Offensive advertising

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There’s a lot of blather in the trades these past few days about some Indian ads for the Ford Figo car.  One ad shown here features the Italian politician, playboy and media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi with three female porn stars tied up in the back. Another ad shows Paris Hilton, star of the porn movie `One night in Paris’, sitting in the driver’s seat and her rivals, the Khardashian sisters, bound and gagged in the back. There have been screams of shock and horror and it’s been reported that heads have rolled at Ford, the agency JWT has fired those they held responsible and lawyers have been briefed by the Khardashians. The train wreck has left the station. And more publicity has been generated for this unimpressive car than could ever have been dreamed. Despite protestations that this was unintentional and the result of poor oversight or perhaps it’s because of those protestations, the cynic in me thinks this was really the plan of a devious genius. This was not the work of some ad school. JWT is no small chicken shack of a business. Ford is no local maverick dealership. Each company employs legions of legal death eaters whose sole job is to manage the risk factor in all communications. India is currently in the headlines already over its attitude and response to recent crimes of rape. One would think the sensitivity to portraying women in advertising would be at its highest. The fact that these ads were even conceived tells you what the level of sensitivity really is. The fact that the account team presented them to the client tells you which part of their anatomy housed their heads. And the fact that the client didn’t fire the agency on the spot tells you that someone saw an opportunity for controversy and went for it. Will the Indian public boycott the car? No. The fact that the western world is getting its underwear in a bunch over this is irrelevant to them. This just advertising. Which is what the devious deviants who let this play out are depending on. It will be interesting to see the sales figures for this car. And the next ad. Maybe it will have Hitler. He’s always good for getting attention.

Child's play

I love a good mash up. Which is why I adore this. It was done for Public Broadcasting by John Boswell aka Melodysheep. He also did one featuring Mr Rogers.And recently he's done a mash up of Lucky charms ads for Saatchi. It's a great way to make something old look new all over again.

some awe required

Isn’t awesome like the most awesome way to describe things that are just so freakin’ awesome?  

 It just doesn’t get any awesomer.  If I hear this word once a day I must hear it an awesome number of times. The only problem I have with it is that all the things I hear it used to describe are as far from awesome as we are from Uranus.

Pizza isn’t awesome. The return of Christ with the dead rising up and the book of judgement being opened-that is awesome. Hunter Wellington boots are not awesome.

Descending into the underworld and bringing your deceased girlfriend back to life-that is awesome. Farts are not awesome. Living with lepers or walking on water –that’s awesome. The internet has a lot of awesome. Check it out. Ohmythatsawesome.com, theawesomer.com, crazyawesomestuff.com, stuffofawesome.com and 1000awesomethings.com just to mention a few. What they all have in common is that everything they feature is so not awesome at all. It’s crap. Maybe crap is the new awesome. How awesome would thsat be? I am thinking of starting a third blog (my other one is justaddpepper.blogspot.com) and calling it `as far from awesome as possible.’ Maybe I’ll even coin a word `nawesome’ to mean simply not awesome. Then I could have the nawesome awards because you can’t have an idea these days without a social media component. Nawesome sports personality of the year follows. Then #nawesome.

I see this going big.This could definitelybe, what’s the word I’m looking for…

Ad-Ho

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One would think that working in advertising would make one immune to it’s siren call. One would be completely wrong. We are the biggest brand junkies per head of the population judging purely by my one person observation methodology which I believe the equal to any 16 housewives in a Hackensack focus group. By the way women who consent to be in focus groups run a close second. Us ad-folks or let me expand that to say ad-affiliates to encompass those who are in the business of advertising analytics such as media purchasing and media planning, we are all what a very sweet ex-creative director of mine called ad-ho’s. We are iPhoned up to neck and dressed in North Face jackets with a Starbucks in our free hand every morning as we enter the halls of the ad world. Once we are comfortably in our offices we power up our MacBooks and check our Facebook before we go about deciding the fate of what messaging the great unwashed will be given on behalf of our clients. At the end of the day we put in those cute little white ear buds or slip on those monster Dr Dre cans with the soundtrack to our lives playing loud enough for everyone on the subway train to share as we go into that good night. Of course we scoff at those commercials for the ear gun-a product that vacuums the wax out of our ears –but wait there’s more –of course we are too in the know to be suckers for those home made local car dealer commercials giving the owner’s girlfriend her big break in showbiz but the car in that Bond movie is cool-but wait there’s more-of course we are above the pitch and woo of ad spots on TV because we so don’t watch TV. Not on TV anyway. We flip open our ipads and watch it there. Or we turn on our Apple TV box. Or our Kindle fire. Or Xbox 360. Or our mac book at home. Seeing a woman on the train reading a book on her iPhone I marveled at her powers of focus and the fighter pilot quality of her vision. That and her Ugg boots.

Venezuela

The recent death of President Hugo Chavez got me thinking of the one time I visited Venezuela to shoot a commercial for J&J.

The spot was originally going to be shot in Argentina which has a

wonderful film industry with a lot of talented people. Having awarded

the job to a production company we learned that the only way the spot

could run in Venezuela –which was a big market for my client –was if it was filmed

in Venezuela. President Chavez had decreed it. As we didn’t have the money

to shoot it twice we all upped our sticks and figured out how to produce this

TV commercial there. All kinds of people started appearing. The Argentine production company. 

The creative directors of our agency in Buenos Aires, the creative director of the Caracas agency. 

The local client. And me -the sole global kahuna on deck.

I checked in to my hotel room in Caracas very late and had only just closed my eyes when an alarm clock in the room next to me started beeping and beeping really loudly.

It beeped for 3 hours. I banged on the wall but the room was un occupied. I called reception and no one was there. I looked for a security guard and could find no one. Eventually it stopped. I told reception next morning and they promised to fix it. They never did. And every night of my stay was interrupted at 3am by the beep beep beep.

One night I slept on the bathroom floor with pillows over my head, I was that desperate.

I had a bodyguard escorting me to the locations every day. One day when we didn’t have There was a UN cultural event with African men and woman children in colorful national dress. At the poolside buffet I felt amused and guilty at the sight of a very young very skinny girl with big eyes. She was at the steaks station piling her plate high with beef like cows had just become extinct. It was a huge dish. The advice never to eat anything bigger than your head obviously never reach her.

She demolished that pile of steaks like a grasshopper eats wheat. And I swear she looked like she was eating steak for the first ever in her life. 

The shoot itself went smoothly and the only other thing I recall is walking in through the wrong door at the airport trying to go home. Alarms went off, military police surrounded me AK47’s raised high.

It was a true heart stopping moment. Prior to that the most wow moment was being driven from the airport to downtown Caracas and going over a huge bridge that spanned two mountains. A week after the shoot the bridge collapsed and the time to get from the airport to downtown took 5 hours.