THE "WHITE" STUFF: A PERSONAL REMEMBRANCE OF BETTY AND MY YEARS WRITING FOR HER, ON THE OCCASION OF HER CENTENNIAL BIRTHDAY.

A few years ago, just before Christmas, there was a knock at the door. It was the Federal Express delivery gentleman. He handed me an envelope. As most of the media and entertainment industry is shuttered for the last two weeks of the year and business wouldn't start gearing up again until after the 1st of January, I wasn't expecting any correspondence in particular to arrive, so was curious as to its contents. I thanked him, we wished each other a good holiday, and I took the envelope inside.

I opened the seal, pulled out an 8 x 10 glossy, and what to my wandering eye did appear, but a black and white photograph of a smiling Betty White, posed with her Golden Retriever.

Over the photograph she had written, "Dear Peter, Thank you for putting your words in my mouth. Love, Betty and Pontiac"

In our business we tend to amass by default quite a number of photographs and other various artifacts of memorabilia with those notables we have worked with in our careers over the years, I tend to throw them in one drawer or another, and not adorn my office walls with them, for whatever reason.

But this one I will now frame and hang, Because there are few if any I value more,

And especially so now.

Betty White would have turned 100 today. Her centennial. She missed it - January 17th, ironically, by just 17 days.

But somewhere up there, Betty is styling. And smiling. And if there's any justice in the next world, sipping from a glass or three the bubbly she so loved. And toasted by her three other fellow Golden Girls who beat her to the finish line. As well as the multitudes in the business and outside of it who knew and adored her,

I had long planned to write this remembrance of writing for her and publish it specifically for this day, as a celebration of her glorious and legendary life on landmark birthday.

And that is what this is - only now these few coins I'll take the liberty of tossing into the fountain of tribute to her is combined with a reflective yet joyful commemoration. In an objective global sense. As well as a personal one,

Some years before I received that Fedex letter, as sometimes happens in our business, it was a kind of circuitous kismet that I was introduced to and subsequently landed the advertising account of a very good client, The Lifeline Program - a quite forward-thinking insurance company - that already had Betty signed as their spokesperson. Which for a creatively-driven ad agency and entertainment company like ours, was what one always hopes for in the creative sense, with all the imagined possibilities and opportunities one could envision vis a vis using her wholly unique persona and personality in a full panoply of various executional endeavors.

And so it happened that I had the pleasure soon after - and when she was already a nonagendarian - of creating at the outset a new campaign for the client and being able to incorporate her subsequently across all media platforms - from television, radio and print, to social media, special projects, speeches, web sites and B2B - over the course of several years in a great many different projects.

We also had the good (and all too often in our business, the rare) fortune of having the company's CEO as well as their marketing director to both be enthusiastic ad aficionados in the best of senses, loving the creative side of the advertising (while adhering to the strategic integrity) and not just supporting but championing all sorts of unexpected and often quite adventurous directions we proposed and executed, no matter how seemingly outre we at the agency sometimes took the creative.

As the client's target audience was seniors, Betty was the most charming...and effective...of role models, full of her unique band of humor, spunk, sauciness, eccentricity, and warmth, I had an absolute ball using her as the centrifugal force and centerpiece of almost all the work done for this client.

At a time when the word "unique" is over-used, Betty truly was in the best sense of the word.

I'd also use the word unique in the process of writing for her in the sense that the vast majority of the time, whether advertising, theatre, film, or any of the performing arts, we first create the work, then cast what we think would be the optimum and appropriate actor best suited for the role. If the lead happens to be a superstar, one can tweak the writing to some degree to subtly tailor the star's personality to it, but the conformation is actor to script.

In the case of using Betty, it was the other way around. Everything created in each medium intentionally came out of and consistently conformed to her trademark persona. And that was both the fun - and the challenge - of the process.

If you'll bear with a bit of personal "inside baseball," before my thoughts on Betty's life and what she meant to all of us in a more general sense which follows, allow me to share two examples.

Shortly after landing the account and after I wrote their new tag line, and as we were developing the strategy and creative direction and elements new campaign, the client mentioned that they had quite a bit of "Betty material" floating about - unused outtakes from other prior print and TV shoots or just a grab-bag of some various one-off just-for-fun tomfooleries - that they didn't know quite what to do with - if anything, I asked them if they would share with me the images, which they sent along.

When I saw the photos, it stuck me that we had a gold mine of the Golden Girl, All sorts of quirky, charming, eccentric photographs of Betty in various poses and costumes and settings. It seemed to me they were simply begging for a context. It would be a crime of sorts for these to go to waste.

And so my thought was to try and come up with some "Bettyisms" to go along with these delicious photos. That is to say, to attempt to write various quips, aphorisms, and philosophies as she might write them, in her special voice, in her kind of style, tone and linguistic texture.

And so I took a crack at writing a bunch of them, the client signed off on them, Betty approved them, we put her imprimatur on them, and we created a quirky kind of print campaign from those. Among other avenues in which we used them, we sent them to the client's many existing or potential clients and prospects on Facebook, who then put them on their Facebook walls and who in turn, sent them to their Facebook friends and connections.

The end result was, with Betty's popularity and through-the-roof Q-score, the campaign going viral and spreading like wildfire.

One of those is in the head of this article, above. A couple of others amongst the many, just for kicks and giggles, are here, below.

One of the other enjoyable outlier projects aside from the major media work, was the time the client asked if I could write Betty's speech for a special event - she was presenting Elton John with the "adoption papers" for the care and feeding of a crocodile in the L.A. Zoo (perfectly relevant to Elton for obvious reasons) on the occasion of his 65th birthday. So I penned a litany of light musings about growing "old" as an appetizer to the main course of the her presentation of the papers to him.

In the course of the work we did using Betty, we also created a campaign using the world-renowned illustrator Rick Meyerowitz - as well as a radio campaign using Betty that was a take-off a well-known game show. And of course she was central to all the television, radio, print and other media in which we used her,

For longer B2B necessity pieces and white papers, her use and presence in brochures made what would normally be pretty dry meat and potatoes technical financial information into somewhat more lively, accessible work.

We as agencies can only go so far as a client allows. And I am always grateful that our client allowed. A wonderful experience all around in a business where that isn't always - or even often - the case.

Through it all, Betty always maintained her energy throughout shoots and sessions, though in the final year or so she did try to limit her hours in respect to her age to four or five hours per day.

I believe her advertising association with our client may have well been the final extensive long-term consistent advertising presence and relationship alliance she had with any company.

And if that was indeed true, it was ever so much fun - and an honor - to be associated with her.

WHAT BETTY MEANT TO US ALL

Betty lived some kind of life. She was a global superstar. A Hollywood legend. In her own way, a power-broker. Yet we found her as accessible as your next-door neighbor who brings you home-baked cookies a few days before Christmas, then stays to toast the holiday and regale your with stories into the night.

?And ever so adorable.

Whatever part of human brain makes us feel good when we see certain people on any of our various screens or hear them on our audio devices, Betty had the knack of finding that region and tickling it. She made us smile. Even the most cynical among us.

Just as "Nobody Doesn't Like Sara Lee" - nobody didn't like Betty White.

Far more than merely "grandmotherly," her collection of life philosophies and observations hold the kind of wisdom earned from almost a century of walking this planet, yet spun in her own cheeky style. She had the energy in her 90s of one half her age.

She could be bold. And ribald. In some ways she was one of the original feminists. She had among many a wonderful line I won't repeat because, well, this is a family web-site, about the tenacity and strength of one's "lady parts" and how it's woefully misused in a common expression of describing timidity, frailty and weakness (you can do an internet search and find it - you'll enjoy it I think).

She'd reinvent herself many times over in her career; she not only had a "second act" but a third and a fourth and fifth act.

She knew the score, and could translate the scoreboard, in the most playful of ways, One never got the feeling she was self-consciously "working" the audience. She could "kvell" over a baby, then turn her head with appreciation as a young hunk walked by. And she was not too advanced in years to enjoy an adult beverage or two once in a while when the sun went down. In fact, she insisted on it.

She could cut to the chase without being cutting. She could be knowing, without coming off as a know-it-all.?

She never lost her trademark twinkle to the inevitable wrinkle.?

With so much anger, darkness and division in our country over the past several years, she was the bright, gleaming orb of instant - and constant - delight who could immediately defuse any rancor or gloom we may be feeling.

She could act a little dizzy at times, yet all the while we know she is nobody's fool. She's spent most of her life in New York and Los Angeles, yet retained the mid-western solid stock and down-to-earth core that comes from her upbringing in Chicago.

She was, as most know, a truly dedicated animal rights champion and activist behind which she put her time, her celebrity, and her money.

And though she never had kids of her own, she was stepmother to her late, adored husband Allen Ludden's three children.

In an age where we spend much of our lives staring into our smart phones and constantly updating our social media accounts, Betty - who proudly called herself a "technospazz" - reminded us of what it means to be human.

We've "known" Betty our entire lives, even though most have never met her in person, only on our televisions in living color. Or for some, going way back, in black & white. And you always got the feeling she's was going to surprise and delight us with something brand new, just around the corner.

She may have in her last years slowed just a bit. But she never stopped. Retirement never was in the cards for her, and why should it have been? Not with the kind of hand she's been dealt and played so beautifully.

The Golden Girl has always been an iconic gem to all of us.

She lived her life as a woman in full.

Either you have "it" or you don't. Betty had it. Boy did she have it. With plenty to spare.

And as we age as a population, with more and more seniors living well into their 90s and even beyond, she taught us how to grow older not just gracefully, but gleefully, energetically, enthusiastically, and always retaining the spirit and wonder of life.

She was unique. Her spirit lives on. In all of memories. In each heart she touched. In every smile she brought. And still it does, as she continues to exist for us and for those who come after, for generations for follow, and she shall continue to, through the courtesy of technology,

Her enchantment is eternal, So, let's all wish Betty a most happy 100th wherever she may be.?

Here's lookin' at you, kid!

- Peter Hoffman