And Now, a Gag From Our Sponsor

In real life, Shadoe Stevens is a dapper and thoughtful man who left a job as a disk jockey to go into the more lucrative field of advertising. But to millions of TV viewers in California, Texas and Arizona, he is Fred Rated, the wild-and-crazy huckster who has appeared in some 800 commercials for the Federated Group, a Los Angeles-based electronics chain. In Stevens' wacky TV career, he has impersonated The Honeymooners' Ralph Kramden and Miami Vice's Sonny Crockett, played a man who gets attacked by rabid frogs and even starred as a Santa Claus who turns into a werewolf. His public appearances at Federated stores attract hundreds of autograph seekers. Most important, since his TV debut in 1982, Federated's sales have surged 80%, and the 16-year-old company has grown from 15 outlets to 60. Says Marketing Vice President Gary Tobey: "He's made us seem like a more fun place to shop."

The success of Fred Rated and other weirdos like him has spurred more and more regional businesses to peddle their products with commercials that are goofy, whimsical and sometimes downright obnoxious. One of the pioneers in the field is Crazy Eddie, the New York-area consumer-electronics chain with the pitchman who raves about "insane" prices and "Christmas sales" in August. Instead of copying the slick style of the ad factories on Madison Avenue, local advertisers churn out low-budget affairs that they often write and produce themselves. Nothing is too ridiculous if it catches a viewer's attention: announcers attack water beds with chain saws or dress up like gorillas and yell, "You'll go bananas!" In some cases, these homemade off- the-wall routines have caused a company's business to increase 100% or more virtually overnight. Says Burton Manning, chairman of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency: "Silliness sells when you're trying to get an ad to cut through the clutter." To keep viewers from wandering into the kitchen during the station break, many businesses are relying on skits that might have been staged by a bunch of sixth-graders. An ad for Bobby Gray Volkswagen-Mazda in Jackson, Miss., features nine car salesmen in matching sweatshirts, khaki pants and tennis shoes who stage an arrhythmic song-and-dance routine in the middle of an empty football stadium. While three of the performers pound out a funky beat on keyboard, drums and guitar, the other six do an out-of-step side-to-side shuffle. In between refrains, the various salesmen sing rap-style verses in which they boast about their prowess on the showroom floor.

Often the boss himself will grab the limelight and ham it up. Barry Ross, 43, owner of Houston's Superior Waterbeds, was watching a disk jockey tape a spot for his firm seven years ago when he got frustrated with the hireling's laid-back style. Recalls Ross: "I wanted an irritant to wake somebody up during the early morning." He grabbed the microphone and began wildly shouting out lines. "When the engineer played it back," Ross says, "it sounded so good that I told the deejay to go home." In one zany Fourth of July ad, Ross dressed like a firecracker and blew up in a "sales explosion!"