Make me a monkey
When politics collides with advertising
My time as a Civil Servant working for the UK government neatly coincided with a period when vast sums were lavished on TV advertising for whatever the cause of the moment was. Now and again, whilst churning through the latest campaign brief from some transient junior minister, the phone ringing every five minutes with highly strung ministerial aides bleating about deadlines, my thoughts turned to joining the glamorous world of advertising myself.
I’d spent my fair share of time being schmoozed in the achingly cool environs of the leading ad agencies and wondering how long the enforced zaniness would take to become wearing. At one memorable meeting, I looked on as my colleagues slid inexorably under the boadroom table due to a chronic lack of adhesion between their suits and the lurid vinyl chairs on which they were awkwardly arranged. I came to the eventual conclusion that the unrelenting cynicism of the political world is broadly matched by the soul destroying rigmarole of the ad world.
The advert that was referred to constantly at the time was the Cadbury’s gorilla. For the uninitiated, the ad involved an enraged primate leaping from behind a set of drums and skewering Phil Collins with a sharpened drumstick before gorging itself nauseous on Milk Tray. Sorry, wishful thinking.
No, it’s far worse than that, for Cadbury’s ad agency Fallon created one of those rare things, the talking point advert. It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally a TV advert will cross into the public consciousness and become, ahem, iconic. Think the Budweiser toads (or the Budweiser Wassup? slots for that matter), Tango’s “You’ve been Tangoed”, the Nescafe romance or Compare the Meerkat.
These are adverts that go beyond the barely noticed norm, often with unintended zeitgeist influencing consequences such as malicious little urchins busting each others ear drums.
If you measure the success of an advert by how much it’s talked about (and they do), the Cadbury’s campaign was a huge success. Worse than that, it’s in the league of crazy career making success that has two really awkward consequences.
Problem 1. Client is now very happy with Gorilla and wants you to do the “next one”. Problem = how the hell do you top a large gorilla playing the drums to Phil Collins?
Problem 2. Every other client is calling their agency asking for “a gorilla”. Net result is a torrent of pisspoor gorilla-a-likes (Exhibit A being the terrible advert for Drench water featuring Brains from the Thunderbirds dancing inexplicably to “The Power” by Snap)
Number two is an entirely predictable consequence of success in an industry propped up almost completely by imitation. I sat in several meetings where seemingly normal people said things like “what we really need is a Gorilla for [insert Government initiative]”. With entirely straight faces.
Number one is more thorny, although to be fair to Fallon, they had a fairly decent crack at it, with subsequent ads featuring hideous children flexing their eyebrows to an electro soundtrack. It’s not all good news though. I can’t begin to imagine how much the advert featuring assorted baggage loaders racing down a runway cost, which played out to a handful of bemused cinema audiences. When you’ve done it once, you’ve got to do it again…and again…and again.
The UK Government has since slashed its TV advertising budget. Probably for the best.
