Powerful athletes' quivering muscles

Yes, it's the Olympics, and nakedly sexual admiration for the scantily-clad, fat-free, streamlined human body is going to be the nation's top hobby for a month or so. With that in mind, here is the BBC's trail by RKCR/Y&R.

Go fullscreen and HD for full effect:

I mention quivering muscles for a reason - it's actually just one beautiful piece of attention to detail (look at the gymnast on the rings at 0:34) in an animation full of them. A crew of dozens put this together, and no wonder - even though the characters are distorted, it's still one of the finest artificial representations of human movement I've ever seen.

Does it mean much? Not really, apart from a vague aspiration to include the entire country and not just the capital in the Games. It's mostly just an appetite-whetter for an event we know about already. But as a piece of craft, it's hard to beat.

Oh, and it is, of course, nothing like the RKCR ads for Lloyds TSB, whatever the occasional fuckwitted organisation with a vendetta against the BBC might have you believe...

Good Bread, Bad Bread

Just had a brief from school for a bread brand, so we've been looking at how they've been sold. It's been responsible for some great advertising. Hovis obviously springs to mind, but I also like this recent Warburtons ad, from RKCR/Y&R. It's funny, but there's a strong brand message behind it.

This travesty of a commercial, on the other hand - for Kingsmill from M&C Saatchi - is just a mess.

It's hard to know where to start. First of all, there's nothing that tells me what's so great about the bread itself. She might namecheck the brand, but basically, it's a cheese sandwich confession. And if I made a sandwich in the morning, went away, came back, and it was gone, I'd just ask my boyfriend "what did you do with my sandwich?" If they're trying to recreate the real people's lives and kitchens, there has to be an element of reality.

And the engagement is just so weak - I checked the Kingsmill Confessions YouTube channel, and found that all videos had been disliked more than liked in all cases. To finish, here are a sample of the comments...


This advertising campaign is lame. So... this girl made her mum a sandwich then ate it herself? This is barely a story... and definitely not one worth telling. What sort of bread related confessions did Kingsmill expect?


Why would you even run a campaign like this?


Britain should weep for the travesty of its people now


These kingsmill adverts are pathetic and i prefer good old fashioned warburtons actually


You're worse than Hitler.


I have a confession to make, I was in a rush to catch a flight this morning so I asked my wife to make me a sandwich, she used shitty kingsmill instead of braces so I knifed her in the neck, stupid bitch.


I wipe the under side of my balls with kingsmill gold........it's very refreshing

RKCR, you are really spoiling this product

Actually, I suspect what is going on here is a client problem. You can't just re-position a brand when it's, erm, ambassadorial image is so ingrained in the minds of the public. But someone somewhere decided that a 30-second ad slot could convert Ferrero Rocher from a kitsch gift to a sophisticated middle class party delicacy. It's actually more preposterous than the original.

It's also about 4 times more boring and 7 times less memorable than the old ads.

Can't we have a Christmas ad with some speed metal or really dubby dancehall, or something? I tire of these winsome ballads.