Analogies. Good, bad or who the hell knows?
When I started at AMV way back in the last century, a creative took me aside and explained that no good ads have ever come from analogies. I think we agreed that the classic ad with the tortoise making love to an army helmet to denote some form of compatibility was the only one (shit; I can’t even remember what that was for. IBM?).
Anyway, fast forward to 2011, and a huge proportion of the major UK ads of the 21st Century have been analogies: Balls, Gorilla, Cake, Mountain, Running Through Walls, Twisted Levis etc.
Why? Well, I’d guess that it could be a consequence of globalisation, where a visual analogy can be understood, no matter where the viewer comes from. This then extends to advertising awards, where the effect has been exacerbated by the increase in mixed-nation juries (incidentally, the analogy virus doesn’t seem to have extended to the US where the great Skittles and Old Spice work have been straight product benefit stories).
But then I was reading a story in today’s Sunday Times about the new Adam Curtis documentary series All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace (best title, ever. Fact.), which starts tonight on BBC2 at 9pm.
Apparently, Adam eschews all forms of analogy, believing that they are not a good method of explanation.
And that got me thinking…
Analogies are kind of odd when you look at them closely: I’m not going to demonstrate that a chocolate bar makes you happy; I’m going to show you how a gorilla enjoys drumming to suggest such a thing. I’m not going to show you how loose our new cut of jeans is; I’m going to show people running through walls to imply this. I’m not going to tell you why a TV set has amazing colour; instead I will give you the impression of this by chucking thousands of bouncy balls down a hill.
I suppose they provide an opportunity to be more interesting than the proposition might otherwise be, but if Cog, T-Mobile Dance and Skittles Touch don’t need to do that, why do so many others?
Is it a sort of patronisation? Here’s the proposition all chewed up and easy to digest.
Is it a sort of laziness? I can’t make a chocolate bar interesting, but I can make a drumming gorilla really cool.
Is it a sort of genius? I can make a car ten times more memorable by making it out of cake (bit of a leap, that).
Of course, almost all great art contains an element of analogy. If your book, movie or song is about exactly what it appears to be about, then it’s unlikely to be thought of as any good. Which begs the question, why has advertising taken so long to adopt this, and why are so many great ads not analogous?
The tortoise ad was for Apple Computers. “Compatibility is never a problem with Apple Computers’.
Paul Briginshaw and Malcolm Duffy did it. 1990 D&AD Annual I think.
Come on, you must know it was on page 34?
D
I don’t know why that AMV creative dissed analogies. AMV did loads of them, e.g. a visual of a kid wrapped in cotton wool, with the line “you can’t do this, but you can buy a Volvo.” I think they work well in ads – just a more engaging way to get across a product benefit.
But, interestingly, I find an analogy almost never works as a means of persuasion in conversation.
I think it’s almost become discredited as a ‘rhetorical trick.’
Oh yeah… that cotton wool one was very good.
And I did think it was for Apple, but then I thought it was kind of odd that Apple did a little black and white ad once upon a time. How things have changed. Apple never do analogies now – just product demos and well-presented information.
But why are analogies a rhetorical trick in conversation but not in advertising?
Analogies are great if they work. Is that helpful?
That’s ironic considering the best ad of all time was an analogy and done by AMV. #Surfer
I once wrote an ad for Yakult that compared what the product does in your stomach to working class scum being priced out of a neighbourhood through gentrification. That was an analogy and that was good.
Anyone who writes off any way of doing anything is a small minded idiot. Richard H said it best.
Who’s gonna take over at WCRS then?
Perhaps it’s also something to do with regulations? You can’t show people having fun while drinking alcohol (or at least alcohol can’t be perceived as the reason they are having fun), therefore, you focus on something else, and it becomes an analogy or metaphor or whatever……
Not a big fan of analogies myself. they’re, usually, lazy and dull.
i think their popularity can be attributed to their lack of texture which makes them easy to sell.
also analogies lend themselves to the kind of inoffensive one-sided communication so beloved of spineless marketers.
Slightly off topic….does anyone know where I can purchase a set of D&AD branded coasters?
Thinking about it, Guiness surfer was an analogy but Guiness DreamClub wasn’t. And yet I’ve never really looked at it that way. Doubt it was a conscious thing. Just see them as both amazing ads. Sometimes a great idea happens to be an analogy sometimes it isn’t.
All analogies are wrong.
All vignette ads are wrong.
How long have you worked in advertising? You should know the rules by now.
Advertising is all about recall. Our brains are not particualrly good at recalling detail, but better at remembering images that symbolise that detail – analogies.
Conversation is all about ethics – do we trust what the person is saying? In this context analogies can feel like subterfuge, and therefore undermine whatever it is we’re trying to say.
Still not sure why the bloke (?) would be telling what makes a good ad when you arrived? Why not wait and see what you were capable of first before giving you advice?
And if he was going to give you advice – how about something handy. Like where the nearest good pub to the agency is? Easiest shag in Accounts? Least trustworthy suit?
You know. Useful stuff.
Aren’t they the same as visual metaphors in press ads? Lazy but effective.