Ridden with inaccuracies, half truths, and plain old news.
Posts tagged advert
Is This The Best Car Hire Advert Ever?
Dec 15th
Whoever made this advert clearly had a big budget and a lot of time to think of an original concept. Unlike a lot of adverts for car hire it focuses more on creating a story than such trivial details such as price or locations. The result is slick and entertaining although it doesn’t really have a pay off in terms of plot. What would you do if you had the use of an Audi R8 and a Ferrari California for the night?
The History of Espresso
Nov 26th
I found this interesting video about the history of Espresso and Coffee in general. Did you know that Coffee was invented by an Ethiopian goat herder called Kaldi? This video was made by Douwe Egberts and features this an other interesting facts about black gold.
Nescafé: Coffee At Its Worst?
Sep 29th
The new Nestle intant coffee advert is a true triumph of marketing. It attempts to convince the viewer that their freeze dried soluble coffee substitute is ‘fresh’ and ‘bright’ and ‘Coffee’. The advert features a man trekking through the jungle catching glowing coffee beans in a jar with a sense of wonder. The tag line is ‘Nescafe – Coffee at its brightest’.
Anybody who has even consumed a cup of instant coffee knows it is anything but bright. It has a bland one-dimensional flavour with no depth. The taste is in no way comparable to real, great Coffee. I understand that there is a place for instant coffee, I even keep some in the house for emergencies/ unwanted guests, but there is no way is can possibly be considered fresh. Most instant Coffee is made from 100% Coffee beans with nothing added but the process is far from natural. Freeze drying involves:
- Agglomerated wet coffee granules are rapidly frozen (slow freezing leads to large ice crystals and a porous product and can also affect the colour of the coffee granules).
- Frozen coffee is placed in the drying chamber, often on metal trays.
- A vacuum is created within the chamber. The strength of the vacuum is critical in the speed of the drying and therefore the quality of the product. Care must be taken to produce a vacuum of suitable strength.
- The drying chamber is warmed, most commonly by radiation but conduction is used in some plants and convection has been proposed in some small pilot plants. A possible problem with convection is uneven drying rates within the chamber, which would give an inferior product.
- Condensation – the previously frozen water in the coffee granules expands to ten times its previous volume. The removal of this water vapour from the chamber is vitally important, making the condenser the most critical and expensive component in a freeze drying plant.
- The freeze-dried granules are removed from the chamber and packaged.
None of this really matters of course, if people want to drink instant Coffee it’s their loss but it’s no big deal. Nestles human rights record is however a big deal. Nestle recently began buying milk from a farm owned by Robert Mugabe’s Wife Grace. The farm was seized from its original (white) owners in order to be given to landless black Zimbabweans along with many other farms in Zimbabwe, this never happened however and now Nestle are directly paying the Mugabes.
Nestle has previously caused controversy by marketing Intant Milk to mothers in developing countries. They allegedly encouraged mothers to use formula rather than breast milk despite the possible risks from mixing milk powder with unclean water. There is nothing ‘bright’ about that.
Levi’s Go Forth But Don’t Prosper
Aug 6th
Levi’s have one of the most recognizable jeans brand names worldwide. Alongside Wrangler they have a long history of selling denim which stretches back to when it was considered workwear rather than a fashion item. They sold jeans to hard-working farmer types and the sort of people who actually needed hard wearing trousers.
One thing Levi’s have struggled with is staying relevant. As their core consumer base aged they failed to move with the times. Having a rich heritage is one thing but any company who wishes to sell to successive generations needs to be light on it’s feet. The only innovation Levi’s came up with that I can think of was ‘twisted’ jeans and the less said about them the better.
Baggy jeans came and went as did skinny jeans but Levi’s keep flogging their dead horse named 501. The 1990s were tough for Levi’s as consumers seemed to want either more expensive designer jeans or cheap non brand alternatives. This time saw Levi’s outsource work to save on costs and there was controversy when their ‘made in the USA’ labels were stitched in by underpaid Chinese laborers.
In the last decade Levi’s has taken to filling lawsuits against anyone who make jeans deemed too similar to their trademarks. They apparently have ‘denim detectives’ who job is to search out new companies to sue. By 2007 Levi’s finances started to improve and they are hoping to continue this with their new advertising campaign.
“For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!”
The new advert features a poem by Walt Whitman called Pioneers! O Pioneers! read over footage of young people running around in the countryside in muddy jeans. The agency behind the advert are W+K who are trying to cast Levi’s as hard wearing, honest and maybe even pioneering:
The inaugural TV spot “America” sets the tone for the new campaign: America is going through a challenging time, but the American spirit of self-reliance will persevere.
There is of course also a website which aims to ‘paint a portrait of the voices in a changing country.’ and a print campaign shot by the young, credible photographer of choice Ryan Mcginley. Mcginley has just worked with Wrangler on their ‘We are animals’ campaign which also featured models getting muddy.
The use of Whitman’s stirring poem makes the advert simultaneously inspiring and a little bit sickening. It’s easy to get caught up in the words and the imagery but ultimately they are just flogging jeans. It takes some guts to align your product to an advert that seems to aim feel revolutionary, particularly when it’s such an old fashioned product.
Volkswagen Lunar Module Advert
Jul 20th
As you will have noticed it is the 40th anniversary of the moon landings this month. Seeing footage of the takeoff what struck me was the cameras people were using to photograph it. It seems strange that we were able to fly people to the moon and back before the invention of the humble digital camera. We were able to see live footage of the astronauts bouncing around on the moon’s surface before the invention of the mobile phone.
What is also surprising is that the Volkswagen Beetle was 31 years old at the time of the moon landings. To put that in context the Ford Escort was in production for 30 years in total, the original Beetle was built until 2003.
Volkswagen have always had a reputation for creating (or, I suppose, commissioning) great adverts. Car adverts tend to range from the offensive to the boring to the bafflingly rubbish. They can rarely be called subtle although I think the Volkswagen one below is. The tag line is ‘it’s ugly but it gets you there’. Some would argue that some of the VW vans for sale are less attractive than the Beetle but either way you get the idea.
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