This week’s look at what ads rock and what should be sent to the recycle bin
by Nick van der Leek
Advertising generally works when it is entertaining or useful instead of irritating, and when ads have an amusing or interesting twist, then we’ll sometimes welcome the intrusion into our attention space instead of rejecting it.
Rock
The blue hues and the fact that all the participants in this ad are Asian (actually Korean) is what immediately catches the eye. The focus is on a man, walking out of his job, despite the protestations of his colleagues. He walks out of his job and emerges on the roof. He stands on the edge of a tall building. The camera does a brilliant maneuver over the man and precipice below him, giving a moving sense of the vertigo the man is must be feeling. I won’t give away what happens next, except to say the man does jump off the building. Johnny Walker does it again.
Huh?
A bunch of people are in the bush, trying to photograph tigers. Some of the swooping shots are quite cool. They’re riding what appear to be African elephants in India. Then, a guy with a digital camera and a zoom lens is unable to make the shot of a tiger leaping into the air, but someone behind him, or beside him, with a very old camera, captures the leaping cat perfectly. Cut to ice cubes and a brandy like liquid. It’s a nice feel good ad but I don’t remember what the brand was that they were advertising. Do you? Alcohol has to tread a very fine line now that tobacco advertising has been banned. This ad comes dangerously close to being an imagey Peter Stuyvesant type ad, like we used to see at the movies. Johnny Walker pulls it off with style and intelligence, this one doesn’t.
Rubbish
An attractive African lady is walking down the street. She starts singing and handing out already open bottles of coca cola to people she supposedly doesn’t know as they pass her on the sidewalk. She dishes out bottle after open bottle from a canvas bag. But isn’t something wrong with these pictures? Anyone care to venture a guess? Who walks around with canvas bags full of coke bottles? That canvas bag must have been damn heavy, and whatever was inside it must have gotten soiled and sticky. And did I mention, she hands out already open bottles? Then, she finally stops walking and two or three people – apparently everyone – behind her suddenly produce bottles of coke, and chug them down as they fade out of focus. Oh really? Does everyone in the world drink coke? Do people give it out like that too? And do they drink the stuff out of small glass bottles? I didn’t know coke still made those bottles. I thought what you get now is a sort of plasticky 500ml bottle with a red label wrapped around it.
And what’s the deal with giving out cokes for free? Are they that cheap now? Since its coca cola, and with so much money their advertising ought to be excellent, are we going to see a bunch of copycat ads where someone is handing out bar one’s (fill in any other product) next? Are advertising agencies running out of ideas, or will they be showing similar brilliance: someone walking down the street and handing out cameras/computers/koala bears? Unless this is an extremely simple form of hypnosis, I’m not sure if I’m going buy the product. Perhaps it only works on zombies and TV addicts.
Especially when we’re watching television, and often while paging through a magazine, advertising feels like clutter. It feels like it’s in the way. Advertising is what happens when we’re really trying to get to some other kind of information. It’s especially bothersome when it’s dense – like weeds over a path when you’re trying to get somewhere. When the weeds are thick, we don’t even notice them because we’re too busy hacking our way through. Here, thick is a metaphor for dumb. Dumb ads, unless they’re funny, make us feel impatient; make us feel someone is wasting our time. In a world where speed is one of our highest priorities, being slow and dumb is marketing’s mortal sin.
Coke makes a useful case in point. They may be living in a dreamworld, but the rest of us aren’t. Johnny Walker wins this week for using the truth to set us free, and being clever in their execution of it.
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