Life is full of opposites. The opposites don’t contradict, of course, just show there’s a continuum, a connecting thread running between one extreme and another. While the continuums are many, and many are big deals reflecting big themes and big ideas, continuums exist for the smaller, more modest and day-to-day stuff too.
Like advertising.
And it’s the advertising continuum (and again, there’s in fact more than one) that draws my eye, or at least tries to. Because much of the time, it doesn’t draw my eye, because I’m like everyone else - too preoccupied and too occupied with all that other life-stuff going on, where the majority of the advertising I “see” isn’t so great and so I pay very little attention to it. The logic then follows that advertising, for me and most everyone else, has to be pretty damned special, stand-out good, or stand out dire, to make me smile or scorn.
In the last week, I’ve smiled. And I’ve scorned. I've encountered the "opposites", lived the "continuum". I’ve found myself watching TV in two very different cities and I've responded with near-instant emotional honesty to two very different pieces of TV work.
And both experiences felt very (refreshingly) Old School, in that I wasn’t watching “TV” on my iPad, or on a laptop. I wasn’t streaming. I hadn’t downloaded anything. I wasn’t on a train, or plane, or sitting in a park. I’d just been sitting, watching a little “regular” television, as part of a “regular and real-time broadcast”, on a regular TV set thats role in the room was just to broadcast TV.
And what of the actual TV ads?
Let’s start with my happy cause to smile. “Take on the Day”, I saw a week ago, sitting in my hotel room in Los Angeles, the sun having recently announced the new day, though I had already been awake a good 4 hours. Jet lag and I are not happy bed-fellows.
This 30” ad, the latest in a series, is for Florida Orange Juice, and it’s just so damn-smile-inducing because it’s tone is so deliciously mocking of life’s everyday bullshit, applying a wise-guy-but-played-straight wit that’s then worked back-a-round to the premise: “given life’s everyday slings and arrows”, it’s a good thing you’re going to take it on with a fortifying glass of Florida-grown goodness inside you.
“Take on the Day”, BBDO-Atlanta (2012)
For the casting and performances alone, I think this TVC is a happy sunrise slice of not-so-everyday genius.
Now for the scorn. Back to London.
The latest ad from O2 is for their “Priority Moments”. They’re giving away free Odeon cinema tickets, so they’ve drafted in some British A-listers. Gary Oldman stars in front of the camera, with voice-over duties courtesy of Sean Bean. Gary casually rolls around a pseudo film-set, while Sean tells us we don’t have to be famous or be part of the (movie) industry. Just by being an O2 customer, there is entitlement to “feel special”, “special” manifesting in the form of some free cinema tickets.
O2 Priority moments, VCCP (2012)
It’s an ad where I keep wondering whether I’m missing something? It uses famous Hollywood faces and voices... to tell me that being a famous Hollywood star doesn’t matter? It tells me that I’m such a “priority” that... I’m entitled to the same treatment through O2 that Orange has been treating its customers to for the last 4 years. “Orange Wednesdays” have been going since January 2009. After 4 years of free tickets, Orange customers must feel really special.
And then there’s something about the overall tone of the piece, that just feels rather (make that, very) smug. Maybe it’s because it so successfully condescends and contradicts itself? Hey, little person, have the crumb of a free movie ticket. We’ve got round to doing the same thing Orange has been doing for (closing in on) half-a-decade. And then you read the small print, just in case you were wondering what kind of “big news” this wasn’t:
“We're giving away one free Odeon cinema ticket to each customer on Priority Moments until 21st November 2012. But we only have a certain amount of tickets and once they're gone, they're gone.”
I’m not an O2 customer, but if I was, I’m not sure I’d exactly be feelin’ the love.
Of course, I can’t finish on a scowl. What if the wind changed?
I have a third entry in my random-and-ever-so-rare week of TV ad watching. While Messrs Oldman and Bean are consigned to the classroom corners, Kevin Bacon proves himself a fine OJ compliment. Swaggering front-and-centre, he walks away with a gold star for comic-timing and self-deprecating sass.
EE launch, Saatchi & Saatchi (2012)
“Six Degrees” aside, for Kevin Bacon doing an impersonation of Frank Carson, this first ad from EE just had to be made. Congratulations to Saatchi & Saatchi for making it. They’re very clearly starting their day with a hearty slug of Vitamin C.
SP.