People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. So I freely admit
that over the past 20 years I’ve authored several turkeys. One of the
worst press ads of all time was mine. It would have triumphed at
BADA.
I couldn’t escape the bloody thing.
Every time I opened up a newspaper or a magazine, there it was. No, I’m
not going to tell you what it was in case you remember it.
I also did something for CrazyMilk that John Webster described as the
second worst commercial ever to come out of BMP. It took me five years
to ask him what the worst was. (Something Gabe Massimi had done.
Phew!)
Most of us have a dog or two to our names. Perhaps David Abbott is the
only writer never to have written a wrong ’un. Mind you, remember the
Boden commercials?
It’s just that to do a great work you need a great brief, a great idea,
a great team to sell it and shoot it, and a great client to buy it, more
or less in that order. In other words, a lot of luck.
Luck was in short supply for the poor bastards who got stiffed by the
Smirnoff job. After all the consistently brilliant work Lowe
Howard-Spink did before being dumped outrageously by UDV, the teams at
JWT must have been fighting to get out of the building when Jaspar came
wandering along with the brief.
Ye olde plotte of the commercial is this: Old Nick comes down off a
rooftop in Cracow. Starts fires. Gets tattoo - 666, the mark of the
beast - removed from cranium, becomes monk in order to take cherry of
nun in Swiss meadow.
Endline: ’No impurities.’
Well wicked? ’Fraid not.
Now, Childline. Hmmmm. The creatives have taken Tried-and-Tested Idea
Number 3, the old role reversal trick - get people to do the opposite of
what they’re meant to. So we watch moody-looking adults as their voices
say, I want more child prostitution, I want to see more kids off their
heads on drugs, I want more abuse. The reveal is these are all
counsellors who want more telephone lines so they can take more calls
from more children who need help.
I get the message; but I also get uneasy. It feels too slick. Too
addy.
Still, I’ve been wrong plenty of times in the past. I hope I’m utterly
wrong this time too and the film raises a lot of money for an important
charity.
Tried-and-Tested Number 3 is also behind the Energy Savings
campaign.
Show people not wanting to save energy. How silly they look. Actually, I
did like the commercial with the girl taking the long way across the B&Q
megastore to get to the lightbulbs. So, not bad. Not great either.
Sainsbury’s, the same. Show a woman who spends a fortune on dairy
products (milk and cream for her one hundred cats) and then show what
she can buy with the extra reward points she now qualifies for.
Lager.
It’s OK. It’d win a ’best use of kittens’ award. But why does the MVO
seem to be sneering? Maybe he thought the commercial was pants, I don’t
know.
The Environment Agency’s Floodline I don’t really understand. Maybe you
have to see them in situ by a river bank or a shoreline for them to make
sense. From the ninth floor of our Canary Wharf block, my response to
the message - floods don’t just happen to other people - is oh yes they
do.
Starbucks I do understand. How to persuade busy traders to slip away
from their VDUs for a cappuccino. A list of excuses for the boss. None
of the excuses in the free booklets is as good as the one David Jones
gave once when he arrived late for a pitch. ’Sorry, my parrot got stuck
in the fridge.’
In short, then, everything here is massively OK. Every team will have
done worse but then every team will have done better too. Here’s hoping
everything goes right for you next time.
ENVIRONMENT AGENCY
Project: Flood awareness
Client: Liz Cook, national flood campaign manager
Brief: Educate the four million households in England and Wales who are
at risk from flooding
Agency: Circus
Writer: David Prideaux
Art director: Tim Ashton
Typographer: Kim Le Liboux
Photographer: James Stuart
Exposure: Flood plains throughout the UK
SAINSBURY’s
Project: Pick your own points reward card promotion
Client: Helen Touchais, marketing manager
Brief: Launch a reward card promotion that enables customers to select
the category on which they can earn extra points
Agency: M&C Saatchi
Writer: Richard Dean
Art director: Richard Dean
Director: Kevin Thomas
Production company: Blink
Exposure: National TV
SMIRNOFF
Project: Smirnoff Red
Client: Philip Almond, marketing controller
Brief: Position Smirnoff as the purest vodka
Agency: J. Walter Thompson
Writer: Bruce Menzie
Art director: Simon Brotherson
Director: Jonas Akerlund
Production company: Jane Fuller Associates
Exposure: Cinemas nationwide
ENERGY SAVINGS TRUST/COI
Project: Energy efficiency
Client: Diane Monkom, head of marketing
Brief: Present the argument
for energy efficiency as the decision you can’t afford to ignore
Agency: Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R
Writer: Mike Boles
Art director: Jerry Hollens
Director: Mark Denton
Production company: Blink
Exposure: National TV
CHILDLINE
Project: Thoughts
Client: Valerie Howarth, chief executive
Brief: Generate funds for additional and much needed telephone lines
Agency: Delaney Fletcher Bozell
Writer: Jon Elsom
Art director: Ken Sara
Director: James Haworth
Production company: Mustard
Exposure: Cinemas nationwide
STARBUCKS
Project: Starbucks coffee shops
Client: Helen Benedict, marketing director
Brief: Encourage people to spend more time at Starbucks
Agency: Fallon McElligott
Writer: Matt Gibbins
Art director: Richard Walker
Photographer: Peter Drinkell
Exposure: National posters
