1/07/2002 - Entry #7

I have been politely informed that I don't update enough. Consensus seems to be one of mild apathy though, so I think I'm safe there. I'll not exert too much effort until a couple of people demand it.

I've been meaning to talk about adverts for a while now. I really love adverts. Television adverts, that is. I think the entire world is unanimous on the motion that radio commercials and billboards really are the most god-awful form of advertising in the world. But TV adverts, now there's a real human achievement. I can't explain what I like about adverts so much, but there's a kind of magic to them that I thrive on. I'm not talking recent adverts, or any specific commercial in particular, but just the overall attitude that they seem to take. I mean, how many of you have dug out an old videotape at some point in time, recorded from TV, and watched something on it (be it old episodes of the Simpsons or the time Channel 4 showed Trainspotting before anyone else), only to be reminded of all the advertisements that you just don't see anymore? We watched a video of Laputa: City In the Sky recently (very very good film) recorded from BBC2 Wales, and it was brilliant! On top of seeing the odd Wales-only advert, it had all the old commercials that we'd forgotten. Remember the Lunn Poly adverts with Rowan Atkinson and "Bob"? And the whole "get away" catchphrase that Lunn Poly used? Remember the love-interest Nescafe adverts with Anthony Stewart-Head, that really weren't all that good at all? The Woodpecker "What a refreshing change" ads, or similarly the Strongbow advert with Smoke On The Water playing, before they decided to bury Johnny Vaughan in cash? The "Papa?"/"Nicole!" adverts with the delectable Estella Skornik. Remember the Lynx Effect advert with Jennifer Aniston, before she was in Friends, trying to keep her boyfriend from being stolen by admiring girls once he'd sprayed himself with some Lynx? I can remember all these adverts vividly, as though they were physically ingrained upon my brain (which they could well be).

Take that last one as an example. The Lynx Effect adverts have been going strong for years now. They all follow virtually the same theme, whereby an ordinary 'lad' uses some Lynx deoderant and is suddenly imbued with superhuman levels of charm and animal magnetism. They feature scantily-clad women (always a winner) pretty much every time, and are sometimes fairly funny (with the exception of the most recent one, which is just terrible all round). The concept is naturally a mockery of the idea that a deoderant could do that, but that's irrelevant. What I like about the adverts is that it's a continuing motif. I LOVE adverts that run on from each other like that. A series of adverts. From the Papa/Nicole Renault ones to the old BT adverts with Maureen Lipman. I love those, because I genuinely begin to look forward to the next one. Even if I don't necessarily LIKE the adverts, I still want to see the next one. I mean, don't get me wrong, I never buy any of their products. That's not what adverts are for. They're purely there for entertainment purposes.

I generally just love seeing adverts progress. I was reminded of that by the most recent Cadbury's Flake commercial. Anyone seen it? It has this woman in space, eating a Flake in zero-gravity. That's pretty much it. Fairly poor, really, but it's a Flake ad! I really liked seeing the last Flake advert, where it was just a compilation of all the old adverts over the years. It displayed the year, and then the Flake advert that had been broadcast that year. The progression was brilliant, because the commercials just got more and more blatantly erotic and less to do with the product with each step. The first few were very wholesome, with ladies painting pictures in fields of daisies and stuff. Those slowly transformed into the archetypal Flake advert, with the girl seductively chomping on one and getting it all over the shop while her bath overflows and a gecko for some reason runs rampant across her phone (I still don't fully understand it, although I can hazard many guesses at the symbolism of it all). And then finally ended up on the (at the time) most recent Flake ad, which was pretty much just a shot of a hosepipe gushing water everywhere (I think the symbolism of that one is fairly obvious). I loved that advert, just because it flaunted the progression of all commercials. It was brilliant.

I could list literally hundreds of adverts that have gradually changed over the years (some for the worse. I'm looking at you, Milk Tray Man. What kind of special agent gets caught in the act by a fucking Hollywood actress, you ponce!! Oh, it was all fine when you were larking about jumping out of helicopters and skiing down avalanches, but when you just have to WALK into a building and put a fucking silhouette photo on a box of Milk Tray, you manage to get locked in! You're a DISGRACE, Milk Tray Man. A fucking DISGRACE!). But that would be pretty crap, and I think this is probably a boring enough entry anyway. So I'll just lump them together into types.

First of all, football ads. Of all the adverts whose next installment I look forward to the most, it's the football ads. Whether it's Nike, Adidas, Coca Cola or even John Smith's now, I just love footy adverts. I'm sure my esteemed friend, Mal, will agree with me on this one. One of the best has got to be the old Coke advert with the little kid kicking a coke can down the street. That was a superb advert. I felt an affinity with that kid. Nothing made me want to go out and buy a can of coke more, simply so I could pour it down a drain and kick the empty can about. Great stuff. Nike and Adidas are obviously the consistent purveyors of footy adverts. They've been churning them out for a long, long time. The pinnacle has probably got to be the Nike 'Airport' advert. You know the one. The "Ooooooh Ariaaaaaaa, Uvah, Uvah!" one. Compare that to the frankly RUBBISH elvis/boat/cantona excuse we have now, and you'll see why it's so good. The emphasis was on skill, on tricks, on fancy footwork. Now it's on...Elvis. The advert is all fast-cutting and most of the tricks I could do in my back garden given a while to practice, and I'm fucking SHIT at anything even remotely resembling tricks at football. The fact that it's practically a rehash of the old Nike 'Cantona/Devil' advert (which was pretty bad in the first place) only makes it worse. No, the Ooh Aria advert is still the winner. Although I must admit that I really liked the Adidas World Cup '98 ad, with Beckham curling the ball through the artificial wall and into a tiny little hole, which apparently was 14 inches wide. That's some pretty impressive accuracy there. I couldn't THROW something into a hole that small from 25 yards away, let alone kick it in. Every time I see that I'll be impressed, and that's what the footy ads are all about! They're supposed to make us gawp like mesmerised fools. And frankly half the time they just don't do their job. But I still love 'em. My favourite at the moment has got to be the aforementioned John Smith's one, with Peter Kay. Couple of guys at a training ground, doing fancy but doable kick-ups and tricks (except for the guy catching the ball on the back of his neck, then flicking it up to his mate, who ALSO catches it on the back of his neck. I could never do that). But then one of them gently taps it up for Peter Kay to carry on the tricks, keeping it off the ground, and he just takes a step forward and absolutely HOOFS the ball as far as he can, shouting "Have it! Ooh yes." Absolutely genius. One of my all-time favourite footy ads, I think, simply because it made me laugh so much the first time. I mean, it's got some fairly impressive skill, and it's got the familiarity of the coke-can-kid advert, AND it mocks all the other Nike- and Adidas-esque adverts with its "no nonsense" tagline. An all round brilliant advert. I love it.

Car ads. Now, a lot of people hate car adverts. All that open road without a single spot of traffic anywhere and everything, all unrealistic right? But those aren't the car ads I'm talking about. I love the STYLISH car adverts. I think Vauxhall are probably the leading lights in that field. They seem to consistently produce stylish ads. Just look at the latest one, the 'Lupo' advert. It's by no means one of my favourite adverts, but it goes about displaying the product in a way that I really like, and that a lot of car ads do. By, essentially, not showing the product at all, or at least very briefly. In the Lupo ad, they advertise a rampant little super-baby escaping from a hospital, and just use that to represent the car. I really like that take on advertising. It's so much better than just listing the merits of the product. I mean, don't get me wrong, I can see the benefits of that approach and the stylistic advertising of commercials like the Lupo one really wouldn't suit, I dunno, Fairy Liquid or Accidents Direct. But I just like it when an advert is subtle like that. When it's more like a music video than an advert. That's the kind of thing that actually makes me enjoy advert breaks. :) Has anyone actually noticed the recent trend in trying to sly bits of information into seemingly innocuous sentences? It really makes me laugh, now that I've noticed it. Two adverts that I can think of which do it are the AOL one, and some insurance one (I think it's Direct Line). In the AOL one, the little girl of the family says "It's so easy to use, I didn't even need the 24 hour totally free helpline." I can't help but smile at that cramming of information into a single sentence. The insurance one does it too, when the guy says that they repaired his car after a crash, and his wife/girlfriend says "not a bad job either, considering you only went with them 'cos they're cheap". Hehe. It could only be better if she popped back on at the end of the advert and said "Did I mention they're cheap? I can't remember. I did? Ok, sorry". But anyway, that's the kind of advertising that I dislike, even if I do find it very funny. It's just too...clinical, almost. Too sanitised. Tacky, cheesy, cheap. I don't really like it. I much prefer it when the advert simply hints at what's good about the product, by inference, and certain car ads do that very well. My favourite at the moment is the Peugeot 307 advert. You no doubt won't know which one that is, because there's so little to actually push the name or even make of the car onto you. It's the one where the camera floats slowly in through the window of the car, and languidly drifts around, looking from within as plants grow and a butterfly flies past, and rain patters on the sunroof. The camera then drifts back out and shows the whole car, and that's it. It's an absolutely beautiful advert, with so much style. I love the pace of it. It's all so slow and 'liquid'. Gentle camera pans and gradual drifting through the scene, with the butterfly ever so slowly flapping its wings. I had to do an animation for University recently, and I really wanted to capture a slow, languid pace, where everything just merged into one. This Peugeot advert is exactly the kind of thing I wanted to achieve, in the sense of mood and atmosphere. As well as that perfect style, it even manages to advertise the car in THE most subtle way possible. By distracting you while showing you the details of the car (in particular, things like the sunroof. I didn't even realise I'd taken that in until thinking about it now. I seem to know the car's features without ever having seen one, or seen a list of details). Add to that a fairly catchy soundtrack and it does everything an advert is supposed to do, and does it with great big dollops of class. Really, really like this advert. Big fan. Another one that's fairly similar is the new VW Beetle ad. Shows several people watching and smiling as a car drives past, and it's only at the end of the advert when the camera turns and looks into a reflective mirror dealy that we see which car it is. Very understated advertising. I like it a lot.

Incidentally, one of my favourite car ads ever is the old Nissan Almera one. The whole thing was a spoof of The Sweeney, and it was just very funny. The parody of the hard cockney guv'nor was just superb.
Guv: "MARKET! NOW!"
Aide: "Stop shouting"
Guv: "I CAN'T!"
It even managed to spoof a lot of other car adverts, by disguising the light-hearted digs as cop show satire.
Guv: "Quick, down the alley!"
Aide: "Why?"
Guv: "Litter! Makes the car look good. Go faster!"
Aide: "I'm doing nearly thirty!"
Guv: "Naughty boy..."

Brilliant.

As for the current set of adverts doing the rounds, we've got some good ones and some bad, as per usual. I quite like the Pot Noodle ("The Slag of all snacks") one, simply because as always, Pot Noodle know their target demographic: People who can't be bothered making the slightest bit of effort. I mean, these are people who can't even be bothered to make a sandwich. These people are my brethren. Good stuff. There are quite a few just plain bizarre adverts too. Not necessarily bizarre as a whole, but with...odd bits. Okay, next time you see that insurance advert with Alan Hansen...I can't remember who it's for, actually. Maybe Cornhill? Possibly Sun Alliance? I honestly can't remember. But it's the one with that evil little kid with curly blond hair, who seems to have aged about 7 years in the space of as many months since the adverts started, and he could talk as a baby anyway. Do you know the ones I mean? The current one has him watching his Dad play football, and he asks "Could Dad play for United?", and the Grandad replies "Don't be a stupid little bastard, you spawn of satan. Their players are worth millions". You know the one? Well, next time you see it, watch the goalkeeper. You only see him three times during the whole advert, but each time is hilarious. I won't say why unless you ask cos you can't find the advert on any channels, but keep an eye out for it. Just ignore everything else and watch out for the goalkeeper. He both amuses and terrifies me at the same time.

Anyway, I'll shut up about adverts now. I do love them though. Adverts are great.

On a completely unrelated note, I was amused to see that it looks like the Russians are backing out of the Bushehr nuclear power plant deal with Iran, much to the relief of Israel (and probably all the middle east countries). It amuses me because of the way it happened. I mean, Russia are desperately short of money, as no doubt everyone knows, and Iran want to become a nuclear power. Perfect deal, right? But the entire western world (and Israel) were strongly opposed to that, understandably. So the Russians, in their ever more pro-western (or rather pro-Washington) geopolitical stance decided to impose certain 'quality-checks' on the half-completed nuclear plant. They questioned the Iranian government over how they'd use the plant, and it was shortly afterwards that they announced they'd be slowly backing out of the deal (worth $800 million). I would have LOVED to be a fly on the wall there.

"So, about this power plant"
"Oh right, yep?"
"Well, 1000 Megawatts. That's an awful lot"
"Yeah, yeah. We have a lot of..uh...power needs"
"I see. Well, it's certainly a tempting offer. Oh! One last thing, we'll obviously be taking all the nuclear waste back, once the fuel's been spent"
"Uh...yeah, about that"
"Hmm?"
"We'll be keeping the nuclear waste"
"Sorry, what? I'm not following"
"We'll keep it, if that's ok"
"You realise it's nuclear waste, right? And it serves no purpose"
"Yeah, yeah, we know"
"I mean, the only possible use for spent nuclear fuel is in producing weapons-grade plutonium!"
"I..we....really? I mean, we....are you....huh. That's news...I mean..."
"You're not thinking of making nuclear weapons, are you?"
"Us? Make...hahaha! ahaha! ahahaha! hahah! ahah! No. Really. Us? No way."
"Cos I mean, we know that Israel are maintaining a military superiority throughout the region, and are using that to protect themselves from even further attacks from their many, many rivals, and that if you were to develop nuclear weapons you'd undermine their military strength, but you'd also be the only country named by America as an axis of terror capable of nuclear warfare, and perhaps one of the least 'stable' and reliable of nuclear powers. Do you...do you think that's a good thing?"
"Well...I mean....I.....well all of YOU guys get to play with them, why not us?"
"Yes, I see. Well, I think we'll be leaving now"

I just find that all very humourous.

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