Christmas greetings to Forsman & Bodenfors, King James and, of course, all our readers
2014, so far, has been a good year for ads: In the UK adam&eve/DDB’s epic series for John Lewis and, this year, AMV/BBDO’s ‘Christmas is for sharing’ epic for Sainsbury’s, have propelled ads from the business pages (now and then) to the front pages.
There was a bit of a concocted story in the FT today about how many complaints there’d been about the Sainsbury’s ad using a geopolitical tragedy – The Great War – to plug itself (and the British Legion). Those two unexpected comrades-in-arms Russell Brand and Jeremy Paxman were both agin’ it. Well both of them are professional noise-makers with, I suspect, a tenuous grasp of what many people, who can probably remember, way back through family connections, losing a relative or two in the Great War, connect with. We don’t need to be told what to think by Brand and Paxman.
Elsewhere Mother’s fantastic ‘Beds’ Campaign for IKEA got the pro’s choice as campaign of the year.
Introduced by an excerpt (highlighted) from some of the Bard’s greatest lines, from The Tempest:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Why shouldn’t advertisers use this stuff – if their hearts are in the right place?
We chose our UK agency of the year – adam&eve – and US – Droga5.
Next year we’ll try to get an accurate perspective on the rest of the world which, had we done so this year, might have included Forsman & Bodenfors in Gothenburg for, among others, Volvo Trucks:
And King James in Cape Town for, inter alia:
So it’s been a good year for ads, for MAA too – getting on for a million page views a year.
Happy Christmas – to those of you who celebrate Christmas – and our very best wishes to all of our readers.
