Tim Kazurinsky Confesses

Most people know Tim Kazurinsky as a former cast member of “Saturday Night Live.”

He was Mr. Robinson's landlord, Weekend Update's Dr. Jack Betoffsky, and, of course, the man who married a monkey.

But what you might not know about the Chicago comedian and writer is that he is also a former advertising copywriter.

“I confess,” he said during a luncheon keynote at the Chicago Association of Direct Marketing's DM Days last month. “I am an ad man.”

Before working at Chicago's famed comedy theater Second City and later “SNL,” he started his career as a copywriter for a now-defunct department store chain in St. Louis. “This was my closest link to direct marketing,” he said, because the ads were measurable. If an ad Kazurinsky wrote resulted in 37 TVs being sold, the store manager was happy.

He later moved on to McCann-Erickson Chicago and then Leo Burnett. The founder of the latter agency knew the true meaning of brand loyalty, Kazurinsky said, noting that one time the hypoglycemic Burnett collapsed during a meeting and asked someone to quickly get him a candy bar. Before they could leave the room to fetch the sweet he gasped, “Make sure it's a Nestlé.”

Kazurinsky's keynote was a big hit with the CADM audience, not only because it was laugh-out-loud funny, but because he truly understood the audience. Unlike a lot of celebrity speakers at DM events, he didn't start by joking about how much his wife spends on catalog shopping and then move on to his canned address. He drew on his advertising background and had obviously taken time to research what was on DMers' minds.

For example, he noted that headaches like the do-not-call list meant it'd been a tough year for direct marketers. Holding up a placard with the word “telemarketing,” he lamented that the government has taken the “tele” and effectively the “market” out of the phone equation. All DMers are left with is “ing — and we can't even use that because of a stupid investment company.”

He kindheartedly offered the audience a list of every person in the United States that welcomed telemarketing offers, “all 28 of them,” including an elderly person very hard of hearing and a woman interested in any offers pertaining to cats and Lithuanian ceramics.

While the current climate can be disheartening, he encouraged DMers not to give up because great things can come out of adversity. He showed the audience a clip from his very first appearance on “SNL,” the first “I Married a Monkey” sketch. Cues were missed and a baby monkey playing his daughter wouldn't come out on stage. This is it, he thought. My career on “Saturday Night Live” is over before it started.

But that wasn't the case. The calamity meant he had to improvise, and the bit got a big laugh from the audience. He was a cast member for several more years and ended up doing half a dozen “Monkey” sketches.

Direct marketers need to think of alternatives to get consumers' attention, he said, because people aren't interested in envelopes. “But how about a puppy? Who wouldn't be intrigued by a puppy, especially a puppy whose mouth is stuffed with discount offers and coupons?”

Or, he said, consider red Jell-O as packaging. Pricewise, it would be more cost-efficient than the standard-size No. 10 envelope, “especially in quantities over 1,000.”

BETH NEGUS VIVEIROS (bethdirect@aol.com) is executive editor of Direct.