Blog entry number 12 from MBA – www.mba-marketing.co.uk
The normal deal with creatives in advertising agencies is that they take one aspect of a brand (preferably the bit highlighted in the creative brief) and dramatise it in some way. In the past, this has led to work which transcends the barrier of being just an 'ad' and becomes part of our culture.
Here are three current examples of TV commercials where this approach has been taken to ludicrous extremes, resulting (in my view) in extremely poor ads.
1. The Wild Bean Cafe. Rather unfeasibly, the 'hero' turns down the late-night offer of 'coffee' from an attractive girl in order to drive (alone) earest 'Wild Bean Cafe' (which is not really a cafe but coffee machines in BP service stations) to drink coffee. You can almost read the brief - 'coffee so good that...'.
Is this the latest update of the famous 'You're never alone with a Strand' advertising disaster? Surely, only losers and Alan Partridge choose to hang around service stations at night drinking coffee on their own.
2. Barclays Bank. A special offer of 'unexpectedly low interest rates' on loans means ads with lots of people walking around bumping their heads on low ceilings. Laugh? Me neither.
3. Fosters - some new product variant or other is termed 'laid back lager'. So guess what, we get lots of studenty-types with whispy beards and surf dude clothes walking around a beach bar in a 'laid back' posture, with their bodies leaning backwards. Holding the new product, of course.
What's gone wrong? Isn't advertising supposed to be (at least one of) funny, interesting, challenging and engaging?
I shall stop here as I am in danger of sounding like my alter ego - Dickie Beasley, from VIZ magazine, the little boy who always wanted to be an advertising account executive. I may post some of his work for you if I can find it.