Posts by James Francis
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Sofie, forgive my ignorance but what's a chav?
Now it feels desperately like a middle-aged man trying to talk 'yoof'.
On the other hand, maybe I shouldn't ask.
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So, you've made a commercial, Matthew?
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Oh, come on. A handful out of people out of hundreds-of-thousands isn't exactly impossible. Statistically it's almost a certainty that you'll be able to find a few people who are your customers and can be presented to a camera, when that's your sample.
The chances are that they will be talent. It's extraordinarily difficult to find staff who look right and can act and are willing to appear on camera. And then multiplying that by two looking for real clients with the same qualities. The cost of that alone, for the film company, would make the merely expensive into the stratospherically prohibitive.
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(And those BNZ ads with the stereotypes, Asian haircut guy, Scottish dad etc, are cleeeearly fake)
Umm, they're for ANZ.
BNZ have flying pigs. I'm undecided as to whether or not the pigs are real.
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The worst bit is, Craig - dirty secret because I'm a Vodafone customer since the days of Bell South - I have no memory of any of Vodafone's current ads. That's how much/little impact they've had on me. Mind you, I saw their spokesman on Campbell live defeding their pricing of the iPhone. He sounded exactly like somebody from Telecom. A curse on both their houses, I think.
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I'd be even more impressed if someone could come up with a masterplan to turn around the (largely self-inflicted) damage to the Telecom brand.
That's the other thing about this ad. It's not Telecom. I know that's the logo on the bottom but it feels more like the youthfulness of Vodafone. Telecom, in the good days of Saatchi Wellington (Spot the Dog and a serious number of very good ads before and after) was intelligent, wel-mannered and a leader. Now it feels desperately like a middle-aged man trying to talk 'yoof'.
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Most of the noise about this ad came from the advertising blog Campaign Brief New Zealand (sorry, don't know how to do links).
The people getting exercised are largely, IMO, industry juniors who seem to have nothing better to do than slag each other and their agencies anonymously. Edifying it isn't.
I saw the ad tonight. It's nicely shot and the talent, to the agency's credit, are a couple of cuts above the often vacuous chocolate box types. The music's good and I smiled. It's not an ad that will win an award and it's not an ad that will win me as a customer. But it's not bad.
I don't think the issue's about it being fake but more about it being 'derivative'. What they seem to forget is that there are no small number of much lauded and applauded ads that have borrowed from popular culture. The "Wassup' campaign for Budweiser that was all the talk a couple of years ago was based on a short film that an actor (who later appeared in the ads) had made. My favourite is a sweet little ad made for Maxell tapes in the 80's. It was based on something that Bob Dylan had done. In both those cases the industry knew where the idea had come from but happily acknowledged the creativity of the ad.
Plus ca change.
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When I heard the $5.5 million, I must admit that I did look askance. $5.5 million? That has to be polirical exaggeration, I thought. And then my Luddite prejudices kicked in and I mentally started blaming the web design/IT people. I do that with things that I don't understand.
A brilliant exposition, David. It all makes sense. And top marks to Sparc for not fudging the figures when you called them. Openness and transparency goes a long way, in my mind.
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But where can I get a job charging obscene amounts of money for stating the bleeding obvious
Craig, I think it's called advertising. David will tell you all about it.
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Is it your television? Or is it any TV you see him on?
Cos that could be a problem.'Tis my television. With other people's I just grump and mumble.