CHARLIE CROMPTON
Founding partner, Rogue
VOLKSWAGEN. It’s not easy to make great ads these days, least of all great car ads. If you see one you like, chances are it’s either been heavily discounted to fly under the radar of the Procurement Police, or won by the production company in a blind auction conducted by Werner from Wolfsburg, whose day job is seeing whether he can squeeze 1,200 spaces into a car park meant for 1,000 cars. Here, I can imagine all the conversations with the lawyers: “Have Franken… Er, I mean, a generic monster if you must… but he can’t have bolts in his neck. And don’t even think about a square forehead either…”
Then clearing music that sounds exactly like The World’s Most Famous Film Scores without actually having the same notes in the same order and having sets and actors who are as close to the original as you can get without actually getting sued. The director, production designer and wardrobe nail all those parodies perfectly. Finally, the endline seals it.
That’s what happens when everybody works together to craft something great and the client trusts them. Boom!
It’s not easy to make a difference for Britain’s Most Unwanted Car Brand. “I want to buy a VAUXHALL!” is something that no-one has said, ever. This feels like it has spent so long bogged down in research, it has rather missed its moment. That said, it has been deftly directed, well-cast and clearly everyone has gone into it with bags of enthusiasm. Not sure if that will result in any mums legging it down to their local Vauxhall showroom in their slippers. But at least it’s trying to do something different rather than a generic creative idea meant to work in every market that doesn’t…
Like FIAT, for example. A nicely rendered stork drops off a baby in Generic Euro Suburbia, only to see a new “Baby Limousine” (please just Taser me in the nuts if I ever put those two words together to describe a car with four doors and a boot) over the road. He then flies over and deposits his load, as it were, on that doorstep instead. No doubt they’re already writing their awards acceptance speeches for Ad of the Year in Italy but, over here, it’d be lucky to get Storky of the Week. I’m going to have another look at those Vauxhalls.
PRIDE IN LONDON’S ads are beautifully shot and cast. Pitch-perfect production design – and “Don’t leave it unsaid” is a great endline. Important work, which, if it gets just one person to change their attitude, has done its job – and it reminded me, if nothing else, why we work in this industry. It’s not all about flogging pointless things we don’t need. Oh, hang on a minute…
In HIVE’S effort, we have a guy on a sofa with his baby who uses his phone to turn the TV and the lights off. The truth, of course, is that what he’d actually do is start flicking through his Instagram account or checking his bid on that carbon-fibre wheelset that he daren’t tell his missus about. “Let’s get living” is the endline. I’d say put your phones down and get out more, but don’t get me started…