THE BEST OF THE WORST:
FOUR ADS THAT MIGHT PICK UP THE WOODEN SPOON
“PENGUIN” “CLEANER”
Agency: FP7, Doha Agency: FP7, Doha
Client: Qatar Gas Client: Ford
While only the most jaded of us could fail to have our fancies tickled by the sight of There’s a joke in this image somewhere—specifically, embedded in that little dot of
baby penguins (or—in the campaign’s other executions—elephants, ducks and bears) light in the middle of the page. The joke is this: the car being advertised is so spacious
tottering adoringly along behind their parents, it’s all a bit of a cop-out for an ad that’s that the windscreen looks as though it’s 20 feet away—there, we just saved you a
meant to be persuading adults to make sure their kids sit in the back of their cars and half hour of squinting and head scratching. The main problem is, the punchline—or
belt up (in the ‘safety feature’ sense, not the ‘Victorian parenting’ sense). The message punchvisual—isn’t worth the effort. And what’s with all the black? Who wants to buy
just doesn’t hit home hard enough. Plus, isn’t it always the tiny baby struggling to keep a car whose interior feels like a bleak deprivation chamber? And who is that sinister-
up that ends up getting its neck snapped by a hungry predator? looking fellow looming over the windscreen? Why am I shaking?
“WHOLE” “CAMOUFLAGE”
Agency: JWT, Dubai Agency: Impact BBDO, Lebanon
Client: WWF/Emirates Wildlife Society Client: Gillette
In the relative universe of charitable causes, the World Wildlife Fund is a financial Embarrassment is something that most toiletry ads try to play on—subtly—to
giant—the Microsoft of do-gooders. So how on this blighted, dying-animal Earth convince us insecure punters that our hopelessly unattractive, stinky bodies might
did they manage to come up with this ad? Never mind the chintzy visuals, the main yet become irresistible to the opposite sex. The keyword here is ‘subtly’. Anyone
offender is the body copy, cleverly superimposed onto the label. The hamour, we sweating as profusely—and as geometrically—as the guy in this ad, unless they’ve
are told, is “almost on the verge of extinction”—almost on the verge, but not quite. just finished some kind of sporting activity, has problems that even Gillette’s “triple
Isn’t that a bit like saying someone was almost late for a meeting? Anyway, maybe protection system” can’t solve. This may have been an attempt to tie into Lebanon’s
the hamour has reached the verge now, after they killed the fish to make this ad. obsession with ‘military chic’. It didn’t work.
www.mediaweekme.com 25 JANUARY 2009
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