Currently, one of the most easily recognizable faces in Arkansas belongs to Arkansas eccentric Peter Miller, the attorney with a smile and familiar face on the back of every phone book in Arkansas. This is what Peter had to say on the start of his well-known advertising:
“25 years ago, when I first started advertising on TV, I used a spokesperson. A very lawyerly looking guy whose tag line was ”We help injured people… we get results”. Periodically, people would call me and ask to speak to “the other Peter Miller” meaning the spokesperson. I would tell them that he was an actor and I was the lawyer. I came to realize that I should be the one on screen.
My first commercial was very stiff and formal… mimicking the spokesman. When I’d see it on TV, it just didn’t feel right.
There were other lawyers starting to advertise. One portrayed himself as a “tough guy” lawyer. In reality he was a tough guy, so the image fit. Another lawyer portrayed himself as a teacherly intellectual, which , in fact, he was. I realized that my effectiveness as a lawyer was based upon my ability to put people at ease… clients, adversaries, juries. The fact is, I am generally happy and satisfied with my life and I do smile a lot.
My ad agency did a commercial in which one actor says to another “call the man with the smile” and before I knew it, people were calling and asking to speak to “the man with the smile”, so that’s how it happened.”
What you may not know about Peter is that he graduated from Hartford in Connecticut with a bachelors in English, he worked on a masters in photography at the University of Iowa, traveled Europe and later settled in New York and did a stint with the United Artists Motion Picture Group. Some time later he moved to Heber Springs and published the Arkansas Sun newspaper where he discovered and bought the world-renown Disfarmer Collection. Had he not had the background in photography, Peter might not have recognized the value of the collection and it may have been broken up into pieces or thrown out.
He became licensed to practice law in 1980 and has been located in Little Rock for a number of years. His law office is located in the historic Faulkner – Leiper House at 1601 South Broadway in Little Rock. Peter Miller is certainly one of those people who make Arkansas what it is.
His commercial are killing me slowly.