Pointless? The latest ad from the Department of Media Culture and Sport.
He knows it’s naïve and wishful thinking, but Dominic Mills wishes that, sometimes, an agency would just have the courage to tell a client that they should not make an advertisement.
I think I’ve discovered the way to make a client say ‘Yessss’ to an ad, in the manner, say, of Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally.
It’s a simple process. Here’s what to do: a catchy piece of music to grab the attention; fast-cut imagery that bears no relation to the product or service in hand; bind the customer/viewer in with lots of use of ‘we’; a voiceover heavy with meaning that incants meaningless, but vaguely flattering, phrases rather like a priest; and climax with a grandiose, but completely pointless, claim.
In a phrase, all fur coat and no knickers.
What not to do: tell a story; have a point of view; make the customer a concrete promise or offer (i.e. sell anything); and use relevant imagery.
Result: the clients cream themselves and fist-bump each other in the lift on the way out of the agency.
The SSE orang-utan ad is perhaps the best current example of this; utter crap and an egregious waste of money. But Nat King Cole’s When I Fall in Love is so seductive.
But this one (below) from the Department of Media Culture and Sport (DCMS) runs it close.
In some ways it’s even more annoying because the DCMS is spending my money, and yours too. At least SSE was only spending its own (and possibly the customers’).
It was the music – The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again usually gives men of a certain age (i.e. me) a visceral thrill – that caught my ear when it ran just before Christmas.
And so I paid attention. As far as I can see, the point of the ad is to tell us that superfast broadband is in the hood, so to speak, so we better sign up to it if we want to be fully paid-up members of ‘The Superfast Nation’.
This is what it actually said:
“A kingdom connected by creativity. That’s us.”
Christ, for a moment I thought we were going to get Shakespeare’s “This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle” – always a sure sign of impending utter bollocks. But what they said was worse. Try telling Benefits Street that we’re connected by ‘creativity’.
“From midnight-oil-burning dreamers. To Tech City innovators.”
Who dreamt up that complicated three-part compound adjective? And what about my aunt and uncle, who neither burn the midnight oil nor know what Tech City is? How does a statement like that play in Tiverton, where rural poverty and lack of opportunity go hand in hand?
“Together we’re investing in superfast broadband.”
So who’s this ‘we’ then? They don’t explain. And how much? They don’t explain that either. (But it turns out that the government and local authorities (i.e. our money, even if it might be coming out of different pockets) are spending £1.7bn on this project – which doesn’t sound like that much money anyway).
“Welcome to the Superfast Nation”.
Yeah, right. Big claim. Pull the other one. I’m no M/B speed geek, but my understanding is that, as a country, we are way behind the likes of Scandinavia, South Korea and Japan.
And the imagery? Stonehenge/White Cliffs of Dover/fish and chips/basketball wheelchair/Red Arrows/George Best etc. See what I mean? Cunningly designed for some Cool Britannia feel-good, but it really doesn’t stand up to scrutiny and is as vacuous as a Katie Price ‘novel’.
And here’s the irony. As invited, I visited the website to check out what was available in my postcode. And guess what? Having taken my postcode and address, I had a severe case of ‘spinning wheel of death’ and was asked to check again later. I know it’s not the ad agency’s fault, but this constitutes a fail.
And although I live in a leafy suburb of south-west London, it feels more like I am a resident of ‘Superslow Nation’.
It would be pernickety of me to point out that, had we heard them, the lyrics of Won’t Get Fooled Again rather give the lie to the message. As far as I can tell, they were written at the zenith of Pete Townshend’s disenchantment with government – ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss’. Still, I suppose he is enjoying the irony and counting the cash.
However, it would not be pernickety of me to point out two things. One, the timing of this makes it feel like a political ad, with the DCMS giving itself a nice warm and wet feeling in the trousers (subtext: see how the whizzy, tech-friendly coalition has made things better). Using taxpayer money to fund a political ad is not a good thing.
Two, this ad feels like a complete waste of money. Why this ad? Why now? How will they judge its return? What targets/metrics have they set? I think we should know, and since as taxpayers we’re paying for it, I’d like to know what they consider value for money.
I know this is naïve, wishful thinking, but sometimes you do wish an agency would have the courage to say to the client: “Don’t make this ad. There’s no point.” But I know it’ll never happen.
In case you’re wondering, the ad was made by Enter, the agency formerly known as HMDG. It’s run by two people I have great respect for, Nick Hurrell (late of M&C Saatchi) and Rooney Carruthers (formerly the C of VCCP).
Come on guys, you can do better than this.
