The contemporary world of television advertising is often as illogical as the circumference of a pringle pot. Just in the way the average hand is too big to reach the pringles at the bottom, the average, rational human being cannot understand the adverts he is witnessing on the box.
On my winter holidays in 2010 I, like most of you, enjoyed lazily slumping like the introjected sloth we all have inside us, in front of the television with no particular desire for anything intellectually stimulating to be in front of me.
There is of course a limit to what vacuous tosh I will tolerate – I refer to the advertisements that are as helpful as a steel-toe capped kick in the crown jewels and as inspiring as Ed Miliband’s political drivel.
I will look first at some good ads.
As a kid one of my favourite adverts (I bet some of you don’t even have a favourite childhood advert do you?… Sort it out) the Brazilian football Nike advert. The one leading up to the 1998 world cup, where Roberto Carlos and Ronaldo to name a couple exhibit their skills in an airport before departing for France to the tune of ‘Mas Que Nada’.
The overall feeling of the advert is one of freedom. It manages to encapsulate the very free-flowing spirit with which the Brazilian teams of old played their football. The fact that the rigorous constructs of the airport’s control are joyfully dismantled to the vivacious music imbues the same emotional pitch of the advert in the viewer. And it becomes an enjoyable experience.
From childhood escapism and frivolity to one of the modern greats in my view – the Honda ‘The Impossible dream’ ad.
On a different note altogether from the one struck by Ronaldo & Co., the Honda ad really does inspire and resonate on a ‘nothing is impossible’ level. It invokes the daring ambition of technology throughout the short history of the scientific era. It evokes the great dreamers of the past who’s visions became realities. Martin Luther King’s famous declaration that he dreamed of a racially equal future – a dream realised in Barack Obama. Human kind’s dream of exploring space (albeit fueled by the American-Soviet conflict post second world war). Eleanor Roosevelt majestically once said:
- The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Albert Einstein said a an idea is only a good one if at first it’s crazy, and if it’s crazy enough it will reveal the truth. All of these notions whir through my mind while the Honda advert is playing; all of which contribute to the sense of accomplishment that being human has conferred throughout history; and furthermore the accomplishments yet to be achieved. Ah, the power of dreams.
And then there are the ‘ad-turds‘. Adverts that are shit. I haven’t made that up – though I would have liked to – it’s a real thing.
What do I feel our sense of accomplishment as a human race is when I look (I say look because I mute the tele) at the Go Compare Soprano, or ‘Gio’, as I hear he likes to be called? Fast-food chains and superfluous university degrees.
The meerkat advert? A repressed bestial desire and superfluous university degrees.
The most annoying thing however is that we all know exactly what these adverts are selling. Which must constitute them being actually ‘good’ adverts. If you hadn’t seen the advert before, and all of a sudden up pops on your plasma a bilingual meerkat dressed in a royal robe trotting around a stately home selling insurance, you’re bound to be a little slow on the uptake.
So the fact that we all know by now exactly what he’s there for suggests to me that we as a race either watch too much tele, or we can see past the bizarre facade of a surreal set of circumstances and pick out the adverts’ premise first time every time. Unfortunately I think it is the former. The very fact that there exists such a bracket ‘adturds’, and the fact that advertisers are happy to categorised as such, implies that it is a desired medium.
The recognition the adturds gains is equal to, or more so than the good, thoughtful adverts. So why would you put the effort in to create something profound, when you can make something as bad and obscure as possible. Which option is more expedient? Which is going to return a greater profit margin?
Such ease and economic factors furthermore suggests that the spotty little nerds who produce these delightful vignettes know exactly what they’re doing. Thus rendering my point of superfluous university degree’s superfluous and erroneous. How ironic.
But as well as applauding these masters of modern consumer psychology, I think it’s a little upsetting that if you were to ask 100 people, like family fortunes but with dignity, to name either the top 5 news stories of the last year, or the top 5 adverts – which obviously depends of your paradigm of ‘top’ – the top 5 adverts, I’m afraid might just take the lead. So in a round about way, these advert-bods might actually be trying to help us by saying
- Look at the crap you will watch if we put it in front of you. But I doubt it.
Did I forget to mention the ‘Cillit Bang’ – shout and the dirt is gone – ads? Thank Satan for that.
Posted on January 3, 2011
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