I'm quite a fan of this Pepsi Max advert, which I found lying around the internet somewhere.
Twist, follows twist, follows twist = FUNNY. Well done Pepsi, you piqued my interest.
BUT - let's not kid ourselves - massive stereotyping has it's place in this world. How do we differentiate between a geeky girl and a hot mama? Simple: a pair of wide-rimmed glasses and a book. Hot mama wearing the time-tested LBD - simple formulas work, as upsetting and impersonal as they may be.
What is the gay guy wearing? A black 't', tightly fitted around the biceps and chest region (yes, I notice). Is this a formula? Yes and no. Yes because a lot of gay guys go for the black 't' look. No because if you're straight, the chances are you can't pull one off.
They have responded however with a little gem, this time original and genuinely amusing.
Good direction, an upbeat Christmas ditty that makes me want to dance around the Christmas tree, and some snappy editing makes this one of the best Christmas adverts i've seen so far in 2008.
A rift of Bond related advertising swept over the nation in the past few weeks, as relentless and unpersonal as a tsunami. Perhaps we can forgive the host of companies for jumping on the Bond bandwagon. It presents a good opportunity to cash in on something which will have all eyes firmly rooted on it, and therefore whatever you advertise will also share a piece of that attention. Whether this strategy is a sensible one, or perhaps just marketing for maketing's sake, is a question even the secret agent himself would struggle to answer.
First up is my favorite of the lot, the Sony TV spot featuring Daniel Craig. A slow, computerised zoom-out (and then in) on Craig as his surroundings begin to explode and various debris crashes into his evidently steel tuxedo. It's easy to say that the advert lacks direction because it doesn't reveal its message (which is 'Bond in Sony High Definition') until the very end, and some might consider it a waste of audience 'thinking time' - they could be thinking about why they don't own a Sony HD TV instead of wondering why exploding debris is bouncing off the invicible Daniel Craig for the first 50 seconds of the advert.
All of these criticisms of the Sony Bond advert are valid, but also invalid. An advert for a High-Definition product needs to fulfill one simple aim: make TV look luscious, wonderful and beautiful. Do this and the audience will simply gawp, wonder why all of life isn't in HD, jump up and run to the local Comet to buy their life-sharpening new television. Does the Bond advert do this? Tick.
Sort of well done to Coca-Cola Zero for their Bond-related effort: a TV spot which employs the Bond theme song (a well executed collaboration between Jack White and Alicia Keys) and also the lavish animations which tend to run over the opening credits of a Bond film - you know, lots of naked ladies silhouetted so we can't see the naughty bits. It's pure and shameless cashing in on the Bond publicity, and instead I would actually like Coke to tell me what their new Zero drink is all about.Why should I drink it? Should I drink the new Pepsi drink because I can attach a huge balloon to my back and jump off a tall building? No.
Come on Coke and Pepsi - give me an advert which tells me about your drink. It's all very well putting out all of these cool cartoons and crazy stunts, but I'd like to see you sell your drink to me personally for once. It's largely irrelevant because I drink Diet Coke like a fish drinks water, and that fact is unlikely to change. Perhaps Coke know this and have just decided to leave me alone.
I would tell you about the other Bond related adverts, but the truth is they were all so obvious and lacked even the slightest bit of imagination. Samsung or Sony Ericcson, I forget which one, put their logo next to the 'Quantum of Solace' logo and called it a day. Avon decided to go the distance and produced a perfume called 'Bond Girl', and got new Bond totty Gemma Arterton to look stunning next to a picture of the bottle. It was all so plain and ordinary, and as I sat in the cinema, watching these adverts before the film began, I just felt as though I was being harrassed. In purchasing a ticket to see the film, I was forced into shameless direct selling.
The Bond film was not too bad, and you can read what I thought of it in my other blog:
But when I left the cinema, I was all Bond-ed out, and frankly, unimpressed with those that had jumped on the publicity bandwagon and taken me for a ride with them.
Good Ad: Bond Sony HD.
Bad Ads: The rest of the Bond-related raft of adverts.
The Christmas Ads have started, and it is only the end of November.
Perhaps a little early, but reasonable in terms of securing the market of 'planners' - those rare breeds that shop early, make their lists in July, and do all the wrapping by November. If you know someone that is a planner, the chances are that your gift from them will be fairly boring.
Nonetheless, these planners do exist, and its important to snap them up before any one else does, which is exactly what Argos has tried to do with its latest TV spot.
Now, I appreciate their efforts to get in their early, but the creative department behind this must surely have realised the obvious connections between their shiny advert and a celebrated scene from 'Love Actually' in which Rowan Atkinson overkills the gift-wrapping process, must to the chagrin of a hurried Alan Rickman character.
You can see that wonderful scene here, pure physical comedy:
The similarity is there for all to see, but somehow, outright plagiarism is there for all to see, and the creators of the new Argos advert don't seem to mind.
There is just no excuse for this form of blatant copying. In my mind certainly, the commanding thought that arises from this advert is one of disappointment that the agency, CHI, have refused to come up with any original content. I am left with a negative opinion of sham brand Argos, cheap imitators.
Is this just me though? Will the normal consumer be affected by the same moral pangs? I don't think so. They will just see this ad, perhaps think about the scene from Love Actually, be amused by the connection, and then go and buy Love Actually, probably from Argos.
Well done to CHI and Argos for being the first off the Christmas mark, but in a season which repeats itself every year, with the same mince pies and the same predictable presents, someone needs to stand out.
It seems a little negative to start this blog out with Bad Ads only, but perhaps it will prove a good indicator test for you, the reader, to know what sort of Adverts I appreciate, and which I criticise heavily.
This advert for BT Broadband is the worst example of a TV spot as you are ever likely to see:
The Ad involves a married couple, characters who have been featuring in BT adverts for over a 12 months and have therefore established a familiarity with their audiences. As a young, attractive couple, with two children (a boy and a girl), they represent middle britain, the young and professionals, a typical median family - the sort that can afford to wirelessly project internet throughout their comfortable, 4 bedroom home.
All of this sounds very pleasant. And whether or not your demographic matches exactly with this TV family's doesn't matter - the point is you've become accustomed to their appearance, and perhaps you rather like them.
This is all about to change. The husband has now moved to Cornwall to pursue his dream job. The Wife is left at home to tend to the children. They are discussing the future of their marriage over a casual online chat, when, oh dear god, he loses his internet connection because of his unreliable third party internet provider. Where does this leave their marriage? Will he return? Do they still love each other? Are they still enjoying wireless connectivity?
Scrap the last question because it really doesn't matter. This advert is terribly sad. And its not sad because he loses his connection, it's sad because a couple is in the process of splitting up, and that is always a terribly sad, raw and emotional thing to bring to the screen. Watching it, I couldn't care less about wireless internet.
Some adverts, in an effort to tell a story, forget that some stories are meant for greater things than adverts. BT crushes my soul every time I watch this advert. The average television viewer gets an ample dosage of emotional turmoil from british television programmes, they certainly don't need it from adverts.
One cannot be blamed for a feeling of utter confusion at the new Levi's 'Unbuttoned' TV spots: four adverts designed to forge a link between the famous denim brand and the causal, unrestrained freedom of youth.
The first is amusing, showing two youths as they make out en route to their apartment, revealing the truth behind the lies which got them a one-way ticket to hanky-pankyville (the very fact that I call it 'hanky-pankyville' should give you a rough idea that I don't travel there that often, or that I'm not ever on the casting couch for a Levi's jeans advert).
I like this advert, it's a bit cheeky and raw, as if it were shot by torchlight. There are no men with ridiculously fake torsos, showing us how their jeans fall just below their boxer shorts, and that this is a sign of a good waistline. Just a couple of attractive people, having a jostle, showing how good it is to be young with unbuttoned jeans.
Two teenagers share a moment of unbuttoning each other and then jumping off a pier into the ocean below. Once again, there's no sugar coating on this advert. The lighting is dull and the weather seems more Blackpool than Orange County. But still, the complete randomness of this act of joint plunging should not be applauded and touted as an example of youthful foolishness.
The girl in the advert, cute thought she may be, says that this is her 34th time jumping!! A veritable plunging tramp then, and certainly not one which our fresh-faced virginal 501 wearing boy should be hanging around with.
I can see the idea behind the second advert, and appreciate its uniqueness, but sometimes, it becomes counter-productive to stretch an advert to the limits of originality and quirkiness. The first advert proves that simplicity, strong design and a half-amusing idea can go a long way.
