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The Glory of Advertising

Those DirecTV ads where it looks like you are watching a movie (two I can recall are Star Trek 6 and Aliens), but then one of the actors/actresses (William Shatner and Sigourney Weaver in those examples) break from the movie to talk to the audience about how you should get DirecTV.
 
Holdfast said:
This thread was inspired by just seeing a new Virgin Atlantic advert and it's beautifully done. The setting, the props, the way it's cut together, not to mention a wonderful array of in-jokes from the era (some are really subtle, too, like at least a couple of rip-offs of adverts from the 80s) and a lots of clever digs at British Airways.
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I got bored, and decided to list all the clever little (and I'm sure deliberate) sight gags, beyond the more obvious costuming:

0:06 - The Sun "It's the Pits" billboard. OK, just a time/scene setting headline right? Not when you realise that VirginMedia have had a long-running battle with Sky (which, like The Sun, is owned by News Corporation)... making the headline a gag against The Sun as well as a scene-setter.
0:08 - our yuppie ticks all the 80s Wall Street/Gekko boxes - braces, contrast collar, brickphone, lightweight briefcase with metal trim. All the cars in the background are period too.
0:18 - cleaner with a Sony Walkman in the pocket!
0:28 - Our Price Records. Note that everything in the terminal is darkly lit, except the Virgin crew... and the Our Price shop. Why is the Our Price shop also lit up? Because it ended up owned by Virgin!
0:31 - Big Country Steeltown album, being looked at by kid with IIRC the same haircut as one of the band members.
0:37 - Asteroids!
0:45 - old style police uniforms/helmets
0:51 - recreation of shot from an 80s Wimpy ad
0:55 - dour BA clones in blue-grey, with the regulation pulled back hair!
0:56 - Rubik's Cube
0:59 - pretty sure the girl skipping behind the hostess is a recreation of an 80s ad, but I can't quite remember.
1:03 - old style flipper boards!
1:07 - again, the lady leaning back and looking over her sunglasses is a shot I'm 90% sure is taken from elsewhere, but I can't nail it down.
1:10 - 80s Madonna.
1:20 - The "I need to change my job" guy looks exactly like Maurice Saatchi... whose ad agency at the time (Saatchi & Saatchi) was British Airways' ad agency!
1:27 - The "Britain's Flag Carrier" and the Union Flag were added to Jersey Girl back when British Airways ditched the flag from some of their own planes a while back.

Clever, clever, clever ad!
 
One other one I remember was the Castrol GTX adverts, with the little line of oil crawling over spanners and whatnot.

And this one. Made before I was even born yet I do have vague memories of it. So it must have been one of the first adverts I ever heard. The bright red text flashed up at the end I remember particularly strongly. It's remarkable to think I can still remember something like that from being a baby. :)
 
Music and advertising are a powerful combination too. With the right song, an advert is elevated to classic status, but the converse is often true too: the advert promotes the song into the collective consciousness. Either way, one side effect often seen is the particular song re-entering the charts.

The Guinness adverts of the 90s used this to excellent effect:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zff9hVH3ptY :bolian:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr8s17QokoY :guffaw:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=v9Y9D0af-uA :adore:

but there were some other good examples too, such as this advert for Tennent's Lager in the late 80s:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=IwL_wP_Y2NU (which was inspired by arguably one of the best rock anthems of the 80s: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=D-IhhSfPrHc )

and this one from the early 90s, which promoted one of my all-time favourite songs - people of Scottish upbringing may want to grab a box of tissues right now...:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TX9h558Tz1E

Jadzia said:
And this one. Made before I was even born yet I do have vague memories of it. So it must have been one of the first adverts I ever heard.
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I was born before that advert came out, but already it's stirred up some long lost memory in my brain. Neat. :bolian:
 
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Now's that's a whole load of freaky that I don't recall having seen before....

:D
 
The "Leon" Bud Light commercials making fun of Pro Football's tremendous egos always made me laugh. Wish they hadn't killed the series off...
 
If we're being nostalgic, the flake ads have to get an honorable mention, for being as near porn as you could show on TV while being completely innocent.

And I'm old enough to remeber what your right arm is for.
 
RevdKathy said:
My all time favourite has to be an old Christmas ad for Whiskas cat food. The cat is curled on the hearth in front of the dying embers. You hear the sound of someone coming down the chimney, walking to the tree, filling stickings etc. And the cat watches wide eyed. Finally, a little soot shakes into the grate, and a can is whiskas is seen nestling in among the stockings. The deliverer is never seen, only implied by the face of the watching cat. It was beautiful.
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This one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyPLS8y2lks

In terms of beer ads and music: My favorite piece of music for a beer I don't particularly like:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eH3GH7Pn_eA
 
There was a set of commercials that I saw one late night-and then the FCC yanked them. the first couple show a hot young woman getting pulled over for speeding. In the first she asks the cop if he tuned his radar gun at the beginning of his shift as required by law and he lets her go cause he didn't. The second cop says, yes, he did so she points out that recent studies have linked those gun frequencies with testicular cancer and he lets her go out of embarassment. The 3rd cop that stops her finishes her sentences for her both times and then writes her a ticket. Furious, she takes off burning rubber. In the fourth sequence a cop and a firefighter are looking down a ravine at a burning sportscar while a graphically dead body is carted away by rescue workers and the firefighter asks the cop if he was aware that radar gun frequencies can cause testicular cancer. the four(?) bits aired split up through out a one hour show. I couldn't tell you what the commercials were actually for but it stuck in my mind for obvious reasons, especially when I read the next day about the FCC yanking it. Anybody got a clue? Its been bugging me for years-I'd love to watch it again.
 
AJBryant said:
In terms of beer ads and music: My favorite piece of music for a beer I don't particularly like:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eH3GH7Pn_eA
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Incredible!!! - :lol:



Mistral said:
I couldn't tell you what the commercials were actually for but it stuck in my mind for obvious reasons, especially when I read the next day about the FCC yanking it. Anybody got a clue? Its been bugging me for years-I'd love to watch it again.
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Doesn't ring a bell, but that's a great example of what I was talking about earlier - how an ad can be so awesome in presentation but lousy in getting you to remember what the ting was advertising for in the first place.
 
I watch ads - some of them cost more than the TV production they are shown in.

It's great to analyze the tricks that are being used in the advertisements.

Marketing is ever so fascinating :techman:
 
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