Wonders in Adland
Warning/Environmental Illness Network/flickr
Anyone scanning the heavens in search of aliens is looking in the wrong place. They need look no further than their nearest television screen, where the strange creatures inhabiting the ads exist in a parallel dimension and the laws of time and physics do not apply as they do on earth.
There is proof of this in the series of ads for Lloyds Pharmacy, starring The Pharmacist. The Pharmacist is a kindly man in early middle age, dispensing patent remedies to a succession of customers with minor ailments: twin boys with identically scraped elbows, a man with a streaming cold, and an unaccountably smug pregnant woman. So far, so normal. But in the two ads where we see him arriving in the morning to open the shop, and then leaving in the evening, he is wearing an enormous belted tweed coat such as men have not worn since attending football matches in black-and-white photos from 1947. Where has he bought this coat? Has he not noticed that no one else is wearing them? Has he not heard of global warming? Isn’t he too hot? Has his wife – for he is clearly a family man – not told him that this is a completely inappropriate garment? So many questions.
Next we come to an ad that turns me into an apoplectic ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ every time I see it because of its antiquated sexual politics. The Galaxy ad features a CGI-generated Audrey Hepburn who accepts a courteous offer of a lift from a young Adonis who draws up alongside her bus in his convertible. The fact that this is taking place in some unspecified location along the Italian riviera rather than along the Walworth Road is no excuse for what happens next. She gets off the bus, nicking the driver’s peaked cap as she passes, plonks it on the head of her bemused admirer, then climbs into the back seat and proceeds to stuff her face with chocolate while being taken for an apparently chauffeur- driven spin along the coast. This ad is so wrong on so many levels: classist, sexist . . . It gives out the message that if you are young, beautiful and female, you have carte blanche to behave in a rude and arrogant manner; that you are somehow entitled to travel in style while the rest of the world stays on the bus; that a fulfilling female existence is only possible through the medium of the male gaze –but Adland is impervious to successive waves of feminism. And what happened to not accepting lifts from strangers? Let’s move on before I spontaneously combust.
Finally, and weirdest of all, are the Corsodyl ads. A stern voice-over tells a young woman brushing her teeth that she would not ignore bleeding from here (cue shot of her eye bleeding), and asks why she is ignoring bleeding from her gums. Yet in the version with a young man, the stern voice-over notes that he would not ignore bleeding from here (cue shot of a BLEEDING TAP!). What is supposed to be going on in such a scenario? Are we meant to assume that rogue plumbers have connected his tap to the run-off from a nearby abattoir? Or does it hint at the supernatural, and an imminent Carrie-style deluge? And why? Would it be altogether too menstrually ‘Eeuuuww’ to intimate that men could bleed from anywhere but their gums?
But every so often, someone, somewhere, gets it right. I leave you with this brilliant Gillette ad from Australia in the 1970s. There are no promises that a smoother shave will get bring you wealth, women and status – just 29 seconds of wit, exuberance, and some nifty song and dance.
I’m with Verity on this one. Although I think I’d have a go at LLoyds Bank, not sexist but profoundly yuk all the same. It’s lush. gorgeous – sweet doe-eyed, lovable horse – winning the war, loving disabled kids being generally wonderful, helping as all live fulfilled lovely lives – from a BANK???
Yes, it’s totally manipulative, complete with welling music to wring your withers (and the horses’ too, I shouldn’t wonder).