A long long time ago in the early 21st Century, clients were making questionable demands. Marketing Directors really started to believe their own bullshit and started making ludicrous claims to anyone who’d listen. Didn’t matter if it was true. Didn’t matter if it was moral. Just mattered that their ads enhanced their reputation. There would often be a wonderful disconnect between adworld and reality which the public understood but marketing directors missed because they had fallen in love with their own creation.
For example my Stella client believed that a Stella Artois (as he alone called it) drinker was a sophisticated, bilingual, continental character equally at home in an art gallery or Debussy recital and for whom Summer was a verb. That’s what the ads suggested so naturally life imitated art. When research reflected that the filthy hooligan soup was actually guzzled in vast quantities by the more fighty gent, these facts were dismissed as heresy. That said, the ads worked and the police would want forewarning of their airing so they could lay on extra troops. (Cue mournful harmonica). Eventually the reputation of Stella (or Wife-Beater as it was called in the real world) dropped so low that action needed to be taken. The proposed solution was wonderful. We’d bring out an even stronger version which would encourage people to emulate our continental friends and drink it in half pints! Genius! Football terraces and EDL rallies would retire to the nearest bistro for a half pint of paint stripper and a crepe. Weirdly it didn’t work and Turbo-Stella was wisely removed from the shelves to protect society.
Complete delusion was one thing, total immorality was another.
A credit-card wanted us to target those who were in serious financial peril but weren’t going to go bankrupt. Essentially a game of black-jack for the debt-mongers. The deeper the shit you’re in the higher the interest rate you’re charged. Hoorary! But – as soon as it got too much and you claimed bankruptcy the good people at the bank lost their stake. Booooo!
A cough sweet brand had done some research and discovered a high value consumer. Very heavy smokers (40+ a day) who went through an unbelievable three packs of cough sweets a day. These poor bastards had enough on their plate without having their daily TV marathons interrupted with exaggerated claims about the benefits of eucalyptus but the client saw it differently and wanted to try and bump them up to 4 packs.
Another beer company wanted us to increase the average consumption of their “super-users” from 3.7 to 5.1 pints a day. Of course this being an average for every “super-user” who didn’t get the memo meant that a “super-duper user” would need to pick up the slack and get their daily sessions towards double figures to hit the team’s run rate. Good at maths – shit at life this client couldn’t see the irresponsible nature of the request but saw the light when we introduced a death curve and the subsequent income loss that would result.
The most remarkable brief I ever received was for a war. Gulf War 1 had been a roaring success for everyone involved (except Iraq) and ITV were keen to cash in on the sequel. 2003 was not an Olympic year, there was no Football and the Rugby World Cup wasn’t until October. This meant the Summer had a bit of a gap in the schedule which the war would fill nicely and might allow ITV to make some hay in the desert sunshine. At this point the war hadn’t started but Saddam Hussein had to produce some non-existent WMDs by a deadline to avoid a disproportionate retaliation for a terrorist atrocity he was not involved in so war was on the cards. Saddam was in a bit of a pickle, as were we because we had to produce a trailer for the invasion should he fail.
The client wanted a “stirring, patriotic Henry V feel” to an advert to ensure ratings success. This posed a problem as while Henry invaded France without a good reason, that was where the analogy ended. Also, Shakespeare played heavily on Henry’s underdog status to preserve the romance. Had Henry been able to carpet bomb Agincourt without having to look up from his laptop the prose might have lost its impact.
“I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start, the game’s afoot. Follow your spirit and upon this charge hit ctlr alt enter and we’ll have the shit kicked out of them by lunchtime”
Bit of a creative challenge so the creative agency consulted the TV advertising playbook.
- Write a jingle:
“Have a seat, cup of tea, watch the war on ITV”
2. Rework a famous song:
“But I still saw the
First gulf war. This is good as before. Prob’ley wont be a draw….
And Saddam’s hiding..”
3.Use a celebrity:
“Nice to bomb you, to bomb you…..TWICE”
The playbook was empty and to be fair to them the creative agency finally produced some scripts that focused more on the journalism than the impending massacre, much to the client’s disappointment. Where was the blood, the noise, the endless poetry? He realised he was on his own in his view which got worse when his bosses turned against him and rightly pointed out it was a shit idea to do prepromotion for a war. His last plea to give war a chance fell on deaf ears and with its arms raised to the sky in a final moment of hopelessness, the idea was cut down in its prime.
Good God Y’all.
Diaries Of Media 