You
may not have noticed, but this blog was started exactly a year ago today! I
have marked this occasion with a new layout and header, and a rant about an
animal playing a musical instrument.
While
writing my post about America I mentioned my hatred for the stupid Dairy Milk
ad with a gorilla in it. Part of what
makes me hate it is how people tend to react to it.
It’s
not “genius!” Einstein was a genius! Thom Yorke is a genius! The person who
invented cheese is a genius! Is this what society has come to? I’m not a snob;
I can be entertained for literally hours watching videos of cats falling into
baths. I do, however, see things for
what they are, and this is an advert. Its
sole purpose is to make money. It annoys
me that this particular ad is seen as a thoughtful and inspirational piece of
art instead of a cleverly designed tool to sell hipsters more chocolate.
I’m
not against adverts; in fact, I’ve been in quite a few internet ads myself and
would quite happily throw my pescatarian principles out of the window if
McDonalds paid me £20,000 to take a bite out of a hamburger. Ads are fun, and there have been some great
ones; my particular favourite is the Guinness ad where the fish rides the
bicycle, and I have noticed the irony of both my favourite and least favourite adverts involving animals
doing things that they have absolutely no business doing.
I was uncertain on beginning this paragraph exactly why it is that I
hate one and love the other, but hopefully by the end of this sentence I will
have figured it out; it seems to me to be to do with honesty.
Guinness’s
adverts probably could be described
as works of art, because they are incredibly detailed and well-thought out. The one about the fish is actually very
mildly offensive to women- and probably fish- but it’s so funny I don’t really
care. I’m not sure exactly what
a fish riding a bike has to do with ‘Guinness Extra Cold’ (the fish does seem pretty cold), in the same way
that a gorilla drumming has nothing to do with Cadburys chocolate, but it seems
like Guinness have worked hard to create something extremely light-hearted,
silly and entertaining and, if I liked Guinness, (which I don’t,) I would
definitely buy their beer.
When
I watch the Gorilla ad, however, I don’t feel that same warmth I do when I
watch Guinness ads; it’s partly because I see it as being very aware of itself
and how inspirational its meant to be, coming across as incredibly pretentious and heavy-handed, and partly because it lacks the honesty
of other adverts. The screen at the
beginning says “glass and a half full productions”, suggesting that they see
themselves as an actual artistic film production company rather than people who
make and sell chocolate. It’s designed
to be entertaining and to make people associate the Cadburys brand with happiness,
but when I watch it I just feel a bit cheated.
All adverts are trying to sell me things, and that is fine. However, Cadburys seems to be going out of
its way to appear not to be selling
me something, and I find this weirdly manipulative.
I
am, admittedly, a trifle oversensitive and may be reading much more into
Cadbury’s intentions than is necessary, but I don’t like feeling tricked or
easily led. I’d rather be fully aware of
being manipulated; then at least everyone knows where they stand. Cadbury seem to be declaring, with this
campaign, that they are ‘different’ from other companies, when there is nothing
remotely different about them when it comes to their desire to keep their
business commercially viable.
Let
me go a bit further:
Another
reason why people think the ad’s wonderful is that it’s sparked so many
comments from people wondering what the hell is going on, which starts a
discussion, which spreads the video around further. “It’s making people think,” says someone on
the internet.
Think
about what?
Gorillas?
I’m
confused. I think it’s actually a
downright dangerous idea to allow people to merely associate something randomly
happy with your product; it’s easy and lazy.
It’s not genuine advertising; it’s propaganda; HAPPINESS = CADBURYS
DAIRY MILK. I’m not going to go as far
as compare Cadburys to Hitler, but this quest to simply ‘make people smile’
without any context has a slightly disturbing edge to it.
What
freaks me out is that this can be done with anything:
WHERE
DOES IT END?!?
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