Bad or Rad?

Some ads stick with you even though they may not be great. This for example, an early 90's ad for milk featuring a bastardisation of a great Squeeze track.

Is this a good ad? Is it a product of the time?
Either way it's been lodged in my head for 18 years.



Is this a borderline racist display of outdated black stereotypes, or is it a cool piece of animation that makes a random beverage seem a million times more attractive than a dull Robinson's fruit drink?

I for one never saw any offense in it, it seemed very very cool; and if it did use stereotypes, it did so in what seemed a mostly complimentary way.

Review of the Year - Part 2 - Awards!

Not quite the Cannes Lions... but it's been a great year in many senses for advertising, lots of exciting and engaging campaigns worthy of merit. Here are The Ad Pit Awards 2010!

Best Campaign

Nike - Write the Future - Talk about catching the moment and running with it. A brilliant, if sadly prophetic piece of work. Making big superstar spokespeople utterly relevant and endearing instead of shoe-horned.

Runners Up: E4 Flashmob (Utterly brilliant), John Lewis - Always a Woman, Nike Grid, Old Spice, Skoda - Meaner stuff, Match - Music shop

Best Surprise

Ikea - Kitchen at Parties - Jona Lewie brought back to popular culture and a magnificent use of music to demonstrate product.

Runner Up: Gillette - Federer video

Most Improved Advertising

Virgin Media - Speedy Gonzales - Welcome back Speedy. This is how to use existing characters to sell a product. Hits the nail right on the head in a way that manages to sell whilst still being funny.

Worst Advert

Go Compare - Opera Twat - Somehow, somehow they made this even worse than last year. A campaign surviving solely on media budget, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It's not funny, it's not engaging, it's not entertaining, it makes me want to have nothing to do with the brand in a way I haven't felt since Jamster.

Runner Up: Argos - Xmas (Nice ad, now why not wait til Christmas to show it?)

Most Disappointing Work

Cadbury's Dairy Milk - Charmer - Product product product nice soundtrack product product product product product. Not what we expected from one of the most engaging campaigns of recent years.

Agency of the Year

Wieden + Kennedy - Nike write the future, Nike Grid, Old Spice Man... I think there could only be one winner this year. Some agencies have made great work, but this year W+K have been consistently outstanding.

Window on Joy

Wonderful ad for Dairy Milk by Cadburys in Australia.
This so perfectly captures the joy that was missing in the post-Gorilla work over here (latest ad excluded somewhat).

via Gemma

Raised Eyebrows

Welcome back to the Cadbury's Dairy Milk campaign. A campaign crushing under the weight of more expectation than Barack Obama.

Yet despite some glowing reviews elsewhere I struggle to like the new ad. The idea of setting the Dairy Milk moment as that moment of glee when kids are left on their own to cause mischief is nice; and far better than Trucks. The use of humans is much better than inanimate objects (unless you Pixar them).

But as my colleague Steve mentioned today: The ad sets its stall out to be entertainment, so we judge it differently. And in this campaign the benchmark is very very high.

The problem seems to be that the tone of the humour doesn't quite fit with the idea. It's trying to be Vic and Bob with serious faces and silly movements, but it just feels too forced and lacks the emotional quality that made Gorilla great. Besides, the joy of Gorilla was that you felt the joy of the moment even if you didnt understand the message; but here that joy just doesn't hit.

That said, the balloon is great and the music is spot on. A disappointment, but not a catastrophic one. This is better than Trucks, better than average, but just nowhere near Gorilla. Which, unfortunately for Fallon, all these ads will be compared to.

Best analogy I came to so far is Manchester City. They wake up expecting Kaka, and ended up with Craig Bellamy. Not a bad signing, but not what they were hoping for.

Image from Skillsspace

Glass and a Half Empty

The problem with hyped ads is that they rarely live up to expectation, with the possible exception of Honda's Grr. Well, here is Fallon's Grrilla...

Hype means that instead of 10 "It's good" reviews you get 5 "Not as good as the original" and 5 "ad of the year!" reviews. People drastically over or under rate the ad because of what came before it.

A good ad with a good soundtrack. Good idea. Good Follow Up. But, it's just that; good. Not great, not exeptional, not the wonder we were expecting. Also, seeing people spoils its transformers like quality. Problem for me is, if this was their second best idea... what's next?

Maybe the fall of the BIG ad starts here... discuss.