Dilbert makes his TV debut for Office Depot

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Nov 25, 1997 by Dana Canedy N.Y. Times News Service

Dilbert, the character from the popular cartoon strip who has become the overworked, underappreciated poster boy of today's cubicle dweller, has a new employer.

Dilbert will make his television debut on Thanksgiving Day, as the star of a $30 million advertising campaign for Office Depot. And for the first time, Dilbert has been animated and given a voice.

"Dilbert brings humor and a sense of familiarity to our ads, which will break at the start of the holiday shopping season," said David Fuente, the chairman and chief executive of Office Depot, the office- products retailer. The 30-second spots will run through the middle of January in various time slots on ABC, NBC and the cable network TBS. The commercials were created by Wyse Advertising of Cleveland. The agency sought to contrast the ludicrous world of Dilbert with a pragmatic, organized atmosphere as it developed the campaign. "With the frustrating idiosyncrasies of office life today, Office Depot is saying that it brings convenience, logical structure and value to its consumers," said Marc Wyse, the chairman of the agency, which has annual billings of about $140 million. In one commercial, in keeping with the tone of the comic strip that made him famous, Dilbert says, "Just as I thought, my cubicle is two inches smaller today than yesterday." Dilbert's boss, sitting in an oversized chair, informs him of the reason. "We installed real-time status adjusters in the cubicle walls," he says. "Sensors monitor your work and adjust the cubicle size according to your value." In another spot, the boss introduces Dilbert to Ben, the company's new fast-track manager. "Ben has no experience," the boss says, "but he's very tall, so we know he'll go far." Equally important, "I also have executive hair," Ben chimes in. "We think it will turn silver," the boss explains. The commercials conclude with the tag line "Business is crazy. But Office Depot makes sense." This is not Dilbert's first ad campaign. A series that started last spring in The Wall Street Journal features him in ads for computer software. Office Depot is based in Delray Beach, Fla., and operates 541 stores nationwide and 37 stores in Canada. The company, which was founded in 1986, had sales last year of $6 billion. "Our partnership with Office Depot will bring Dilbert and his cohorts to a much broader audience than ever before," said Douglas Stern, the president and chief executive of United Media, a part of the E.W. Scripps Co. that syndicates the comic strip in 1,700 newspapers in 51 countries and 19 languages. How can Dilbert, the hapless basher of corporate management, become a company mouthpiece? Is he selling out? "What does that mean, selling out?" responded Scott Adams, Dilbert's creator. "That's like asking Michael Jordan if he is trying to be a jock." Adams, who was involved in choosing the voice and content for the commercials, added, "What you find with Dilbert, and humor in general, is that everybody comes to their own conclusion, and they all react differently." Animating Dilbert was an interesting task. "It was really fun to watch him move, to see that rhythm and motion and to see him walking and bobbing his head," Adams said. Choosing a voice, though, was the most difficult part of the project. "Once you establish characters without voices, people, I think, will put in their own voice, so there will be some people who will have to get over that," Adams said. "There is simply no way to solve how you make everyone happy. All you can do is kind of take your best shot and live with the consequences." The voice of Dilbert is Dan Castellaneta, who also puts words in the mouth of Homer Simpson of the Fox television show The Simpsons. Asked why he did not put his own voice to his creation, Adams said, "I'm a little too nasally."