Private View? Public ridicule, more like. But fret ye not, I was up most
of last night with food poisoning so I’ve got all the bile out of my
system. Anyway, the work’s not half bad this week. Well, half of it’s
not half bad.
Bet you’re sick as a parrot you didn’t get the Pretty Polly brief. ‘Do
me a Wonderbra,’ the client allegedly told TBWA. ‘Shomebody shtop me,’
said clever Trevor Bolan-Clone, swiftly turning a 96-sheet poster on its
end to display the longest, loveliest pair of legs in the world.
Phwoar! This isn’t just a big idea. It’s triplemegatoptastic. It
deserves to be sandwiched between two 60-foot high speaker stacks
belting out the percussion to We Will Rock You.
The Miller Pilsner campaign’s got legs too. The ads are mindless, full
of bad jokes, men being stupid and women being gorgeous. A bit like a
night on the piss, really. The frontman, Jo-o-ohnny Miller, with a smile
like a baby shark trying to burp, has the best lines: ‘The last time I
felt this good I had just committed an illegal act with an escort - I’d
parked on a double yellow.’
He’s supported by a truckload of trailer trash talent. There’s Pilsner,
the car-thieving talking dog (‘What’s the Japanese for ‘mirror’?’
‘Miller’), and Benny the bandleader and his grumbling appendix (‘If you
think that’s bad, you should hear my irritable bowel’). Not to mention
celebrity fridge-opener, Kathy Lloyd, and Liam’s bird, Patsy Kensit.
There are cameo roles for ‘the Chatatollah, Mr Jonathan Ross’ and a
‘toothless little dork’ of a stunt message man who plunges regularly to
his death.
Best of all is the ad-within-an-ad, where Johnny spoofs BT’s Bob
’Oskins, in an accent spookily reminiscent of Dick Van Dyke in Mary
Poppins. If the media buying is as sharp as the script-writing, this
fake-American campaign is going to shift shedloads of fake-American
beer.
Real American ads are intrusive to the point of rudeness. You know the
sort of stuff: Anal itch? Smelly feet? Trapped wind? Well, here’s
another one from Breath Asure, ‘the internal breath freshener’. (What do
you do? Shove it up your bum like some kind of eau de colon?)
This ad is so bad that as redneck presenter George Kennedy came at me
pack in hand, squeezing off facts like machine-gun bullets, I found
myself backing away from the telly. So I was well softened up for the
intelligent twist in the tail, delivered cut-glass by Geoffrey Palmer:
‘In spite of this advertising, Breath Asure has become the number one
breath freshener in America. It must be one helluva product.’
But not so wunderbar as Wonderbra. Up here in Embra, your ‘big bra’ is
your older brother. Everywhere else, it’s that miracle of modern
engineering jiggled in our faces by Eva Helpzemgrobigga. But now there’s
a newcomer to the bra wars. ‘The bra that doesn’t advertise itself’ is a
Triumph - literally, strategically and creatively. The strapline’s
clever wee dig at Wonderbra is built around something rarely seen these
days: a unique selling proposition. Of the two ads, my favourite issues
an invitation to lift an acetate with the girl’s top printed on it,
revealing the underwear underneath, saying: ‘The only way to tell if I’m
wearing a bra is to take my top off.’
Texaco’s hospital-drama piss-take for CleanSystem 3, the petrol that
promises ‘a new lease of life for your engine’, is well shot and edited.
But the idea of mechanics ‘operating’ on a car soon runs out of gas,
despite brave efforts to revive it with ten-second gags.
At least Texaco found something to say about its petrol. No such luck
for the agency team on the Nissan Primera. Their dilemma is summed up in
the line at the end of their ad: ‘It’s a driver’s car. So drive it.’
Gosh. A car you can actually drive. Must get one of those.
Gerry Farrell is the creative director of the Leith Agency
Triumph
Project: Bijou bra
Client: Malcom Vagg, sales and marketing director
Brief: Portray Triumph as a fashion brand while retaining its image of
understanding women
Agency: Delaney Fletcher Bozell
Writers: Mark Waldron, Peter Kew
Art directors: Alex Bamford, Ronnie Brown
Photographer: Warren du Preez
Typographer: Richard Fielden
Exposure: National press, women’s magazines, London Underground
Scottish Courage
Project: Miller Pilsner
Client: Simon Rhodes, brands director, lagers
Brief: Reinforce Miller’s position as the US lager
Agency: Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe
Writers: Robert Campbell, Jez Stevenson, Jon Magnusson
Art director: Mark Roalfe
Directors: Chris Bould, Jon Magnusson
Production company: Talkback Productions
Exposure: National TV and satellite
Texaco
Project: CleanSystem 3
Client: not supplied
Brief: not supplied
Agency: IMP
Writer: David Harris
Art director: David Harris
Director: David Hartley
Production company: Academy Commercials
Exposure: National TV
Breath Asure
Project: Breath Asure
Client: Claire O’Brien, director of international
Brief: Introduce Breath Asure to the UK market
Agency: Leopard
Writer: Ken Mullen
Art director: Ken Mullen
Director: Greg Willcox
Production company: Levett O’Connell
Exposure: National TV and satellite
Pretty Polly
Project: Pretty Polly
Client: Brian Duffy, managing director
Brief: Put the glamour back into tights
Agency: TBWA
Writer: Trevor Beattie
Art director: Steve Chetham
Typographer: Tivy Davies
Photographer: Platon
Exposure: National posters
Nissan
Project: Nissan Primera
Client: Brian Carolin, marketing director, Nissan GB
Brief: Position the Primera as the driver’s car in the sector
Agency: TBWA
Writer: Dave Woods
Art director: Pete Harle
Director: Nick Lewin
Production company: Cowboy Films
Exposure: National TV
