Freddie Flintoff for Morrisons

Right, back to an ad a day, this time a celebrity supermarket slot from DLKW Lowe

Well, as far as these things go, it's beautifully done. The message - Morrisons do a range of ready meals from different cuisines - is put across simply and effectively.

But Flintoff is the perfect find for so many reasons. Men want to be his mate, women want to be his mistress. He's charming and handsome, and has a populist appeal that a Michael Atherton or a David Gower could never possess.

But more to the point, he just nails it. There must have been some high-fives after the first screen test. He's down to earth, but he pitches in and learns the foreign phrases to each of the chefs. He's blokey, but not wooden. The sign-off "champion" works because it reflects both his image and the brand's image.

Richard Hammond, take note.

Schemas

Things are getting busy at the School of Communication Arts 2.0 - in fact I've only got round to doing this blog after a busy day at school and an evening spent writing and recording a voiceover on the history of telecommunications advertising (a very potted one, mind you).

The morning session from Chris Hill was fascinating throughout, but one part stuck out, which chimed in with the book we're currently reading: Made To Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath. They've been talking about "schemas" - which are (and let's head over to Wikipedia now) "structures that organize our knowledge and assumptions about something and are used for interpreting and processing information".

In other words, when I say "X Factor", you might think "a singing competition on the television that loads of people watch and while entertaining is not perhaps the purest example of musical and artistic expression". You probably think a lot more. Just 2 words instantly bring up a whole range of facts, ideas, names, images, songs and more in your mind - and that makes them an incredibly powerful tool for expressing a complex idea in an easily digestible and easily remembered way.

So today, we had the old AA slogan, "to our members we're the 4th emergency service". And that's all you need - with that you know that you phone them to get help, they come to you, probably in a van, as fast as they can, and they'll fix whatever it is that's wrong. All that is expressed in 2 words - "emergency service".

Words, eh? Bloody hell.

Thoroughly decent Goodfellas ad (for balance)

This blog can't be all doom and gloom, so here's a good ad. It draws you in, it strongly pushes authenticity as a brand value, and there's a great pay-off. A big platonic Italian kiss to the uncredited Mother London copywriter who wrote the script.

However, now we supposedly have to listen to what Steve Henry and Dave Trott are saying, that you really have to start making your ads special, or else who remembers them? I don't think things are quite this black and white - because in this case, what they want to do is make you choose them at the freezer aisle above the other frozen pizzas.

You might not remember this ad when asked "tell me about some ads you saw yesterday", but to me that's a bit of an artificial challenge. Surely the test is to put some brands in front of someone then ask if they remember seeing any adverts for it, what they thought. And if this one springs to mind as they're hovering around that freezer aisle, it's only going to be a positive.

Wartime Whores

Great pair of posters from World War II here, mostly aimed at American soldiers finding themselves in Britain amongst a lot of lonely ladies. The first one is the perfect short line of copy, with a kind of symmetry that puts "say" in the middle, then "know" and "no" rhyming either side, then "who" and "to" rhyming either side of that. It's got a great rhythm to it, too.

This one seems more old fashioned, like one of those old allegorical cartoons, or even a Hogarth drawing - whereas the previous one, disregarding the slight misogynistic overtones, could have been made now.

Original post at Retronaut with more images.

Christians do Good Copy

This weekend I went to see my nephew get christened and become his godfather. During the service, being an atheist, I was actually paying a lot of attention to the words of the prayers and hymns, and noticed that some of them are absolute masterclasses in rhetoric, using the same devices as politicians and orators have used for centuries.

I typed out one of the prayers and annotated it - click here to view the document in google docs (you don't need an account).

Alternatively, you can just watch this video of my nephew developing his neck muscle stamina.

Lurpak butter

Seen on Camberwell New Road on my walk home from class.

The main thing that needs to be praised is the art direction - it's a beautiful image. It makes me hungry. I urge you to take a look at the full size image.

I wasn't so sure about the headline "noble", but in context with the rest of the campaign, which is headed with words like "salvation", "heroics", and "empires", they deserve their space.

The stated aim is to "reinforce the brand’s position as the natural choice to enhance good food", and in a marketplace where there is no discernible quality or price difference, it's as good a way as I can think of to swing your decision. It is, let's face it, an appeal to the middle class foodie, the people who want simple homemade food with good quality ingredients, and are sceptical of packaged sandwiches and fast food. Yes, it's preaching to the converted, but it's beautifully done.

Would You or Wouldn't You?

I'm going to have to be political and vague in this post, as it involves a creative disagreement at work. I'm also going to change some details.

Let's say we were asked to produce an advert promoting train travel from Oxford to Cambridge to students at the university. My idea was to play on the university rivalry and have the headline...

wouldn't you rather be at Cambridge?

...just something to grab their attention with a little low-key fun-poking.

However, in production, this got changed to just...

rather be at Cambridge?

...which I felt completely ruined the mechanics of the line. Humour, even if it is of the lightest sort as in this case, is . A slight change of phrase can turn a hilarious one-liner into a dull dud, and so it is with copy.

In this case, the quest to make the shortest phrase possible does more than shorten the phrase, it changes its meaning. "Rather be at Cambridge" is an abbreviation of "would you rather be at Cambridge?", not "wouldn't". And that changes the whole tone - it becomes a neutral question rather than the challenging, teasing tone implied by "wouldn't you?". Also, starting the sentence with "wouldn't you" draws the eye because it challenges the reader and entices them into interacting with the advert. "Rather be" is a meaningless, unchallenging way to start a sentence, and in requiring the reader to fill in the words, is actually harder work than the longer version.

It. Makes. Me. Mad.

Pret - good copy bad copy

Had a bite to eat in Pret the other day, and was taken with the packaging of their own-brand food - clearly a lot of effort had gone into it. It's clear and makes its point concisely, but still adding those buzzwords: "lovingly", "fresh", "natural". "Made today, gone today" is a neat and elegant little phrase too.

In contrast, this - on a bag of low-fat popcorn from a different manufacturer - is just a mess. The first sentence is weak, utterly uninspiring. And the second paragraph aims for enthusiasm, but really - are they the first people to describe making food as an art form? If they'd just said "Making popcorn is an art form", I'd never have responded "well that just sounds ridiculous", I'd have thought "well, I suppose there's a lot you have to get right".

And then there's this pathological obsession with crisps, mentioned FOUR times on the packaging. It made me want to eat a bag of crisps, quite frankly. Oh, and what's the "hybrid stuff" when it's at home? What are the one thing and the other that sailing camp at Bosham aren't? What is any less "industrial" about mass-produced popcorn? It's not as though individual kernels taste different.

So, when I'm feeling peckish, I'll eat what the hell I like, thank you very much.

(they were quite tasty though)