Hall of fame 2008
Posted in Uncategorized
Oh.
No Classics.
But we do have Cycle Safety ‘Awareness Test‘, Some Government Body’s ‘Binge Drinking Boy‘, Cadbury’s ‘Eyebrows‘, HSBC ‘Lumberjack‘, Levi’s ‘Secrets and Lies‘, VW ‘Everyday‘, Shelter ‘House of Cards‘ and Toshiba ‘Time Sculpture‘.
I think this is the beginning of the current malaise. By the law of averages there ought to be a few classics and ten good ads a year. If there aren’t, there might be something more fundamental that’s not quite right.
Pop back on Monday to see how 2009 fared (spoiler: it was also pretty shit).
I’m everyday people.
I really don’t like ‘Cards’ at all.
It’s an emotionless ad about an emotional message.
It’s an expensive ad and the money could have been better spent actually helping people.
It doesn’t tell me anything I don’t already know or challenge any preconceptions I might have. It offers no surprises.
It’s a visual representation of a stock phrase, like an ad that features a piece of cake to show that the product is easy to use. So it’s lazy.
The TV ad doesn’t do anything more than the print ad.
Plus I can just imagine everyone pulling together to make it happen. Yuk.
All in all it encapsulates advertising bollocks.
I always find that ‘money could be better spent actually helping people’ argument difficult to agree with. The intended result of the ad will (in theory) far outweigh the cost of making it. Besides, I bet you most of the crew, post, production etc was done at a knock down price.
It’s like the argument about Danny Kleinman’s Polar Bear spot. The job of the ad is to raise awareness to the problem. In order to do that in the most effective way possible, they had to travel to wherever the shoot was. You can argue that it is hypocritical, but if it wasn’t for ads like these, then there would be a more limited awareness to the issues they promote, which I think makes them completely necessary.
I like a good, proper charity ad, but so many these days are award pot-shot wank-offs for people who don’t really care about the issue.
Yes, people are starving/homeless/bumming their kids/throwing dogs in canals, and that’s a crying shame, but where’s my BTAA silver?
the safety one was thieved by the bagginses