Hasta La Creative!

“This was such a nostalgia trip for us. It’s a really fun series of commercials that have all the joys of the original most of us remember from childhood but with a contemporary twist,” comments Clare McGrath, Executive Producer at Finger Music.

The primary musical objective for the campaign was to stay as close as possible to the original for instrumentation and vocal sound, but modernise the track with the new sound effects and lyrics. Finger enlisted composer, Ant Adams, and LA-based singer, Greg Lastrapes, to re-create the original music to fit the new lyrics for the song.

Clare adds: “Ant is a brilliantly talented composer, who creates authentic music on any instrument he lays his hands on. It was fantastic to have him on-board for this project, and it was equally important that the vocalist we chose could mimic the distinctive original vocals and adapt to the new lyrics. Together, Ant and Greg worked to create a brilliant revival of the Birds Eye Waffle jingle”

Steve Chantry, Birds Eye Marketing Director, comments: “The new ad campaign is an exciting moment for Birds Eye, as not only does it bring a new product to the breakfast table, but it gives a nod to the heritage of the brand and reminds Brits of a moment from their pasts. Ensuring we provide versatile products for shoppers is key to the brand, as we want them to remember that for any meal occasion Birds Eye has a solution that caters to all needs and tastes.”

Birds Eye’s ‘Hello Morning’ ad can be seen during Britain’s Got Talent on Saturday 7th.

Gaston Legorburu: “If you stop learning, you’re no longer valuable.” #DandAD16 pic.twitter.com/oQzdexa4nR— David Felton (@doritosyndrome) April 20, 2016

Gaston was confirming for most of us (although perhaps explaining to a few), that learning doesn’t just happen at school. It doesn’t just happen in a classroom or a lecture hall. And it doesn’t finish when you throw a flat cap in the air and head out into the world, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Learning is a lifelong pursuit, valid and important and necessary at any age, especially if you want to keep on adding value and being relevant in the advertising industry. It was a good insight, from a good speaker.

With that extremely meandering addendum, here’s another one: I like Purdey’s. They are a brand I personally consume. When I’m ill, or when they’re on special offer, I hunt Purdey’s out and guzzle them down. I have no illusions that they’re doing me any particular good, but I like the taste and I like placebos.

In addition to liking Purdey’s, I also like Idris Elba. He’s a fine actor, universally liked one might say. When he speaks, we listen. He has gravitas. Which is what makes him perfect for this role, and sadly I don’t mean that as a compliment.

There’s a famous anecdotal line where Harrison Ford turns to George Lucas while they’re filming Star Wars and tells him: “George, you can type this shit, but you can’t say it!” And that’s the problem with this ad, which on paper I should love, but distinctly dislike. You can type incredibly stupid lines like “What do you want to be when you grow up?” but as soon as you say them you sound like an absolute idiot. If one man on the planet could pull it off, it would have to be Harrison Ford, or perhaps Idris Elba. But it breaks down as soon as you think about it. We all know “grow up” means “When you are older”, it does not literally mean “When you grow as a person.” This is plain stupid. But of course with an overly indulgent length of almost three minutes, who needs rationality.

An older gentleman gets the point straight away, “Oh no, you never stop learning do you?” I wonder when, as an industry, we’ll learn to make better ads than this?

Which leads me directly into my second big gripe with this ad. It is – quite simply – based on a lie. Idris tells us that:

Myself and Purdey’s, we think that people shouldn’t stop growing. They should always challenge themselves. No matter what stage they are in life, people shouldn’t stop dreaming – they should thrive on.

You see what they’ve done there? You do see it, don’t you? It’s very clever. Without making any health claims, they’ve managed to heavily imply that their fizzy grape drink will help you accomplish your dreams. For those of us that believe in using advertising to tell the truth, not spin lies, it’s very disheartening. When you slow down and look at the language on a granular level, it’s reasonably clear than no laws are being broken, yet every cell of this ad wants to persuade you that Purdey’s is a health drink. Purdey’s is for people who ‘Thrive On’ at every age.

But what does ‘Thrive On’ mean? It certainly has no health implications, which is what makes it such a subtle little devil.

Therefore internet friends, I’d like to clear up a few misconceptions about Purdey’s – a drink which I enjoy – and therefore am certainly not ideologically opposed against.

1) Purdey’s contains 22g of sugar in a 330ml bottle; 73% of the UK RDA of 30g.

2) The drink is made from fruit juices – from concentrate (Grape 41%, Apple 16%), plus carbonated spring water (41%) – total 98%

3) That left over 2% is natural flavorings, botanical extracts, citric acid and vitamins.

4) Purdey’s will not help you ‘thrive on’ any more than a bottle of water and a vitamin tablet.

5) If you drank one bottle of Purdey’s per day, you’d be consuming 154g of sugar per week, and drinking 742 calories.

6) That’s just slightly under a McDonald’s Big Mac (540 calories) and a small fries (230).

7) Does that sound like a healthy choice to you?

It’s your body, and we all need to take responsibility to educate ourselves. And as for this ad, while on paper we should all love it, everyone here at Adland doesn’t. Idris Elba deserves better than being used to sell lies, and to tell a stupid brand story. Purdey’s doesn’t care about you. Purdey’s is Britvic plc, (BVIC), a company worth £1.3 billion and they’re selling you sugar water – shaken and stirred.

The music you know so well is David Axelrod’s “The Edge”, you might have heard it first when Dr. Dre, Nate Dog and Snoop Dogg sampled it on their hit “The Next Episode”.

This years June issue of Vogue, will celebrate the iconic fashion mag’s 100th birthday. So Harvey Nichols created an ad with Bo Gilbert, who was born in 1916, as their main muse. And she looks fantastic.

Microsoft wanted to help. And promote the Microsoft Surface. So they partnered with 25 of the UK’s most interesting bloggers, YouTubers & Instagramers, including Jim Chapman, Doug Armstrong, Roman Kemp and Emily Hartridge. The goal was to show kids all the cool stuff they could be doing for a living– as long as it involves a Surface, of course.

I’m sure it means more to the right demographic living in the UK who actually know who these influencers are, but honestly, I thought this was a great way of inspiring recent grads whether they recognize the people or not. And yeah the Surface shots were gratuitous, at least they were in situ, so to speak. Although I’m surprised the number of grads who have no idea what they want to do is that high, and I’m not sure they’d watch this spot and decide to become a fill-in-the-job based on a half a second of film. You never know, though.

In a similar vein of discussion, how do we make security cameras cool? Oncam is a manufacturer of sophisticated 360-degree camera technology, as featured in private homes, businesses, banks and casinos. Their latest campaign invites you to become a detective, reviewing security footage to catch a gang of Faustian criminals called ‘The Magicians’. Most people go out of their way to avoid ads online. As an ad critic, I go out of my way to click on them, but only the ones which are genuinely interesting and feel fresh. The clever aspect of this campaign is it let’s you take part in a forensic analysis, looking through different scenes via a 360-degree camera, but you’re doing so for the story. Because which one of us hasn’t wanted to step into a Hard Boiled detective novel and become the hero? Sure the story is a little rough around the edges, but this is a branded microsite, not Raymond Chandler. It’s digital storytelling, well done.

We reached out to Oncam who told us they were really pleased with the results so far from the campaign and were happy to share some of their social media metrics with us (as of July 2015). As an ex-social media manager, these are great stats.

Stats:
Total number of interactions with the campaign, to date: 1.6M
% increase of Twitter followers since launch: 450%
Tweet engagements: 2.01K
Number of likes: 776
Completion rate: 62%
Users returning to site: 13.1%

Therese Hume, Digital & Social Media Marketing Manager at Oncam told Adland:

We are only a small company and we have been delighted with the level of interaction and awareness the campaign has generated. We have received a number of business opportunities as a direct result of this campaign, although due to the sensitive nature of our business I am unable to give you any names.

And you know what – I bet they have. Brave marketing can change perceptions. This is my favourite digital campaign of the year so far. Professionalism can be interesting. A CCTV camera can be interesting. And brave advertising needs to be self assured, and unlock that interest.

Good luck detective: http://www.heistoncam.com/

W+K are keen on letting you know that “No pigs were harmed in the making of this film. Oink!”, it’s all been skillfully crafted in cgi after live-motion filming in studio. It looks both real and a lot of fun, so well done on that!