Are banks chasing the pink pound or just reflecting real life?
Banks, with the inclusion of gay people in a host of their recent ads, seem to be reflecting modern life much better than most. Mainstream advertisers should take note, says Dominic Mills.
Blimey, ads featuring gay couples are a bit like London buses. None for ages, then three in less than a year. And all for banks too.
Last week’s from NatWest for its new cash back scheme featured a lesbian couple, followed this one almost a year earlier from Barclays for its personalised debt card, and this one from Lloyds in October 2012.
About time too, you might conclude, although Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells has yet to have his or her say about it. I suspect we have yet to hear from the homophobes because presentation of the gay couples is so subtle (NatWest has thoughtfully disabled all comments under the ad on its YouTube channel, perhaps because, unlike its peer banks’ ads, the couple is explicitly gay) that you have to have your gaydar on to spot them.
It’s naturally tempting, since we are talking about banks here, to believe that there is nothing more than calculated opportunism going on. We know the pink pound is significant and, I guess, potentially attractive to financial services providers.
But I’ll give the banks the benefit of the doubt. I think they’re just trying to make themselves inclusive or, for want of a better phrase, part of the fabric of national life. If that means showing gays in their ads, so be it.
And we shouldn’t under-estimate how difficult this is. Financial services providers are incredibly conservative in social issues (they may be utterly reckless with our money, but that’s a different matter). Nor are they marketing-oriented, and marketing people (who aren’t real bankers, obviously) tick the ‘to-be-tolerated’ box. So getting ‘gay’ ads – however anodyne they may be – through the system is like pushing water uphill and therefore something we should celebrate.
This is interesting because the banks seem to be ahead of other mainstream advertisers – such as supermarkets – which might also claim to seek to be part of the Zeitgeist and therefore reflect normal life in their advertising.
But I’ve yet to see any gay couples in their ads. They might respond that, to put it crudely, they’re only interested in our money and playing the volume game, and that targeting on this kind of level is an irrelevance.
They might also argue that gayness does not determine where you shop.
The result is that they spend fortunes on ads that show happy, idealised, stereotypical families – none of whom are gay or differ wildly from the norm – or featuring celebs for no meaningful reason other than they offer quick cut-through.
By comparison, the banks look forward-thinking, modern almost.
Look carefully though and you will see the odd ethnic face or family in some supermarket ads. Most of the time though they look like little more than a token nod to real life.
But all advertisers, especially the mainstream ones, must look as though they reflect normal life as most Britons experience it. But if the way they choose to portray that life means showing minimal ethnic faces or no gay ones, then they are ultimately doing themselves a disservice.
Me, I’m looking forward to seeing the first Christmas ad featuring a gay couple – they do, after all, celebrate it too and buy presents and things. But after all the flack Saatchi and Saatchi got last year for its portrayal of Christmas for Asda – much more true to real-life, I thought (but which may last month have cost it the account) – we’ll wait a long time.
Is Skittles the bastard child of the Mars empire?
I can’t stand them, and I’m far too old to be in the target market, but I love the sheer barminess of the Skittles advertising.
Here’s the latest from the DDB Chicago in the US, featuring up-and-coming teen actress Laura Spencer. She kisses a shy, geeky boy called Lewis who never smiles because all his teeth are Skittles.
Most of the ads seems to be from the US (rarely the home of straight-up weird advertising), but dubbed if necessary. Here’s another example from a couple of months ago, in which a youth called Tommy sits on a sofa smashing figurines which talk back to him. The fun bit is that viewers are invited to select items for Tommy to smash.
Of course, there are some British ones too, like this mockumentary-style piece of film about a hapless athlete who sweats Skittles.
But the provenance of the ads doesn’t matter because they share the same qualities. They are, however, unusual in that they are both child-like in their playfulness and adult-like in their surrealism. What child wouldn’t laugh at the man for whom everything he touches turns to Skittles? But what adult wouldn’t find it disturbing?
What makes Skittles interesting for ad geeks is that the brand is owned by Mars. And Mars, for historians of advertising, is the original ‘rational’ advertiser. For years nearly all Mars advertising used the concept of the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) invented by US adman Rosser Reeves.
Thus Maltesers were the chocolate that ‘melted in your mouth, not in your hand’, a Mars bar a day ‘helped you work, rest and play’ and Milky Way (do they still exist?) was the ‘sweet you can eat between meals without ruining your appetite’. Rational certainly, especially for parents buying confectionery, but hardly fun or playful.
Mars advertising has moved on some way – the bell-ringing monks, the Snickers Joan Collins ad or the Audrey Hepburn Galaxy number demonstrate this.
But they are all underpinned by the same relentless rationality. Sometimes it’s like being hit over the head by a hammer.
Skittles, by contrast, seems to go its own merry way, the bastard child of the mighty Mars empire. Perhaps it’s because there is absolutely nothing rational you can say about the product. But who cares? Long may they continue.
(By the way, there are some outrageous spoof Skittles ads out there too of the kind that come with an adult-only warning. They’re childish, but not child-like or child-friendly. I’ll leave you find then yourselves).