PRESENT TENSE:Creative advertising distinguished itself in a number of ways this week, some far less subtle than others
IF YOU remember one ad from this week, it probably involved cleavage, crisps and short-lived outrage. It’s hard, then, to write about the most predictable and naked (boom, boom) attempt at some advertising publicity, without mentioning the product – or without printing a picture of the ad. And if we don’t print a picture of the ad, you may be less likely to read a piece about it. They have us where they want us.
The Hunky Dorys campaign is nothing but the latest variation of the student favourite “SEX! Now I’ve got your attention . . .” notices. It contains little innovation. One features a half-naked woman placing a ball on a kicking tee, and the line “are you staring at my crisps?”.
It is no “Hello boys”.
At least when Wonderbra ran that billboard, the line and the image were perfectly matched with the product. More recently, if less memorably, Hunky Dorys ran a campaign along the idea of “which one would you kick out of bed for eating crisps?” That caused a tiresome level of fuss, but at least played on a mischievous Irish phrase.
But in its current ads, it includes images that don’t bother with imaginative wordplay or imagery or with anything other than gratuity. Because gratuity can work as well as subtlety. And it probably makes for shorter creative meetings.
The cheekiest element was its suggestion that it was a “proud sponsor of Irish rugby”, when its parent company Largo Foods is little more than a sponsor of All-Ireland league Div 3 side Navan. The IRFU has reportedly brought the lawyers in on that. But aside from that, the fuss must have been everything they could have hoped for.
They put the campaign out there and the nation, rather than simply ignoring it, indulged them as they would a tantrum-throwing toddler.
Instead, radio phone-ins took on their usual role and a few people went to bother of sending written complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority. Again, if you were to complain about every example of sexual imagery in advertising, your writing hand would be bigger than Popeye’s forearm.
Disappointingly, Largo Foods also owns Tayto, which was at the centre of the most inventive and, arguably, most successful ad campaign of recent years when Mr Tayto’s “biography” sold tens of thousands in the run up to Christmas. It followed the icon’s election campaign and search for a wife. There was a campaign that elevated itself beyond the ordinary, and which deserved to be talked about.
There was another notable advertising campaign this week, far more intriguing than the one involving short shorts and salt. During the week, on the back page of The Irish Times, was something announcing an amnesty for "illegally recorded cassette tapes". Readers were directed to a website, mixtapeamnesty.ie, where there was a video of a "detective inspector" going through confiscated mix tapes. It was genuinely funny: "This one here has the tell-tape two pieces of Sellotape on the top of the tape . . . This particularly nasty example, which we recovered from a house in Co Leitrim recently, has an entire recording of Larry Gogan's top 30 show . . . "
After a couple of days a link revealed it to be a viral campaign for the radio station 4FM. (Declaration of interest: The Irish Timeshas a stake in 4FM. I've appeared on the station twice. On the first occasion, in a lift, I met the actor who played the original Darth Vader. This was quite a big deal for me.)
It was a rare campaign in that it rewarded anyone willing to follow its trail. It may have played on the nostalgia of a generation that came of age in the 1980s, but it was a very modern campaign. It did perhaps fall down in the gap between the innovation of the campaign and the reality of the product – 4FM is a traditional radio station, its presenters predominantly middle-aged men – but if the intention is to change that perception, it at least gave itself a good start.
Yet, the 4FM ad does not get first prize for subtlety. That goes to the person behind the odd rectangles of black text on red background that have appeared in corners of The Irish Timesin recent weeks. It was a text-based artwork by John Lalor, which unfolded in seven "episodes" and culminates with a gallery this week. That was engaging and puzzling, interested in selling something a little purer than crisps. Readers were buying an art work without knowing it. You are now sorry you used it to mop up a spill.
shegarty@irishtimes.com