Editor’s Notes: It’s easy to see why Gillette’s latest ad was not the Best A Man Can Get
The "father of advertising” David Ogilvy once said “I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information”.
Were he around today he would have to concede that the current industry takes a different view. Today’s advertising campaigns are meant to be shared, reviewed and discussed whether they make reference to a product or not.
Last week I noted the controversy surrounding HSBC’s proudly globalist “we are not an island” campaign. Of course, we are an island and I still think the campaign is puddle-deep drivel – just as I think the people getting angry about it are the kind of people who spend all day tweeting in capital letters to their three followers.
This week, it was the turn of Gillette to annoy people on the internet, after it released an advert that encouraged men not to be sexist, bone-headed morons.
It’s a perfectly reasonable message, but of the 11m people who have so far watched the ad on Youtube, 75 per cent have registered their dislike. Why? Possibly because it insinuates that men, left to their own devices, are instinctively sexist, immature knuckle-draggers.
Speaking as one who doesn’t fit any of these labels it’s not hard to see why so many people took offence.
It’s also possible that people are fed with up with brands lecturing them and desperately jumping on fashionable causes in a bid to flog more razor blades.
A current Ogilvy man, vice-chairman Rory Sutherland, said yesterday: “I think it would be a lot less tedious if everyone in marketing didn’t share the same fucking boring metropolitan opinions.”
Fair point. His ideas for truly radical brand-driven campaigns are worthy of consideration: “If Cornflakes promoted anarcho-syndicalism and Twiglets wanted a return to the Gold Standard, it would at least be distinctive.”
A petition to launch a study into the economic benefits of grouse shooting currently has 4,720 signatures on parliament’s website. Perhaps Gillette could lend it a helping hand?
Speakers for Schools
This morning I shall be in Cornwall, talking to 130 students at Bodmin College about the media, journalism, politics and anything else they’d like to ask me about.
It’s my first outing as a volunteer with the charity Speakers for Schools, founded by journalist Robert Peston as a way of linking state schools with guest speakers.
I know a number of people who have spoken as part of this scheme and without exception they’ve all enjoyed the experience of swapping their usual corporate audience for a room full of teenagers.
The organisers asked if there was a part of the country that I’d particularly like to speak in, and Cornwall was the obvious choice – since I can’t quite spare the time for a trip all the way back home to the Isles of Scilly.
I never thought, when I was at school in Cornwall, that I’d end up editing a newspaper in London. So if there’s one message that I hope to leave with the students of Bodmin College it’s that opportunities must be sought as well as seized.
Fake treat vigilance in Veganuary
God only knows where she found the time alongside running her own business and writing a book, but I got home from work the other night to find that my wife had baked a tray of brownies.
“Is this a real brownie?” I asked, recalling the time her sister served up something similar that turned out to be sugar-free and mostly made out of sweet potato.
“Yes,” she said, before adding, “well, it’s vegan.”
Now, at the time of writing I haven’t yet tried one and I’m sure it will be delicious – but I can’t hide my disappointment.
I’ve rather taken against the rise of fake treats, where things that look like chocolate are actually compressed dates, chicory and sawdust. This week, a judge (an actual judge) ruled that a “raw choc brownie” is in fact a cake.
The manufacturer had brought the case in order to qualify for the VAT exemption enjoyed by the makers of actual cakes.
So, £300,000 goes back from HMRC to the “cake maker” and a judicial ruling now states that such items “wouldn’t be out of place at a cricket match tea”. God help us.