And behind door number 22... a guide to some music of the more traditional kind
Catherine Munn and Jacob Martin list their Top 5 programmes to watch over the festive period.
And behind door number nine... some dazzling musical delights
The complete arts guide, for week 9
Whatever happened to the days when everybody and their granny wanted to work in advertising? Now consigned to nostalgic television programs like Mad Men, there used to be a time – I think the 1950s or the 1960s – when every creative young spirit with an eye for sophistication, a drive for success, and an addiction to whisky would hitchhike to the metropolis to begin a career in advertising. And although those heady days of turtle-necked sweaters are now long gone, there are still adverts around which make you want to pause your Sky+, rewind and smile.
The adverts that sell you food dressed as eroticism. Billed as ‘not just any food – this is M&S food’, to what can only be described as culinary soft-pornography. Apparently it means your carrot cake would look perfect when it comes out of the box, and a sensual voice would whisper seductive nothings into your ear; never happened, though.
Those Mini-Coopers travelled to many a mysterious and exotic location in their adventures. Just how they got there and what they were doing there were never explained, and, lets be honest, it doesn’t matter.
Those filthy bobble-headed aliens always got such a laugh over their extra-terrestrial conference table at the primitive, potato-eating humans. God knows what metallic termites from outer space eat, but apparently Smash is owned by Cadbury – who knew?
Whoever had the idea to dress up those damn dirty apes as bank managers and skateboarding youths in a bid to sell the public tea leaves was, frankly, an advertising genius. Those chimps deserved their own show. One glorious day, however, the table will be turned and our monkey butlers shall serve us the tea. One glorious day…
Directed by Baz Luhrmann, starring Nicole Kidman and Rodrigo Santora, this advert for… perfume, I guess? … broke records for being the most expensive commercial ever made, and was billed as some kind of mini Moulin Rouge style film. Wonder how many bottles of perfume it shifted?
Guinness have a knack for making excellent, artistic adverts. The one with the surfers and horses made from wave foam is excellent, but the best has to be the reverse-evolution advert, where three drinkers devolve into cavemen, apes, wombats and eventually newts supping from a pond to ‘The Rhythm of Life’. God knows what it had to do with alcohol.
Those cinema executives from Orange were never satisfied, bossing a host celebrities, including Snoop Dogg, Rob Lowe, Spike Lee, and Jack Black. More power to them, I say, as their ideas were usually better than whatever crap was being otherwise turned out.
The now-legendary Meerkat adverts, starring meerkats Aleksandr and Sergei Orlov, doing… meerkat stuff… in Russian accents. I still have no idea what Compare the Market actually does, but those meerkats are funny. Simples.
Most American Express adverts were pretty crap, but the great director made his own advert, following himself around on a fake-film, a parody of Truffaut’s Day for Night, set mocking his own eccentric and quirky style, more concerned with his sandwich than anything else.
Probably the classiest advert ever made. Kevin Spacey stars in a quest to find the perfect seat (and no doubt get unlimited air miles in the process) which he finally finds – quelle surprise – on an AA plane. Set to the music of Ludovico Einaudi, specially composed for this advert.
you're joking right? i hate those meerkat adverts! completely overdone and yet not even as overdone as those we-buy-any-car adverts!
#1 You're not the opera-singer from the Go Compare adverts, are you?
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