The Logic Police
I can’t remember if I did a post about this in the former location of this blog, but if I can’t remember, hopefully none of you can either.
There are some creatives who don’t mind that certain ads don’t entirely make sense, then there are others (myself included) who act like Kathy Bates in Misery when she’s going on off on one about the false endings of movie serials.
BUT WHY IS THERE A CHOIR MAKING NOISES LIKE A HONDA? WHAT DOES IT COOK-A-DOODIE MEAN? AND IT CAN’T BE ANYTHING LIKE ‘HONDAS ARE SO NATURAL THEY MAKE NOISES THAT PEOPLE CAN REPLICATE’ BECAUSE THE CHOIR MAKES THE NOISE OF RAIN LANDING ON THE WINDSCREEN AND THAT’S THE SAME FOR EVERY SINGLE COCK-A-DOODIE CAR IN THE WHOLE COCK-A-DOODIE WORLD!
Those people are called the Logic Police.
They (we) do tend to be the rain on some otherwise quite contented parades, but when these ads have to pass through such enormous and anal approval processes, I think it’s a reasonable question to ask why they don’t make sense. (Why no one seems to care that they don’t make sense once they’ve aired, therefore proving the people who approved the ads absolutely right, is another question entirely.)
On one side of things, as I hope I’ve proved with the above rant, being part of the Logic Police is like pissing in a very strong breeze: nobody cares that you’ve done it and you end up looking like a twat. But I like things to make some sort of sense, so fuck you if you don’t.
The exception is the kind of ad that has no real intention of making sense, yet is wonderful for that very reason:
These are above the Logic Police because they actually obey the logic that they have created for themselves. There are things that Flat Eric would and wouldn’t do, even if they are many miles from the things that I would would and wouldn’t do, so that’s fine.
But it’s the ads that have flaws through which you can drive a tank that annoy me, even if I like the other aspects of them.
For instance, 99.9% of the people who watched this ad would have done so on a non-Sony Bravia TV and therefore would not be able to appreciate how it has colour like no other. The other 0.1% of the population already own the product being advertised, rendering the ad somewhat pointless.
But nobody really cared.
I don’t know why I care.
It’s all pretty sad, really.
Sorry.