The first of the Conservative election posters

Profound messages encoded in the first of the Conservative election posters.

Deeply religious imagery - Matthew Chapter Seven verses 13-14:
Verse 13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat
Verse 14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life.

The landscape is northern European (it is apparently German, although it could be in Lincolnshire - perhaps one of the droves from Spalding to Bourne and up onto the Stone Heath) and reveals a pristine environment of clear views, pure air, rural virtue - none of the "urban" attributes that have corrupted society.

The lower half of the Union flag used as an arrow - this is the British way.

This is a lovely piece of work.

Joe Hart

Is Joe Hart already the face of the World Cup?

Visionary far-seeing gaze, strong neck, perfectly symmetrical features.

He is being used to sell personal grooming products.

That face conveys attributes of cleanliness, purity, hygiene, power, impact, strength.

Cheltenham & Gloucester fixed rate mortgages

Really like this ad for Cheltenham & Gloucester fixed rate mortgages.

There is nothing tricksy or show-off about this.  It is a simple idea beautifully executed.  Lovely muted colours.

The ad is basically selling "peace of mind".  We see the home-owner hugging a mug of coffee and smiling as she directly looks at the headline.  A beatific light bathes her in warmth and happiness.

Everything about this is lovely.

No idea who does their advertising - I suppose I could look it up, but I am in a rush.

A racist stereotype

Large article in today's Guardian in which Aida Edemariam interviews poet Benjamin Zephaniah.

Benjamin Zephaniah describes how he has moved to the Lincolnshire countryside and openly talks about being "the only black in the village" (a self-evident truth to anyone who has been to Lincolnshire, or indeed any other rural county).

Black people do not live or work in the English countryside ("black" meaning African or West Indian heritage). There is of course at least one "Black Farmer" and you can buy his sausages in Sainsburys.  But statistically black people do not register outside of urban areas.

Which makes the current television commercial by Confused.com all the more interesting http://www.confused.com/press/our-latest-advert

This advertisement, entitled Farmyard, shows a large cast of animated farmhands with approximately a third of them portrayed as black.  A "large woman of color" seems to be part of the Confused.com branding, and we might perhaps disregard the animated ethnic cleansing as a clumsy attempt by their ad agency to be "diverse" and "socially aware" and all the other buzz words that will appear as tick boxes on the campaign briefing document.  But there is more...

If you look carefully at the animated dancing farmhands you will see that the genital bulges at the crotches of the black farmhands are enormous, whereas the crotches of the white farmhands are so slight as to make them seem emasculated.

It is of course a racist stereotype that black men have enormous genitals - a stereotype related to the black experience of slavery.

So it seems odd that Confused.com in seeking to challenge the "hideously white" stereotype of the English countryside should in the process promulgate one of the most insidious (and demeaning) racial stereotypes of black men.

Confused.com are shooting themselves in the foot, it seems to me.

Eupeptic

One new word I learned from Keep the Aspidistra Flying was "eupeptic" which in the sense Orwell uses it means an idealised healthiness (he was describing an advertising hoarding).

I tried to find a modern example of a eupeptic family and came across this idealised family group advertising a Welsh seaside resort.  In the referencing form of a casual "snapshot" photograph, the illustration shows a half-naked family of four on a beach with the cold-looking Atlantic in the background (note the white surf crashing on the sand) and more than half the sky covered in cloud.  Father and son have Celtic red hair, mother and daughter have Saxon fair hair.

Awareness of "the Games" is currently overwhelming

Less than an hour until the Olympic opening ceremony (which I am apprehensive about, since it is promising us a "vision of what it means to be British today" - presumably thousands of choreographed Heath & Safety officers).

Awareness of "the Games" is currently overwhelming.

Some examples:

Above:  this e-mail pinged into my computer today, with lots of "must have" merchandise.  The style of the Games is deliberately kitsch, and no attempt has been made to achieve timelessness.  I don't mind kitsch, but whoever did the logo has produced something so horrible it is beyond comment.

I am not being anti-Games.  I want them to go well.  But whoever did the logo needs to go in the stocks and have rotten fruit pelted in their direction.

Above:  in Asda this evening the staff were in Team GB t-shirts, and Olympic-themed items were everywhere.  Everyone seemed to be rushing, presumably because they wanted to get back in time to watch the Opening Ceremony.  On impulse I bought these Olympic caramel shortcakes - I guess they are own-brand as there is no logo on them (apart from the 2012 logo).

 


















Above:  I was intrigued by this e-mail campaign for Damart.  Their customers tend to be elderly and price-conscious, so you would think they would be the last people to spend discretionary income on souvenirs.  What possible motives might they have to allocate some of their pension money on these items?  Elderly people tend to be isolated and lonely so possibly they will respond to an invitation to "join in".  They also have low self-esteem, so the idea that being British is fabulous will make them feel good.  It is also nostalgic in style, which again would appeal to this demographic (no trace of the Olympic logo - this is a "Jubilympics" range).

Dolce & Gabbana advertisement

Fabulous Dolce & Gabbana advertisement in yesterday's Guardian. 

Everything about this ad works - the position (inside front cover), the size (half-page), the use of full colour.

Above all, the creative impact is superb - brave and confident use of a wonderful photograph combined with the Dolce & Gabbana logotype (nothing else!). 

There are so many ways in which this photograph works, but I am particularly impressed by the figure of the woman.  I have no idea who the photographer is, but I would guess he is an Italian fully cognisant of Renaissance iconography.  This is a classic "madonna", and the gaze of her sunglass-shielded eyes is one of rapture (note the tiny starburst in one of the lenses, as if she is exhibiting the Stella Maris).

Above:  detail from Guido Reni's painting Disputa "the spotless Virgin in glory adoring the name of God".

All desire (sexual desire, material desire, desire for power etc) is supposed to be sublimated desire for the presence of God (did EH Gombrich say that? I can't remember).

Above:  recently I read Richard E Spear's book on Guido Reni and his work.  For all his prurient speculations about Guido Reni's sex life it is a very dull book and towards the end I was just skim-reading.  I bought the book ages ago and it became lost under heaps of other books so that I have only just worked my way down to it (published in the mid-1990s it was in pristine condition and still shrink wrapped).

This ad for Gucci is for their new shop in London

This ad appeared in The Times yesterday.

It's a fabulous print ad, full page and full colour (in what is still a mainly black and white publication).

Advertising depends for its effectiveness on repetition ("repetition builds reputation"). Consumers buy from brands they trust. Consumers trust brands that are familiar. Therefore to get consumers to buy from your brand all you have to do is make your brand name so ubiquitous that consumers are very familiar with it and start to trust it. That is why even companies with an awful product offering can manage to keep going simply because they have a big familiar brand. Unfair I know, but it is the way the human mind works.

The problem with repetition in advertising campaigns is that consumers can become bored of seeing the same old ads all the time. The repetition principle will still work, but the brand personality might pick up undesirable attributes such as "boring", "samey" and "tired". The job (part of the job) of the creative department is to encode the ad with so many intriguing and enticing narrative and design devices that you can look at the same ad twenty times and still see something new and interesting. Many of these devices are likely to be subliminal, so you may not see them at first glance (and may not even see them after careful study). But subconsciously you will see the colour interactions, the choice of fonts, the layout, the narrative (all ads have a narrative, whether deliberate or not), the art historical style, the multiple layers of meaning etc. A really great advertisement is one you can look at time after time and it still has an impact on you.

This ad for Gucci is for their new shop in London. But they do not show the shop. They do not even show the things you can buy in the shop (I would guess the Gucci dress in the ad is haute couture rather than off-the-peg but I might be wrong about this).

So what is going on here?

The photography is superb. A print ad is static and two dimensional, but this image has a shimmering dazzling quality that appears to move. The use of shadows gives the image a wonderful sense of depth and realism.

Whatever Hadley Freeman might tell you, people who buy fashion (real fashion, not High Street stuff) are sophisticated and well-educated. Often they have studied art history. So can we detect any art-historical references at work here? My immediate thought on turning the page was to visualise the 1926 painting La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Frank Cadogan Cowper. Also the shimmering quality (which first attracted me to the ad) reminds me of the post-Impressionist work of Henri-Edmond Cross, particularly his ground-breaking Apres-midi a Pardigon (probably my favourite painting of all time, even though I don't really like the post-Impressionists). Obviously these references might be accidental, but they work for me, and indicate the creative thought that has gone into the art-direction of the ad.

Strong sense of narative in the ad.  Why is this young woman sat on a stone bench in the hot afternoon sun?  Who is she looking at (those eyes have an almost cruel intensity)?  Her mouth is slightly open, as if she is gasping with the emotions she is feeling.  And yet she holds herself absolutely rigid as if she has calculated the best angle she wants to be seen from.  She looks very uncomfortable (in more ways than one), but her beauty and the beauty of her Gucci clothes, outshines even the Bougainvillea flowers tumbling over the wall behind her.

I also like the way the text in the ad is subtle and understated, almost apologetic.  The Gucci brand name is overlaid in white so that it does not compete with the main image, the text about the shop is at the foot of the page - it's importance is indicated by the fact that is is on the central axis, but you have a look carefully to see it. This is presumably because messages we discover for ourselves are more compelling than the messages that are shoved in our face.
 
Despite what I said earlier about the repetition principle, it is unlikely that this ad will run as many times as it deserves.  Probably just once or twice in a limited number of publications.  This will be the fault of the client - very few clients have the courage or nerve to repeat ads sufficient times so that they really begin to deliver.
 
The designer (who I suspect is a genius) has compensated for this limited media repetition by producing an ad that you want to look at again and again.

The new Sainsbury's Live Well For Less print ad

I really love the new Sainsbury's Live Well For Less print ad which appeared in the Independent today.

There's so much in the ad to enjoy, not least the use of a double-page spread to give us a fabulous photograph that is a genuine work of art.  You could look at this photograph many times and still see new things - the sense of balance (the upright posts subtly matching the father and son); the different textures (wet pebbles, grainy wood, bleak sea); the wonderful muted colours.  The sense of encapsulated narrative is also absorbing.  Why is this father and son on a deserted beach together (divorced father given access? unemployed father with time on his hands? busy father simply taking quality time with his son?).  Why have they gone to this wildly beautiful pebble beach instead of somewhere more sandy and more commercial?  What is the meaning of the faraway look in the father's eyes?

On a conceptual level I like the implied offerings in the copy - the idea that less is more (always a powerful proposition), the ethical subtext (no cheapo pork and chicken from ultra-cruel factory farms), the advice that we already have the things we most want.

If I were to be critical I would say the orange text is a bit hard to read.  Also the trendy steel thermos flask looks a little out of place.  But these are tiny points - the ad is virtually perfect.

I think the ad agency that did this was AMV/BBDO - can't find the name of the photographer.

Some of the best TV ads running at the moment

Above:  screenprint from http://www.directline.com/about_us/adverts.htm

Some of the best TV ads running at the moment can be seen in the current Direct Line campaign.  They have dumped boring Stephen Fry voiceovers for a comedy sit-com with clever narratives, true to life characters and very subtle endorsement of selling points.  This campaign is in the old tradition of the commercials aspiring to be better than the TV programmes.

The campaign is by M&C Saatchi:  http://www.mcsaatchi.com/

Hugo Boss ad

I don't often comment on fashion/clothes advertising - mainly because it is a specialist niche that I don't have much experience of; the target audience is usually female (and obviously I am not a woman); good fashion advertising is complex and relies on emotional arguments I don't always understand. But this Hugo Boss ad is so wonderful I can't stop looking at it. For a start, it appeared in a newspaper (The Guardian), and newsprint is not kind to colour advertising. The designer has got round this problem by using a highly-variegated photograph, so any imperfections of ink on paper are hidden within the image (Dolce & Gabbana has also used this tactic recently, but in black and white). The corner position also worked really well. The quality of the photograph is exceptional. The photographer has chosen a low angle so that we are looking up at the figures - as if we had just paused to fasten a shoelace and happened to look up directly into the eyes of this tall, blonde, statuesque woman. Placing the figures behind a plate-glass door was inspired, and the reflection of blue sky, drifting clouds and waving trees is staggeringly beautiful (it takes a true genius to see beauty in banal objects). However it is the narrative that really makes the ad. The woman is about to leave the offices of a large company. The man seems to have stopped her (look at the delicacy of his hand on her hand) but from her posture and the angle she is standing she is clearly not happy with him. So many questions are raised by this image! Did she go to the office to deliver some kind of final ultimatum? Did the man follow her to the door, and even now is whispering to her: "You know I love you but I can't leave my wife just like that, you know we need to wait, why don't I come to you tonight and we'll talk it through..." The beautiful blonde heroine-victim stands there pouting, the tears in her vulnerable eyes hidden by Hugo Boss dark glasses, the only consolation left to her being the sense of dignity conferred by her Hugo Boss outfit. More:  http://www.hugoboss.com/

Ad for NEFF ovens

Above: double page spread for NEFF - you might need to click on the image to see it properly.

I really like this dps ad for NEFF ovens.

Firstly I applaud the way the designer has gone for black and white, using size (a double page spread) to achieve impact rather than colour. There must have been a strong temptation to use colour, but given that the product is stainless steel and black, the monochrome image on the left was an intelligent choice. The only colour in the ad is the dull red of the logo, carried through into the copy on the opposing page.

Therefore you are immediately presented with a sense of balance - the creative treatment does not overwhelm either the product or the client's logo.

I also really love the sense of symmetry throughout the spread. Especially the way the longer you look at it you discover more symmetries. The human eye and brain is conditioned to see symmetry as beautiful, and so the use of elegant symmetries is this ad is exceptional (the way the dark head on the upper left is balanced by the dark product on the lower right; the way the copy panels carry across the central page division; the way the vertical lines on the right created by the justified edges of the text are mirrored by the very subtle vertical lines in the photograph especially the line created by the gaze looking straight down through the finger and the fork etc).

I admire the way that the photograph has been used - on the left and ostensibly looking out of the magazine. The obvious thing would be to use the image on the right so that it carries the gaze towards the copy of the opposing page, but that would have created an ad so predictable it would risk being banal. The designer here has been confident of the tension in the ad, realising that the photograph has such impact that most people are going to want to seek out more information (which is provided on the opposite page - and this gives a clue as to the target audience since well-educated high-income consumers are always more persuaded by an ad where they have been given some work to do).

The choice of photograph is inspired. The photographer seems to have caught the model at a moment of total absorption. This ad is not selling an oven, it is selling the promise of culinary perfection.

More: http://www.neff.co.uk/ovens.html

Diesel

Diesel print ad which ran last year promoting Diesel’s range of clothing (specifically jeans).

This ad is an unusual choice for me, as although I have worked as a copywriter in the past, I much prefer ads with strong visuals. Also I am of the opinion that all ads should include people (this would be the unique selling point of my agency, were I to found one). It is my belief that if you add the human form to any advertisement it instantly increases the awareness levels (I have no evidence to support this, it’s just my own irrational opinion).

But to get back to Diesel, I can see what the campaign was trying to do.

There are a number of problems related to selling premium priced fashion to men (I am guessing that the key target of this campaign is men). There is always the suspicion among purchasers that an interest in fashion is unmanly. There is also the far worse fear that buying a particular fashion brand will unwittingly identify you as light-weight, trivial or camp.

This ad is double page, stark black and white, text in monotype placard bold.

This ad is not actually telling people to be stupid (which would be a suicidal strategy). It is aimed at people who are intelligent enough to appreciate what an expensive fashion brand can do for them, but are wary of exposing themselves to ridicule by investing in clothes that could be interpreted as flippant or over-priced. Therefore by making stupidity a key brand attribute Diesel are telling purchasers that the accusation of stupidity has been deflected and dealt with.

The copy also relates to a deep-seated prejudice in the United Kingdom that sees the “working class” as stupid. Coming from an East End family, I know that this is not true, but the idea persists that people who are simply uneducated are somehow also “stupid”. In parallel with this prejudice the male working class is admired for qualities of manliness and masculinity, and “stupid” becomes a shorthand way of conveying this.

“Smart may have the brains but stupid has the balls”. This line of copy opposes images of over-educated weedy egg-heads with a colloquial reference to a crucial part of the male reproductive organs. Purchasers of Diesel products are probably going to be fairly well educated (usually you don’t get high disposable incomes without at least a university degree and a desk job) but they may well feel inadequate in terms of their masculinity and the ad is telling these people that they can compensate for their inadequacy by buying a pair of Diesel jeans.

On the whole this ad represents a high-risk strategy (in my opinion). Not because it will not work (the logic is sound). It is high-risk because the client may not understand it, the client’s colleagues will not understand it, and there will be lots of opinions and feedback from people who are not the target audience but who will feel the need to criticize the use of the word “stupid”.

The ad agency was Anomaly.



Not sure if Anomaly were involved with the ads for Diesel fragrance but there seems to be a continuity.

The bottle design is of a clenched fist wearing “chav” jewelry.

The TV commercial features Sam Way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgOcoVpz1Jo&feature=relmfu

The New Toyota Auris Hybrid

Above: you might want to click on the image to see it in more detail.

I've been looking at the new ad for the Toyota Auris Hybrid.

Obviously I am not cogniscent with the brief for this campaign, so all my conclusions are subjective.

The ad is double page, full colour, minimal copy. The image captures the moment when a new car has just arrived home. The image is seen from the viewpoint of a neighbour looking out of the house next door (with the subliminal message that your neighbours will look out of their windows in admiration if you buy this car).

The youngish man has just got out of the driving seat and his wife and daughter have come out of the house to greet him (possibly they have rushed out; possibly the daughter has been waiting up past her bedtime since it looks as if she might be in a night-dress).

I like the brave way in which the double page has been used, with only twenty-five per cent of the area showing the product. The rest of the space sets the product in an emotional, cultural and demographic context. Note the arrows formed by the two areas of gravel in the foreground, subtly pointing towards the car and subliminally telling us "look!".

Too perfect to be a photograph, the image looks entirely airbrushed and super realist in style.

The setting is suburbia, a quiet road of absolutely new detached houses, featuring pseudo-Tudor neo-Elizabethan gables and half-timbering (these are people rich enough to afford pastiche).

The family are B or C1 social class, standard British middle-managerials or professionals. I would guess they were C1s more than Bs as the subliminal instruction in the copy is "like nothing else". As and Bs resent being told what to do, but generally C1s and C2s are happy to follow orders (as long as you don't insult them by being too overt).

Look more closely at the figures. The mother and child are so perfect that they are obviously idealised. The woman is at the centre of the image, but I cannot think that the ad is aimed at her. Rather it seems to be aimed at men who buy new second cars for their wives. The man is slightly more indistinct, as if he is allowed to be imperfect (baggy clothes that might be hiding a paunch, perhaps the hint of round shoulders). Subliminally this ad is saying to the man: perfect house, perfect family, perfect car - but you do not need to be perfect yourself to own this lifestyle.

There are two light sources in the image. One comes from the setting sun of a summer evening, creating a roseate glow in the sky and gentle shadows on the houses. The other light comes from the car itself, a preternatural dazzling white light symbolising newness, purity, even holiness (using the word in its correct sense to mean something set apart).

From an art-historical point of view the ad is Claudian in ambition. The figures are in the foreground as if on a stage; the composition leads the eye off into the distance; the colours and mood are romantic etc. It's the print ad equivalent of Claude Lorrain's Landscape with Narcissus and Echo or his Rest on the Flight into Egypt.

Saatchi & Saatchi? http://www.saatchi.co.uk/