Tag Archives: Advertising

It's Christmas time- there's no need to be afraid.

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I’ve just seen an ad for Littlewoods, or copses as they should be known. It’s your usual fare. Loads of cute kids on stage at a school and the proud parents beaming from the fold-up chairs below. It’s not a nativity of course, god forbid, it’s a singing tribute to how wonderful mums are. Nice? Well not really no, because the song- and there’s even a rap in there to keep it ‘street’, is all about how mum is wonderful for buying just about every consumer electrical gizmo you could imagine that doesn’t begin with an ‘i’.

There’s a laptop and an HTC Android phone. The first kid proudly holds up his X-Box Kinect unit like it’s the ‘fragrances that are also useful in scrabble’ shop’s entire stock of Myrrh.

It ends with a little girl, her ruby cheeks poking out from between the just-closed curtains, reminding us that the mark of a wonderful mum is the quality, measured in expenditure, of her gifts. And that we should, therefore, measure our own maternal love by that scale alone.
The add stops short of having Santa flying overhead trailing a banner from his sleigh that reads, “MONEY = LOVE, don’t forget kids!” But that mantra is sewn, inextricably, into the underpants of every precious, seasonal second.

I’m not against Christmas, contrary to the view of the parent of a child that approached me once and asked if I was Santa’s sister because his mum has said I was ‘Aunty Christmas.’ I love Christmas. I come over all Jimmy Stewart as soon as Summer’s over and I can’t hear the opening bars of ‘Silent Night’ without bursting into tears and wanting to join the Sally Army. I just hate this unnecessary and inexplicable extortion every year.

I don’t have kids, and I’m sure some of you are thinking, “If your wife’s as tight as you are, you never will!” But my sister does. My sister is a single mum with two sons. The eldest is 22 now so his festive focus has fully relocated from under the tree to under the table but his kid brother is 14. Old enough to want everything but too young to care what it costs.

When his mates are all tweeting photos of their new PS3 on their new ipads and running round to his house in their new trainers to make sure he got it because he hasn’t ‘RT’d’ yet, he’s going to hide his market versions- the ‘iPhone’ and the ‘Games Centre Play Console- with 7 game cartridges included!’ And look at my poor sister like she’s picking the last of Santa’s gonads from between her teeth just because she couldn’t get herself into deep enough debt to avoid the emotional scarring a shit present can have on a teenager.

He won’t really because he’s a good kid. He’ll do what I used to do and pretend it’s just as good as the thing you really wanted then find a way to hide it long enough to casually mention you played with it so much it broke, and suffering the inevitable comeback, “That doesn’t just apply to toys you know!”

I still remember desperately faking happiness when the ‘Evil Knievel action figure with interchangeable costumes and multi-trick stunt bike’ I’d asked for turned out to be a small plastic moulded ‘figure-on-bike’ with a big glued seam running down the middle that you revved up and watched career in a short curve into the nearest skirting board. Not to mention picking the stitching from the fourth stripe on my ‘same as Adidas’ trainers before I got to school only to be told by my jeering fellow students, as I knelt down for assembly, that they had different coloured soles- not from genuine Adidas trainers but from each other.

That was nearly 30 years ago. The pressure’s ten times worse now.

Why? Where did this law that you have to spend a couple of hundred quid on gifts come from?
Not the Nativity, that’s for sure. Its been sacked by Littlewoods in favour of ‘Grange Hill does the Ludovico Technique.’ (Google anyone?) And I’m sure Jesus would be spinning in his shroud, if he was still dead, at the thought of his birthday being hijacked by everyone else. Imagine if everyone got presents on your birthday. It’d certainly take the sheen off it I’ll bet, and that’s my point really. Birthdays are personal and they only involve one person.
Mark Twain said, “The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” I agree with the first part, although the day I heard my mum say, “by the time I realized it wasn’t wind it was too late,” doesn’t even make my top 100, but you get my point. Presents on birthdays make sense! Let’s just do that shall we?

Here’s what I think we should do: Everyone, at the same time, stand up and say, “There won’t be any presents this Christmas.” Then enjoy a huge sigh of relief and start, for the first time in a long time, to really look forward to the holidays.

It’s important that everyone does it at the same time and sticks to it, which will be hard to organize and even harder to check, and there will be mass disappointment for every child in England but it will pass when they all realize they’re in the same boat and they’re not missing out.

Now imagine the Christmases that will follow. Everyone can just work until the holidays start and then enjoy time with their friends and families. Boyfriends and husbands won’t have to reduce themselves to asking the teenage assistant behind the perfume counter for suggestions because they’ve forgotten what their wife’s favorite is called and EVERYTHING just smells of perfume!

It can feel like a real holiday for a change and, once it’s all over, there won’t be a national depression as everyone spends January skint, cold and about as festive as Scrooge’s warts. Better still, single parents or families that have little or no income won’t have to worry that their kids will hate them and/or get bullied at school. Loan sharks, feeding on the poor and vulnerable in in the less affluent areas of the country, will have to find other ways to ‘help people out till pay day’.

A weight of unnecessary obligation would be lifted from everyone and we would all be no less festive for it.

As for Christmas morning? Imagine getting up (whenever you like- you’re on holiday remember) and strolling downstairs to greet your family with a hearty breakfast and a mulled wine and hugs all round. Elders can talk to youngsters while the crisp winter morning air draws the first flame from the Yule log. Christians can take a moment for silent reflection while the rest of us slap a bit of Slade on and work up an appetite for the largest and best meal of the year. Happy in the knowledge that it’s cost you no more than all the good will and genuine Christmas cheer you can muster.

Sounds great to me.

“Yeah, I know what I said but… come on, play fair Infidel!”

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Carlos the Jackal, the notorious terrorist and assassin of the latter part of the last century hasn’t got a nail clipper and he’s peeved. It’s mainly because he’s doing a lot of press and he wants to be presentable, after all, it’s a basic human right to have as much chance of meeting Louis Theroux as anyone else, right?

It always amazed me when people who have taken an oath to destroy an entire society or bring down a government that represents, to them, pure evil and then when they get caught, or their rucksack fails to reap the souls of the infidels around them because it got wet waiting for the train at Luton and now it’s just got cake mix oozing through its webbing, they seem more than happy to bend the principles they killed for if it means a few quid or a comfy cell.

It’s as if they’re saying, “I want to destroy your way of life because it represents all that is wrong with the world… but until I do, can I get a skinny latte and do you have WiFi?”

Osama Bin Laden, erstwhile leader of a terrorist cell that holds the most anti-western viewpoint of them all wasn’t averse to a nice pair of trainers and a designer watch. That video of him rocking back and forth in front of the telly looked more like he was waiting for the Lotto program to skip past the crappy thunderball and get to the main event. You could almost read, “it’s a roll over this week,” in his body language- and while we’re at it, I suspect that he didn’t just go for the ‘Al Jazeera’ channel when it was being installed either. Those long nights in a cave can just fly by if you’ve got Babestation and The Simpsons to keep you going.
It just feels like, if you’re going to take the moral high ground to such an extreme, you should be willing to die by the same sword you came running in screaming with.

Suicide bombers, for example. You don’t get more committed than that. Delusional sheep, bereft of even the most basic common sense they may be, but commitment they do very well. You’d think, therefore, that if their planned trip to everlasting back-patting and more virgins than a ‘World of Warcraft’ convention ended up as six months in an orange boiler suit in Southern Cuba, they’d laugh in the face of such conditions with the kind of scorn only someone who has tried to do to themselves what their captors will always stop short of doing, can pull off. It’s a shame we can’t take some of those that survive and retrain them as call center workers or marriage councilors. A little conversion and they could get employee of the month at The Samaritans on a two day week.

But no. Instead they’re hiring lawyers and complaining that their human rights have been violated. Abu Hamza, the low rent Dr. Evil who hates all non-Muslims and has devoted his life to trying to bring down civilization and turn the world into a Muslim state, screamed like Louis Spence on a ghost train the minute he thought he could lose his council flat and benefits and even appealed against losing his British Citizenship.

So, to any terrorists out there let me just say this: Play fair. I know you hate me, and it’s fair to say I hate you, but come on. Do it properly or not at all. We’ll give you your human rights if we have to because that’s what we do- we’re the human rights people, you’re not. Having them thrust upon you should feel, to you, like a vegan protestor, marching for PETA against vivisection, being given a fur coat and a bucket of KFC so they don’t catch a chill. You should eschew such western ways with a hate-filled ‘harrumph!’ And maybe a gob full of something nasty in the face of your jailer. Screaming that you’ve missed ‘strictly’ and only had four of your five a day just makes you look like the jihad equivalent of Johnny Rotten. One minute he’s sticking pins in the establishment and swearing on TV, the next he’s that property developer off ‘I’m a celebrity’ who advertises butter.

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, New Frontiers in film financing.

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The Greatest Movie Ever Sold directed by Morgan Spurlock.

Where and When: Thursday 29th September at BFI Southbank

On Thursday I saw Morgan Spurlock’s new documentary about branding, advertising and product placement, which is entirely funded by branding, advertising and product placement.

Afterward, a panel of experts from film and advertising discussed how producers can create new synergies and forms of production finance without losing their artistic integrity. The panel included; Pippa Cross, Producer of Chalet Girl, Duncan Forrester, Head of Public Affairs, Volvo, Darryl Collis, Director of Seesaw Media, Pete Buckingham, Head of Distribution and Exhibition at the BFI

“Nothing like a cold call to let you know how little power you have.” Morgan Spurlock.

What I learned:

1) The Greatest Movie Ever Sold was the first film to be in profit before it hit theatres

2) Spurlock ‘didn’t negotiate for success’ so the brands didn’t have to pay him any more money when the movie became a runaway success.

3) In the first few months, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold had over 900 million media impressions.

4) Spurlock called over 100 ad agencies and 650 companies to contribute to the documentary, only 15 companies said yes. A success rate of only 2%.

5) Pom juice is 40% as effective as Viagra for helping a man sustain an erection.

6) Volvo did not pay to be in Twilight, the filmmakers stayed true to the fact that Edward drives a Volvo in the book. But they have people come in and buy the car Edward drives after seeing the movies, even though it’s a £35-50,000 investment.

7) A big champagne company turned down the opportunity to be in The King’s Speech because they ‘didn’t do period films’.

8) Morgan Spurlock could not legally disparage the entire country of Germany in or around the Mini that he was given for the film. Most of the contracts had a non-disparagement clause.

9) Spurlock said all of the brands asked for ROI (return on investment) but not of them got it.

10) Ditto for the final cut, Spurlock says: ‘Retain final cut or it’s not your film”. However, if your film costs more than $40-50 million, you will not get final cut.

11) Spurlock’s advice to filmmakers when negotiating with brands and advertisers is: Always know what you are willing to give up. Integrity is valuable.

12) Fed ex did not pay to be in Castaway.

13) The film uses all of the things it criticise in the beginning to sell the film to you later

14) Old Navy gave Spurlock a cheque for £200,000 after seeing the documentary at the Sundance Premiere.

15) The brands have bigger lawyer than you.

16) Pippa Cross had to spend 2K on CGI to get ride of a beer bottle on Shooting Dogs because the beer brand did not want to be associated with the genocide.

17) The Social Network has Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the cast using Sony laptops, but, factually, the real people the film is based on would have been using Apple Macs.

18) Pippa Cross got Tesco vouchers for Chalet Girl, and the best Ski brands on board.

19) Morgan Spurlock made a deal with a tri-state pet discount store; you could get a goldfish and after the first one died, use a voucher to get another one. Like Spurlock does in the film.

20) Spurlock tried to get a gun company onboard, but they all said no.

21) The lawyer Morgan interviews in his documentary tells of of the term ‘Faction’. Where fact and fiction meet, and what advertisers use to confuse you and integrate their products into your favourite TV shows and Films.

The documentary is essential viewing for anyone interested in film, or raising finance.

Innocent launch a film making competition

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On a rainy Saturday morning in February, the Frost Editors went to Innocent HQ (aka Fruit Towers) to take part in a workshop held to launch Innocent Smoothie’s Mini Movie Competition. Kind of like the most pleasant post apocalyptic scene I can imagine, we were greeted by a lush gate of green grass and vans also covered in grass. In side was more grass, picnic tables, bean bags, unusual random objects, some very tiny fences and lots of smiley happy people. As soon as I was through the door I was inundated with beverages both hot and cold.

Listening to a presentation at Fruit Towers

Inspiring this competition was Innocent’s recently made TV advert. Their Superhero ad differs from everything else on the TV at the moment as theirs is Lo-Fi. Using absolutely no CG and embracing the ‘I can see the strings’ mentality the ad was typical of the Lo-Fi style of Ben Wheatley (the ad’s creator) who gave us a presentation on film making.

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After letting us into the little secrets of the advertising industry we were given lunch in picnic hampers! Apart from the crumbs, there was one thing one everyone’s mouths…how can THEY get a job at fruit towers?! We then were split into groups and given Mini Movie Making kits, containing a bottle, a cape, stick, string, farmyard animals, tiny people and other random things presented in a show box and tied up with beautiful movie reel ribbon.

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Mini Movie Making Kit

So there we were with our teams, a theme, camera equipment and the knowledge gathered in the morning’s presentation. We storyboarded away, filmed and created masterpieces. I can’t find our mini movies on the internet anywhere so you will just have to take our word for it. Everything we did had to be edited “in-camera”, meaning we couldn’t edit anything at all on the computer afterwards, this resulted in lots of giggles to the “cut”‘s and “action”‘s being left in.

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Catherine Balavage with a chicken at Fruit Towers

The Innocent Mini Movie competition is now open and you have until 17th April to submit your own lo-fi advert. The winner (voted for by the public) will receive £5000, tickets to the London Film Festival and your advert will be broadcast on national telly. There’s a lose brief, your mini movie must be no more than 30 seconds, contain no CG, music (although sound effects are allowed) no branding (other than innocent) and they must be submitted via

the Innocent You Tube Channel. To submit your entry you need to go here: http://www.youtube.com/innocentdrinksltd