HEAD BLOG

Following on from my earlier entry on celebrity endorsements for advertising I’d like to focuss on one particular product area: fragrances.

I can’t help but notice that TV ad time is swamped with star-studded endorsements for – The Fragrance (the last resort Xmas present). Ad-slots have heated up despite the snow with James Franco, Vincent Cassell, Josh Harnett, Ewan McGregor, Kiera Knightly, Nichol Kidman, Kate Moss, Beyonce all doing their utmost to convince us to buy the scent they represent.

Actually they are not doing their utmost, in fact they are doing very little but it’s better than just featuring the actual companies behind the product. Yet, is this really the best way to convince the public to buy their fragrance above all others? Especially when (conceptually) they are all the same.

I don’t blame the creatives or the agencies behind the ads; anyone in the ad biz knows the best ideas never get chosen but let’s face it, there’s not even the slightest attempt to stand out.

I get it though. Buy the smell and you’re buying into the glamor of the worlds inhabited by these celebs. Hell, it’s worked in the past and the wisdom here seems to say that if it aint broke… I just thought that maybe the consumer these days was slightly more knowledgeable and cynical about advertising to fall for that old one.

You would think though, that if this is the time of year when sales peak then surely the arena is more competitive.

So why be the same as your rivals?

There is a great opportunity to stand out and be memorable but I smell a rat. Playing safe seems to be the order of the day and in these times of accountability a good defense for decision makers is “well they do it, so why don’t we?”. Safety in numbers and all that.

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe they all smell the same, and so the ads are all the same. It could be an honest approach to advertising.

And that, my friends, stinks.

Many complex arguments surround the issue of marketing to children. They are linked in with the world in which we live and the world in which we wished we live where advertising is just one way in which we discover new ways in which to be productive or pass the time. In the world in which we live, these ways often come about in ways in which advertisers wish they had control. Instead we are often left chasing the moment, trying to bend it to our will.

And in this world, more complex than we can ever imagine or control how are we supposed to find the right line to take when parents are terrified to send their children out without a mobile phone? Should the manufacturers not produce phones that are attractive to children? Would that make us better people? Would it save our children from the clutches of the Pied Piper? If only the world were that simple. If only it could be reduced to such things and then solved by a quick chat with Trevor McDonald or David Dimbleby.

Of course it can’t. And so it will continue, rightly so, to be an area that undergoes regular and detailed scrutiny. Maybe it is inevitable that advertising often finds itself at the sharp end of the commentator’s disapproval. Calls for bans on advertising, on video games, on Marilyn Manson’s music surround every anti-social act to be caught by the global news media. It becomes so automatic, so knee-jerk that it is easy to dismiss it in a similarly knee-jerk and automatic manner. Many of us, however, think about the arguments each time a new piece of business comes our way. And often the answers come in the way in which much of the advertising industry conducts itself – by talking and listening to the public. After all, what kind of advertisers would we be if we ignored the public mood? Where’s the strategy in that?. No, talking to the consumer is something we do on a daily basis – something report writers might also look into doing. Without it we would soon find ourselves existing within the sort of bubble some people might wish our children to live in.

It’s this conversation which reminds us that we are no longer in the world of the 1960′s where the Don Drapers could dazzle us with the promise of great new things simply because they were new things. This conversation with the public reminds us that each new piece of work we produce is put into context by a million different minds, each of which consume information (and advertising falls under that category) in a different way. We can create excitement, anticipation even, but to assume the power to steer society towards a dumbed-down mockery of itself – well, isn’t that what we have television for?

Good creativity is full of risk. But such a direction seems to be in direct contradiction to the message of despair and cynicism that currently prevails. Steve Henry of HHCL questions the use of celebrities in advertising during a time of recession saying, whilst acknowledging the escapism value of such strategies, that they don’t represent the best way of talking to people. Rich people advertising cheap food – where’s the connection between brand and consumer there?

Celebrity based advertising (generally speaking) is just one of those fallback positions for Creatives. They are easy propositions which show conservatism in full swing. The reasoning seems to be that by shoe-horning Celebrity D into Brand A there is no risk, or at least a reduced risk. There is a degree of truth to that. Safe advertising done well can be effective, of course it can, and wild, risky ideas can fail miserably. I’m sure Gillette’s “star-studded” tour de force may well have sales to back up its strategy.

More often than not this form of advertising, whether it is stapling Richard Hammond to a supermarket trolley or forcing Ant and Dec into other people’s made-up lives, has to remain true to the basics of good advertising and use their celebrities for solid, persuasive reasons and not because they are flavour of the month or, worse still, flavour of the marketing exec’s better half.

After a century of making cars, General Motors has filed for Chapter 11 which allows GM to continue trading as long as they get their finances sorted out. The US government will then take a 60% stake in what was once the largest corporation in the world.

Fast forward to the inevitable re-launch of the brand. Forgetting for a second that they are nearly bankrupt and that the volume of negative stories of recent dealings would crush the sturdiest of independent SLA torsion bars with monotube gas-charged shocks. How would you approach the task, strategically and creatively?

The challenge would be immense but what agency wouldn’t rise to the challenge?

Consider the gauntlet down.