Controversy over content: why advertising is missing the point
It’s been reported that French Connection has had a collapse in sales recently, blamed in part on their recent advertising campaign, which attracted a large number of complaints. I don’t know if you saw it, but I certainly found it quite off-putting: it showed two women beating each other before enjoying a kiss, while covered in oil.
Obviously, the company were trying to invite controversy (they’ve never exactly been arbiters of good taste in advertising), but it was just rather offensive, and it certainly didn’t fill me with the urge to go and buy any of their clothes. If their sales have been affected, well, they’ve only brought it upon themselves.
It’s all just part of the great power of advertising, I suppose. From reading the papers, you’d think that Marks & Spencer’s fortunes have been turned round single-handedly by Twiggy, in those adverts where she, Laura Bailey and Erin O’Connor (and that other one, whose name nobody knows – since she’s the least famous, she’s the one that has to do all the underwear modelling) flounce around some stately home in various outfits. People have said that this is a great victory for the use of older women in advertising. Which might be true, if Twiggy didn’t look about fifteen years younger than she actually is, and if she weren’t surrounded by three women who are in their twenties and thirties. I’m sure the average ‘older woman’ feels just thrilled.
I hate Marks & Spencer’s adverts, anyway. The clothes ones are annoying enough, but then there’s the unashamed gastro-porn of the food commercials. I used to think Dervla Kirwan was great (mainly because I was a big Ballykissangel fan many years ago), but now she’s just the woman who works herself up into some kind of breathy, orgasmic glow while listing the delights of smoked ham, or whatever other delicacy we’re all supposed to rush out to buy. Apparently I’m in the minority, though, as the food section has had record profits.
It could just be, of course, that I generally miss the point of most adverts. I mean, there’s a brilliant one on at the moment which I really like, where a gangster gets cremated and then turned into a diamond, or something along those lines. The thing is, though, that I have absolutely no idea what the product is that is being advertised. I always mean to look out for it, but forget, and it’s getting increasingly frustrating: either it’s just not explicit enough in terms of what it’s selling, or else I’m being stunningly slow-witted about it (which is more likely, really: recently, what with the whole it’s-my-final-term debacle, I’ve felt my ability to concentrate, or indeed think about anything in any kind of detail, deteriorate).
Then there are advertisements which I feel are deliberately designed just to irritate me. So, for example, some girl with flawless skin will ramble on about how she went shopping, and there was a fantastically attractive male assistant, but she just couldn’t look at him because she looked so awful that day. (Get over it, I say. Why do people want to look their best when they’re shopping? I can’t understand it). But then she used some magical face wash and the very next day, she went back and got his number. I always think, what, am I supposed to be thrilled for you? Brilliant, you’re going on a date: well, I don’t know you, and this thirty-second film has not endeared you to me in such a way that I care what happens to you. Or else, there’ll be some emaciated model who clearly hasn’t eaten an actual meal in months, and she’ll be inhaling ice-creams whole, as if to tell me, look, you too can look like me while indulging in this calorific snack!
I can’t cope with it; I hate people trying to sell me a look, or a product, or a lifestyle, in such a vacuous and thoughtless way. In fairness, I’m not particularly consistent in this. If the actors used are fabulously good-looking, I get annoyed at the presumption that they’re meant to represent normal people; if they’re less attractive, I decide that the company couldn’t be bothered to shell out enough money, and that I don’t want to look at a load of ugly people on screen. What I really can’t stand, though, is celebrity endorsements. When Eva Longoria simpers at me that I should use some shampoo or other, because I’m worth it, I almost want to scream. It’s not really her fault – my dislike of her is inextricably bound up with the fact that I pretty much loathe Gabrielle on Desperate Housewives, and Desperate Housewives in general – but I really resent the implication that my life is so anodyne and unsatisfactory that I must be striving to be more like her, and that, therefore, I must want to use the products that she claims to use (and she so obviously doesn’t, anyway).
My all-time favourite advert, and the one which I reckon has been most effective on me, is that Ferrero Rocher one from years ago: you know, about the Ambassador’s parties being noted for their style. It is the cheesiest, most unconvincing advert ever, and yet that’s what makes it work. I don’t even like Ferrero Rocher, but I buy them sometimes because I have some kind of weird affection for that advert. They don’t make them like that any more…
