I don’t know about you, but when I read that an advertising agency
has developed a new endline for a famous brand, I expect it to be better
than the one it replaced. So I don’t take it kindly when Opal Fruits’
’made to make your mouth water’ falls victim to ’fruity enough to make
anything water’. I guess that’s what you get when you leave Saatchis for
Grey, but isn’t there something about ’if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’
in the advertising rule book?
That was a rhetorical question. Here’s one that isn’t: why do so many
endlines and advertising slogans say absolutely nothing at the
moment?
For starters, there’s McDonald’s impenetrable ’enjoy more’ (love to,
more what, exactly?) and Nissan’s ’the car they don’t want you to drive’
(OK I won’t, never liked Almeras much, anyway).
But the most breathtaking example of a meaningless endline has to go to
Ray-Ban, whose agency, Made in Spain, wins a lifetime supply of Julio
Iglesias CDs (theirs to claim as soon as they remove the account handler
from the client’s bottom) for its campaign using images of people
holding a pair of Ray-Bans and the line, ’Till the end’.
Talk about style over substance. Actually, what the ad is saying is ’we
know we have to run a global campaign, it’s the fashionable thing for
style brands to do and we thought we’d hired BBH but then we fell out
before any work was created so we sacked them and who cares about the
differences between local markets so long as the ads are on show
everywhere?’
Campaign often gets accused of not looking at the bigger picture when we
criticise campaigns, but I’d wager that any wet-behind-the-ears trade
press hack could write a more memorable line for Ray-Ban (and probably
Opal Fruits, too) than these offerings. Now, if you’ll just hand me the
pounds 100,000 salary and Cherokee Jeep to get me in the mood, I’ll get
going ...
