17/2/2004 - Entry #85
Well, three identical e-mails from my host providers later and they've still not suspended me, so let's see how long I can hang in there. I've decided to change host, in fact. The one I'm with now is great for all sorts of scripting and the technical support is great, but the actual amount of webspace I get is tiny, and as I'm now finding out, so is the data transfer limit. I mean, I never even got close to it before, but all it took is one popular picture to cripple me, so I think I ought to upgrade. If I'm going to eventually use this site to show videos of my work and stuff, I think I have to change it soon, so I may as well do it now. So the good news therein is that sometime soon I'll probably overhaul the site to a proper php weblog! With actual proper automatic buttons and stuff! No more manual changing of links to just spoof the look of php blogs! That = me being more inclined to update. Also, a search function, for when you want to look up my pearls of wisdom from the past (or more likely to mock me and rub in my face some foolish drivel I spouted years earlier). Also, comment on individual posts, etc etc. All kinds of fancy stuff. So that should be an improvement. The downside therein, though, is that sometime soon the site may either show up all wonky and weird and wrong, or just plain not show up at all. Depends how smoothly I can transfer everything across to the new host, and how long it takes me to make a nice new layout. I mean, it's not like I need to warn you that updates might be slow (arf!), but you know, I'm just keeping you informed.
Oh! And also with the new site, I'll probably be uploading several albums to download, or full half hour tv shows, or whatever. All kinds of big internet.
Anyway, since I said I'd update, I will do. And I've decided to do a good old fashioned advert entry! You know you miss them. Chris. P. Bean sent me a link to a supposed American TV ad. I've shown it to multiple people and none of them seem to have ever seen it, so who knows what's going on there. But anyway, the rest of the adverts on the site are good too. You can see them all here. Some are better than others. I particularly recommend Pinata. That one has to be my favourite. The music and the increasing scenes of violence, and the ludicrously saccharine disney-esque closing words. Ah, it's fantastic.
But when she sent me it, she mentioned that it was an example of non-sucky American tv ads, and commented that the standard of commercial in England is much higher. And that got me thinking. Cos I'm not sure if it's true or not. See, the last 4 years in a row an American advert has won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, meaning the best advert in the whole world has been American for the last four years running. In 2003 it was "Lamp", for Ikea, directed by Spike Jonze and created by the ad agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky. In 2002 it went to Nike's "Tag" by Wieden & Kennedy, who were also the most awarded agency in the whole world that year. So it's not like American ads are short of accolades. But do they get more awards, or just the top prizes?
You can see the results of the 2003 Cannes Lions festival here (pdf file). See how many you can actually recognise from name alone. I'll do the maths for you though, and tell you:
The UK won 14 Gold Lion Campaign awards.
The US won 3.
The UK won 4 Gold Lion (single ad) awards.
The US won 5.
The UK won 2 Silver Lion Campaign awards.
The US won 6.
The UK won 3 Silver Lion awards.
The US won 6.
Both the UK and the US won 5 Bronze Lion Campaign awards.
The UK won 4 Bronze Lion awards.
The US won 11.
And, as I say, the US won the Grand Prix.
So the US won more than us in every group except Gold Lion Campaigns, where we soundly slaughtered them. Indeed, of all campaigns together, we have 21 winners to the US's 14. Perhaps that's the real difference in advertising on both sides of the Atlantic. Not the quality, but the scope of the adverts. But either way, if we create a little faux scoring system, where any Gold prize is 3 points, Silver is 2 and Bronze is 1, then the results are....
UK:
Gold = 54 points
Silver = 10 points
Bronze = 9 points
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73 points
US:
Gold = 24 points
Silver = 24 points
Bronze = 16 points
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64 pointsI'm glad we sorted that out.
While we're on the subject, too, I'd like to point out how much I like the new Volvo advert. For those that haven't seen them, they're quite short and fairly unimpressive on their own, talking about a strange occurrance where 32 separate people in a small Swedish village all bought the exact same car (the Volvo S40) on the exact same day. The advert itself, as I say, is pretty nondescript, because it serves only to point you towards the website where you can watch the "documentary". So you head over to http://www.volvocars.co.uk and you watch the documentary (you can also watch the TV trailers if you're a completist....or foreign). But yeah, the whole film is surprisingly long, with very authentic production values. It genuinely looks and feels like a real documentary, complete with classic English narrator enunciation. It also cleverly works the features of the car into the film, with people explaining that drew them to the car in the first place. If you're a cynic like me, it sticks out like a sore thumb, but it doesn't destract from the impression. At this point I'm very impressed with Volvo for basically going above and beyond what needed to be done. They could easily have just made any other 30 second commercial with a car driving through long stretches of open road. Job done, who's next. But they've gone to all this effort to make a short film to advertise their car. And that's really what I like most about it. They seem to be trying to expand the format of the commercial into nigh-on short film territory. They've constructed this whole set up, and created a fake documentary, and gone to such lengths to make it look decent, when they really didn't need to. I like that.
However, it doesn't even end there. Everything gets even more impressive when you go to http://www.carlossoto.com/. Carlos Soto is a Venezuelan documentary director, and the man commissioned by Volvo to film the footage in Dalaro. On his website, he has created his own short film pointing out inconsistencies in the documentary he made for Volvo, questioning the behaviour of the residents of Dalaro and doubting the reality of the entire story. Again, the film is expertly edited and put together to excellent effect, really getting the point across as all documentaries do.
But the thing is....there is no Carlos Soto. This, too, is just another part of the deception. The man, the film, the website, its all pure invention to further the myth. If you do a little digging into the website info, it's registered to a woman named Paula on Paulus Potterstraat 38, which also happens to be the address of Volvo's European Fuel company. This is just an elaborate hoax within a hoax. Turning an already unusually complicated commercial on its head even further. What's more, the film by 'Carlos' once again cleverly slips details of the car into the sequence of events, pointing out how people "didn't even know about the Global Positioning System in the car" *cough hint cough*. Seriously, the more I watch the films and the more I think about the exact script of each, the more I consider this to be a stroke of absolute marketing genius.
"Why would a corporation play with people in such a way? Did Volvo really fabricate this story as an elaborate scheme to sell cars? Is this what it takes to get attention?"
-Carlos Soto
I can only applaud.
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