The new weetabix ad
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x1s60tXJtQ
I have to say that I quite like it. It’s nearly pretty good.
HOWEVER
Something about it just sets this big voice off in the back of my head that booms, ‘THE YANKS WOULD HAVE DONE IT BETTER. THE YANKS WOULD HAVE DONE IT BETTER.’
And you know what? The Yanks would have done it better.
Like this:
They wouldn’t have been afraid to exaggerate the situations to get bigger laughs. Better, or just different?
I suppose they’d have managed to get an ejaculation reference in there somewhere: http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/most-raunchy-skittles-commercial-you-will-ever-see-nsfw-133630
Better, or just different?
agreed. it’s a bit stiff. whatever happened to performance?
ORH: in a comedic ad, funnier=better.
Bentos: you know that’s not an official Skittles ad.
Aye, I know, but it is American
re the understated performances, I think they’re inspired by brilliant BBC sitcom Outnumbered: http://www.youtube.com/user/outnumberedchannel
So is Jackass.
I think I’m trying to suggest that Americans do make ads like Weetabix, only they tend to make them better than that.
As in the ad I’ve added to the bottom of the post.
Anyone seen a ‘funny’ English ad better than that in the last five years?
Agreed Ben.
In the career builder ad everything is funny in its own right. Each shot strives to be funny.
In the British ad, you get bits that are just observational without the comedy. For example, the housewife not wanting her mother to judge their house. This is a safety shot, typical of cowardly agencies trying to reflect consumers’ own lives back at them.
Don’t get me wrong, the whole ad is excellent within the costraints of our current industry. Nonetheless it stinks of people sitting in a room trying to think up “normal” worries for “normal” families as dreamed by adland. Eccentricity and oddness is excised in favour of what a committee would deem part of the ordinary British day.
Yup, everyone’s hit the nail on the head. The problem with British ads, especially comedy ads, is that for some reason we are hung up on realism. We’re desperately trying to find what’s funny on the everyday. That means we spend too long on the set up and not enough on the actual gag. Then when we do the gag, we try to make that realistic too. The Americans go for unrealistic, but much, much funnier. They don’t have to waste time on set-ups. That’s why they create characters in US ads (and they are proper characters: Ernie the Klepto, the Skittles guy with the moving beard, the Starburst ‘Berries & Cream’ boy, Mr Turkeyneck, the Geico Cavemen, Old Spice guy) who can just get into it immediately. They can speak totally unnatural, unrealistic lines of dialogue and it’s fine because, after all, they’re in an ad. In fact the contrivance of the dialogue normally makes them funnier. See any Fed Ex spot for instance. Over here we’re all too worried about whether people in focus groups will ‘identify with it.’ We’re worried about whether it’s realistic, plausible, sensible. And consequently it’s safe, predictable, tediously observational and shit. Like every bad dad/uncle/grandad joke you’ve ever winced at over yet another awkard xmas dinner.
A good US agency would never have allowed examples such as ‘I get squashed on the tube’ and ‘I have to do the washing and the shopping’. They’re not funny. Why are they in? Why didn’t someone have another look at the script and say, ‘The toddler? All good. No problems there. But the others just need the creatives and the director to spend a couple of hours in a room together to thrash out funnier examples and not make the laughing at the boss just like the laughing at the boss from that Monster.com ad from a few years ago.’?
I reckon you could make ‘squashed on the train’ funny if you really go for it. Squashed like they are on the Tokyo metro; only more. Or something. I agree that doing laundry up is more difficult to get laughs from. when you compare the weetabix and career builder ads, the former just feels a bit ‘small’. Good job nobody except the readers of your blog will do so, eh? For the record, I like this weetabix spot much more than the ‘marathon runners’ but not quite as much as ‘jockey’. I would be pretty happy if I’d done it.
That Career Builder ad is fucking brilliant.
I think the Weetabix ad is a bit shit.
Not ‘cos of the scenarios especially (which could evidently be funnier as per Ben’s comments), but because of the painfully scripted way in which the dialogue is delivered. It sounds as if it’s being read from a page.
Therefore it’s unfunny, cliched and overplayed.
I think it’s a poor direction/writing-convincing-dialogue’s-far-harder-than-it-looks-combo.
It’ll invariably win golds though, because there’s not much out there to rival it (scarily).
Makes me want to stab myself in the cock with a rusty nail.
Both outstay their welcome by about 30 seconds. Brevity is the soul of wit.
It’s OK and it’s far better than I feared but it’s lazy. Too many cliches, lame observations, cloying sexism, and while the baby scene is inspired they appear to have cast a child bordering on adolescence in the part.
everybody’s right.
phew.
Hey Anonymice, that was a pretty spot on analysis. I watched the Weetabix and wished they’d cut everything but the kid. I watched Career Builder and spat water on my new shirt and a tiny bit on the ‘n’ & ‘m’ of my keyboard. One is funny the whole way through. One is only funny after you’ve gone through the brief/’touchpoints’/usage shots.
I like the fact that Americans know it’s an ad – everyone from the agency to the public. It’s great entertainment that’s not afraid to sell something. The other one’s not bad. Just n nnn nnnnot great. Fuck, the water’s got innto the keyboard. Fuck you Kunnntz for beig so funn nn y.
“It’s gold” is the funniest line.
I have ticked I’m NOT a spammer but I AM a spammer. Ha. I lied. Sue me. There or thereabouts.
suppose as creatives we prefer the bonkers ads. Which ad would my Mum prefer? Probably the Weetabix ad, She doesn’t ‘get’ Anchor Man but she buys Weetabix. I get a new job. [But still get called dummy]
Yup – they did a good job. Not great. But good. Anonymice is bang on – we are so fearful of someone saying in a focus group ‘that’s not me’…when in fact we should be worrying about them saying ‘that’s not interesting me’.
Career builder is ace. It takes an insight about how we feel in bad jobs and makes it funny (by making it bigger/bolder/weirder) and therefore more powerful and thus more interesting and thus more effective.
I concur.
personally, the only funny bit in the weetabix ad i found is dad laughing about his boss’s unfunny jokes.
im not target audience i guess. i bloody hope so if i see what they made that woman do all day.
they are just “trying to reflect consumers’ own lives back at them” as anonymous put it so well.
so tries the careerbuilders. but instead of getting a target group world out of market research reports, they manage to make it appeal to everyone who would only in the slightest be in the ‘target group’ of wanting to change jobs, by capturing emotions. i do think it might need a client who is not totally focussed on the psychographic-target-group-lifestyle-segmentation world.
British advertising hasn’t been funny in years. I think it’s cos intellectuals are rarely funny. And planners are mostly intellectuals.
American ads can compete with proper comedy shows. Technically, they are brilliant at humour.
Case in point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXxIGbzrklU
Anonymouse, love it. And so simple. I think we’d try harder to be smarter and fail.
Funny spot, anonymouse. Thanx for sharing. What I find weird is that American humor in commercials has been greatly influenced by Monty Python and British humor from commercials of yesteryear. When I was stationed in England (1976-80), I thought your commercials were hilarious. Far funnier than anything we had done. Now it seems the other way around.Maybe the pendulum swings…
That link in Anonymouse’s post is indeed superb. I’m going to Tweet it so everyone like me a bit more.
I reckon creatives still, write funny ads in the UK but I bet they don’t get past the creative director, planner, head of planning, account man, head of account handling, digital CD, chairman, junior client, medium client, senior client, head of marketing, focus group 1, focus group 2, focus group 3 and some wizened old humorless cunt in accounts who gets asked because he’s a “normal” person.
That Career Builder ad is great. Ditto the FedEx spot. Proper.
The career builder ad reminds me of another American ad…
(comcast)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-50dLMG19gY
And this is what we get over here…
(virgin media)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOkhmsCykpw
I know which one I prefer.
The creatives that wrote it are American. Oooooooh…didn’t see that coming!
I think it could’ve been good, but the client is a conservative housewife who insists on bowls and kitchens and product shots. And clunky writing. And bad casting. And laughing at bosses jokes gags nicked from Monster.co.uk ads from 7 years ago.
What do I know though, eh? I knock cocks for a living.
i laughed about that comment of your’s ben.
joking aside, my previous comments a bit fucked up, but yall get it, yah? cool. had to do the washing and was rushing.
The career builder.com, FedEx and Comcast ads are all brilliant. But they’re a bit long-in-the-tooth now, aren’t they? Any new campaigns from the US that are as funny? Oh yeah; Old Spice. I’ll shut up then.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3sqAZ0OcMo
What about if you got a really talent (IMO) British comedian like Russell Brand involved in your ads?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZW3ia7v2Ew
Oh well.
[…] seen a few thoughts around the internets that I have to agree with, like Ben who says that it’s ‘nearly pretty good’. There are lots of comments in there and […]
There have been no genuinely rip roaringly funny ads on UK TV since HHCL and possibly early St Lukes.
it wasn’t always thus. http://www.strimoo.com/video/14871560/Tango-Megaphone-Ad-par-Kevin-O-MySpaceVideos.html
That tango megaphone ad is the only good thing James Corden has ever been in – fact.