Hasta La Creative!

Blockbuster advertising is back.

In 1983, industry legend David Ogilvy published “Ogilvy on Advertising”. In it he wrote:

Celebrities rate below average in their ability to change brand preference. Viewers guess that the celebrity has been bought, and they are right. …The problem is that viewers have a way of remembering the celebrity while forgetting the product.

Featuring five mentions of the name “Warburtons” (that’s one Warburtons on average per 22 seconds), this flashy yet extremely clever ad leaves you with no doubt who’s bringing home the bacon baps. I have to admit, the tongue in cheek tone really nailed it for me. I absolutely cracked up at the “snappy one liners” line. Proving perhaps we’ve come a long way in 32 years.

If they’d played this ad as a straight piece of fiction, it would have been an awkward disaster. Instead, it’s just self-referential and silly enough that we buy into an incredible world where Sly Stallone wants to play a truck driver. The audience is made complicit in the fantasy, and we’re invited to laugh along at the absurdity of it all. However, there’s a striking product focus here, which is tied nicely back to the thing we’re being sold. Not a Hollywood star, but a simple loaf of bread.

Here are some fun ads for VW in South Africa that are very matter-of-fact in their advice. “The car that takes you places,” reminds me a lot of Toyota’s “Let’s go places.” I guess because it’s more or less the same tagline. Stillt hese are quite witty and are in some ways a modern take on the classic Bernbach VW ads. The women headline is my favorite. Sort of takes the piss out of all the mid-life crisis cars out there.

This isn’t just your usual branded content for cool fashion brand featuring skateboarders skating which we’ve seen a few times now. It’s more than that. See, Oakland high school teacher Keith “K-Dub” Williams partnered with levi’s Skateboarding to create a permanent skate park in west Oakland. All the skaters are local and legit, too.