What Do Kids’ Cereal Ads Tell Us About The Ebb And Flow Of Society Since The Seventies?
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There’s a new Ready Brek ad out, and the kid has got his glow back.
Only this time the glow is like some weird acid trip/wish fulfillment fantasy.
So what does that say about kids these days?
Well, in the interests of upping the brow level of this blog, let’s analyse the progression of UK society through its Ready Brek ads.
Here is the offering from the innocent, crap-CGI seventies:
And here’s the simply desperate, jump-on-the-hip-hop-bandwagon eighties effort (CGI precisely 12% better):
So, we can now deduce that the seventies were all lovely and homely and amateurish, the eighties were brash and self obsessed and the new one shows that kids need as many pointless special effects as possible to get them to want a bowl of hot, beige sludge.
This reminds me of when I worked at Y&R in the nineties and was given the Sugar Puffs brief. We watched the historical reel (I believe the originals won D&AD pencils) and noticed a rather creepy relationship between the monster and his predatory middle-aged house mate:
But it was all kind of charming, unlike the 1996 version where the Honey Monster had to be able to breakdance, sing with Boyzone or, in this case, be like James Bond:
It seems that ‘progress’ means a relegation of the message of the ad in favour of the latest fad or post-production technique. Can I sound like a curmudgeonly old buffer and say that doesn’t sound like progress to me? It feels like a succession of vibrant, thrusting planners have decided that kids need smoke and mirrors over anything that actually relates to the product.
Maybe they’re right. I’m off to read the Telegraph and whip some children up the chimney.