid placements.

All this is nothing new, at least if you're a venerable Philadelphian. We had Tik Tok, albeit in a more primitive form, more than a half-century ago. Let me explain.

Back in the bad old days when TV meant six or seven channels, about half of which were relegated to UHF (which had a much narrower broadcast range), there were limited options for promoting your product/service by video. You might sponsor a whole program (but that became prohibitively expensive,) or you could produce your own commercial, typically running thirty seconds or one minute. A professionally produced commercial was also expensive; even buying thirty second spots on the less-watched UHF stations could be costly.

Enter Benny Krass, owner of Krass Brothers menswear store on South Street. Benny had a natural flair for promotion--he parked a white Rolls Royce in front of the store, had celebrities appear in the store from time to time (usually sports heroes), and generally made himself visible around town. He needed to be on TV, but the conventional commercial formats wouldn't work for him.

So, he went down market. Way, way down market. He pioneered the ten-second commercial, set in a bare studio, where he delivered variations on the same message: "If you don't buy your clothes from Krass Brothers, xxxxxxxx." It might be, "you was robbed." "you turn my stomach (exposing his belly)", "you make me cry," etc. but always ended with the tag line "store of the stars." Benny, who was certainly no Robert Redford, surrounded himself with young, scantily clad ladies in the sort of outfits found at Lou Turk's strip club near the airport, which in its way made sense since the target audience was middle-aged men who needed another business suit. Production values included audible sound and adequate lighting. Of course, he gravitated to UHF, where airtime was cheap. He could get three attention-getting spots for the price of one thirty second commercial (and with bulk time buys often much, much less.)

You saw the commercials all the time, in constant rotation (much like Tik Tok, where frequency gets attention.) They were so jaw-droppingly terrible that all of Philadelphia was transfixed, and "If you don't buy your clothes from Krass Brothers" became a joke catchphrase.

Benny made a lot of money and had a lot of fun, not only because he got to surround himself with lovely ladies but because he was an instant celebrity. People would shout the catchphrase when they saw him on the street.

So, scoff if you will at the silly dances and music clips on your cell phone app. Somewhere in Heaven Benny, surrounded by a bevy of buxom angels, is having a chuckle.

You can see a few of his masterworks here: Krass Brothers Commercials - YouTube

Jim Shulman is the founder of Elsinore Business Associates, where he has coached very successful entrepreneurs, particularly financial advisors and attorneys, since 2000. He's a devotee of new media, tempered by the belief that everything old is new again. You can find him here on LinkedIn, at [email protected] or through his website at www.elsinoreba.com