Today's Rant: The gorilla is a turkey

I must admit to a surge of schadenfreude as I read on Scamp's ad blog about the apparent failure of that drumming gorilla to sell Dairy Milk.

The original article is on Brand Republic, and reveals that while the percussive primate may have been a favourite among bloggers, Dairy Milk's market share has actually dropped. (While its arch-rival Galaxy has gained ground.)



I have to say, I never understood the fuss about Gorilla. I found the ad slow, the gorilla unconvincing and the whole thing bewilderingly unfunny. (Even bizarrely earnest.) So naturally I'm delighted, in a mean, selfish sort of way, that he's a flop.

Gorilla, like its successor, Trucks, is based on this 'brand idea' of 'Joy'. And it seems to me to demonstrate one of the pitfalls of modern-day branding. Having distilled the 'essence' of Dairy Milk down to that one idea, Joy, Cadbury's seems to have lost sight of what it's actually about, which is chocolate.

The idea that chocolate brings joy is hard to argue with (although hardly ownable by one brand). But joy, in and of itself, has no particular connection to Dairy Milk. The 'glass and a half' bit is still there, but feels rather lost, like a remnant of the past they felt beholden to include. (Pure joy or Brimming with joy or any similar line would have worked just as well.)

What you're left with is an ad which does kind of say 'Joy', and which apparently makes lots of people laugh, but which doesn't seem to have communicated very much about Dairy Milk.*

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I still think you need to tie whatever Big Brand Idea you're toting back to your product or service - not just in advertising but in any communication. We need to come away connecting the Big Brand Idea to what you're actually selling. Because it's not an ad for joy, it's an ad for chocolate.

For example, I'm one of the few people whose teeth grind every time someone says how wonderful the Guinness Surfer ad was - what a pompous, overblown lot of old cack, I mutter to myself - but at least the Big Idea still connects to Guinness: it's worth waiting for. It's particular to Guinness, rather than a generic emotion like Joy, which could just as well be the Big Idea for the iPod, or McCain Oven Chips - or even Guinness, which has certainly brought me joy for many years.

Those great campaigns of yesteryear, like For Mash Get Smash, understood this too. The Big Idea - Space Age Food - is nailed firmly to the product. It doesn't hurt that the ads are so completely charming, universally funny and entirely original.



There's a First Choice ad that's been running for a while. You've seen it: hundreds of children appear over the dunes of a beautiful beach, and scream down to the sea to the William Tell Overture. We learn that First Choice teach thousands of kids to swim every year. 'That's why we're First Choice.'

It's not a great ad. It's not going to win any pencils. It's not as 'creative' as a drumming gorilla (although let's face it, animals doing human stuff is a pretty well-trodden trope). It doesn't make arch, ironic use of crap music. And it's never going to be a successful viral.

But for me it wins over Gorilla, because it tells me something, in a way I find it difficult not to smile at - all those kids rushing for the sea, now there's joy. I bet it sells more holidays than Gorilla sells chocolate.

_______________________
* All this reminds me of that experiment, I think by the Guardian, in which they created a brand called, I seem to remember, 'Joy'. (I can't find any reference online, unfortuately - anyone know where it's hiding?) They created a campaign about it, even though it was nothing but a name. The ads looked fresh and appealing, and people quite liked them. They even said they'd be interested in buying Joy. But Joy didn't exist. It was just a brand idea without a reality. Superficially successful, but with no substance.

What did they think would happen?

You ask a question like that, and then leave a nice, clear graffiti-friendly space. (The scribbler got a bit confused, but his/her question for God is, almost inevitably, 'What will win the 3.30 at Kempton Park tomorrow?')

If God did exist, I'd ask him whether he gets to approve his own advertising.

Your own heart attack - or just Stephen Berkoff shouting at someone else?

Coming home from London the other day, I was faced with a poster inviting me to WATCH YOUR OWN HEART ATTACK. It's a pretty arresting headline.

I forgot what time the ad was going to be on telly, but I've now seen it online. And so can you:



The original poster was brilliant, in that it was completely un-ignorable. Even though I forgot when the ad would be on, it lodged in my head and I knew I'd be able to find the ad online, whatever it was. But how, I wondered, could they possibly have me watch my own heart attack?

They couldn't, of course. What they've done is film a commercial more or less from your point of view, as if it's you sitting in a chair and getting sucker-punched by Stephen Berkoff. But they haven't even felt able to stick to the viewer's single point of view. Instead, we get cut-aways of snakes coiling and wet rags being wrung out. There are even shots of the victim himself, sealing the fact that whoever's having this 'heart attack', it certainly isn't me.

(A separate worry is that Berkoff tells us to call an ambulance 'even if you're feeling unwell'. This would seem to herald open season on the 999 service, which as we know is already hamstrung by ludicrous calls. Berkoff's advice will probably startle ambulance workers like the brilliant blogger, Tom Reynolds, who has countless stories of wrong-headed 999 calls.)

The problem is, of course, that you can't possibly 'experience what it's like to have a heart attack first hand' from a commercial, as the British Heart Foundation promises you will. Mr Berkoff, or someone else, would have to come physically into your home and punch you in the chest, before gripping your arm and putting duct tape over your mouth.

From the start, this is a campaign with no hope of delivering on its central promise. Which is a great shame, because the message is obviously very important. We should all know more about heart attacks, and when to call the ambulance.

The whole thing feels like people getting very carried away: 'Imagine posters everywhere saying 'Watch your own heart attack'. Imagine the impact!' It's easy to get so excited by an idea that you cover your ears against the 'Yes, but...' side of your brain. But if an idea can't stand up against the 'Yes, but', then there's a problem. Because it won't take the audience long to come up with exactly the same objections.

For me, this campaign is an object lesson in not setting your target unachievably high. Because the inevitable let-down will always cloud whatever message you're hoping to get across. Better to do as Faulkner said of writing, and 'kill your darlings', than to sacrifice your message to your enthusiasm.

Great guerilla stickers for VW

This is a lovely idea from Brazil:



If you can't be bothered to watch it, VW looked for cars with dents and scratches on their rears. Then they put stickers against these marks, promoting the Polo's parking sensors.

A nice touch is that the stickers are the same colour as the cars (as much as possible, presumably), so it looks like the type has actually appeared on your bodywork.

Via Adverbox

Now Orange has made a Sony ad.

There's a thread developing here, isn't there? I've been noting TV ad rip-offs for a while now (here and here), and now there's another one. We've just had BMW doing Honda, now Orange do Sony. When the ad below began on my TV the other night, I thought, 'Here we go: Bravia again.' But it wasn't.



It was Orange, whose marketing continues to get up my nose in all sorts of ways. Not only are they persisting with their wilfully bewildering dolphin/badger/artichoke/frog tariff system (or whatever it is), they've made a Sony ad about it. I mean, it's not quite on the same scale, but don't all these people reaching up for floaty orange things remind you just a weeny bit of all those people reaching up for floaty foamy things?


Presumably the international market has something to do with this. The ad was shot in Buenos Aires, but it could just as well be Paddington or Grand Central. And there's no dialogue. So you can stick whatever voiceover and titles you like on it. Bingo: globally consistent branding, plus lower production costs.

Both spots, of course, are made by Agency Du Jour, Fallon. They're making it pretty easy on themselves these days, aren't they? They must still be laughing even when they've been back from the bank for some considerable time.

Why has BMW made a Honda ad?

Bizarre. Oh, and I know I'm just a lone voice in the wilderness, but that end line? That should of course be 'Fewer emissions'. Tut.

A little bit of genius for World AIDS Day

Adverblog has alerted me to this brilliant little idea for World AIDS Day by the Cape Argus in South Africa. You can't really see on this image, but they've made each page number of the paper extend into a statistic about AIDS. (For a much bigger version of the image, click here.)

This is the kind of idea I love: simple, enormously impactful and totally original - ideas that make you think, Why hasn't someone done that before?

Enough already!

Having just bemoaned the lack of originality in TV ads, it was with a sinking heart that I came across the latest VW ad (via Scamp).



They're not making something physical this time, but is it necessary to point out the tonal similarities to all those other ads? That slightly kooky, hey-isn't-this-just the-greatest-world-we-live-in? kind of goofy/cleverness that infects all those cake cars and streamer rainbows? And of course there's the obvious similarity to Honda's Choir ad (splendidly spoofed here), as Scamp points out too.

Could we have something else now, please?

A virulent infection in adland?

The latest VW and Audi ads seem to be evidence of a virus infecting the advertising world. The disease leads agencies and their clients to believe that they must make ads with lots of people busily building something related to their brand, in some suitably inventive way. Except they're all looking distinctly uninventive now.

The latest from VW:


The latest from Audi:


From Honda:


From Guinness:


From Orange (complete with hideously patronising oh-so-friendly Scots voiceover):


From Skoda:


I suppose it all started with Cog:


But why must a wheel, once invented (or at least ripped off), be reinvented so many times, for so many different brands? How lazy can you be?

----------------
Update (3/4/08): I've just seen Johnson Banks' post on the same subject. Great minds, and all that - I promise I wasn't copying.

What? (Again.)

Since when did 'Never mind' become one word? (No smartarse comments about Kurt Cobain, please.)