Lipton has a good endline that gets straight to the point: "Don't knock it till you've tried it. A quick reference to George Lois' The Art of Advertising, published in 1977, reveals this same typeface was used for the famous "When you've got it flaunt it campaign for Braniff Airlines.
I think George would have made the stock pictures a bit more adventurous (though big knickers catches your eye).
The XFM campaign reminds me of the early 70s Selfridges campaign by Charles Saatchi and Ross Cramer. The bland, ugly photographs of people in homely environments are very redolent of Alan Brooking's pictures in those ads.
XFM again uses a classic 70s typeface, but are these ads as original as the originals?
No doubts about the originality of another heavily 70s-influenced ad from Lil-lets. They're piss-takes done with loving accuracy, down to the Vymura Pop Art wallpaper and the presenter's helmet of lacquered hair.
Strategically, these films are classic side-by-side demos, showing the hero (or should that be heroine?) tampon expanding to fill the test tube.
But woven into the arch humour between the bumbling How-type professor and his perkily primped Magpie colleague is a sly context of male embarrassment.
As he eyes the tampon and splutters, "is that what I think it is", I imagine many a woman will smirk at the familiar male coyness. As the non-target audience I still give this campaign a gong for being daringly but relevantly different.
Where druggies are the target audience, it's a market with which I have had more experience. To say that drugs are a serious problem in Scotland is like stating that Billy Connolly uses bad language. Interestingly, the Agency for Scottish Road Safety doesn't come over all serious to start with. Instead it gets our attention with some of those candid camera moments from American police films. We laugh at the guy who can't find his nose with his finger, the girl who corpses when the cop asks her if she's had any "substances", then suddenly in comes the sucker punch: "We're doing these tests in Scotland, who's laughing now?"
My only criticism is the very quick title that says these tests are effective in 94 per cent of drug driving cases in America. Walking a straight line or nose touching are standard alcohol tests so drug driving could easily be misheard as drunk driving - which would be a pity.
The droll naivety of the drugged-up people on police tape hide a more disturbing aspect of drink and drugs - violence, and, in particular, domestic violence. The frightening muffled upheaval we hear through a wall and flinch at the unimaginable goings on at the other side. Bizarrely, this is the gist of the new films for the BBCi Search. The concept is that in fact it is not domestic violence we hear but someone smashing up their computer because they don't have a BBC websearch. Looked at charitably, the films are well shot and the idea unusual. But would I be alone in thinking that the analogy is somewhat offensive?
And finally, FIFA. There's something mesmeric about footballers keeping a ball off the ground but even the most ardent fan of what we used to call keepy-uppy at school must have had a net full of it by now. Charming kids, haunting music, but I'm afraid these FIFA spots look like they were made by the committee.
XFM
Project: Christian O'Connell breakfast show
Client: Charlotte Soussan, head of marketing
Brief: Reflect the irreverent tone of the XFM breakfast show and recruit
new listeners
Agency: Quiet Storm
Writer: Becky Clarke
Art director: Trevor Robinson
Photographers: Richard Ansett and Sheyi Antony Banks (dancing midget)
Typographer: Andy Vella
Exposure: London Underground posters
Accantia Health & Beauty
Project: Lil-lets tampons
Client: Rachel Price, senior brand manager
Brief: Demonstrate Lil-lets' superiority over other tampons
Agency: Us London
Writer: Jo Tanner
Art director: Mark Howard
Director: Us London
Production company: Independent Films
Exposure: National TV and cinema
Unilever Bestfoods
Project: Launch Lipton Ice Tea in the UK
Client: Fiona Forbes, brand manager
Brief: Overcome the "old tea gone cold" stigma of ice tea in the UK
Agency: J. Walter Thompson
Writer: Kieran Knight
Art director: Max Clemens
Typographer: Andy Dymock
Photographer: Stock photography
Exposure: National outdoor and press
FIFA
Project: Keepy-uppy
Client: Sonja Brandmaier, brand manager
Brief: Inform people about FIFA's positive role in promoting, developing
and controlling football at every level around the world
Agency: HHCL & Partners
Writer: Tom Wnek
Art director: Jay Pond-Jones
Director: Dominic Leung
Production company: Independent Films
Exposure: Distributed with live feeds of World Cup Games
Scottish Road Safety Committee
Project: Anti-drug driving
Client: Fiona Murray, director
Brief: Reduce the incidence of illegal drug driving by making the target
audience aware that the police now have the means to test for drug
driving
Agency: Faulds Advertising
Writer: Pete Bastiman
Art director: Steve Mawhinney
Director: Mark Brozel
Production company: Rogue Films
Exposure: Scottish and regional TV
BBCi
Project: The search is over
Client: Jenny Beckman, marketing manager
Brief: Launch the new BBCi internet search engine
Agency: BBC Broadcast
Writer: Ben Friend
Art director: Anton Ezer
Director: Keiran McGuigan
Production company: Cowboy Films
Exposure: National TV
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