There’s a moment in your typical advertising brainstorm when the people charged with wrestling the creative elements to the ground cry uncle, settling on a clumsy compromise for the sake of getting on with the really important business—billing their clients. Or so these advertisements fronted by some rather improbable pitchmen and women would suggest. Is a clown really going to convince us to buy tires for our cars? Did anyone ever believe Bill Gates bought his computers at Radio Shack? And don’t tell me it took a cheap brand of vodka to pry Woody Allen out of his shell. On second thought….

(Images via the Ad*Access Project at Duke University, Vintage Ad Browser, and others.)