What makes an advert memorable?

Some of my next adverts are memorable because they are humorous. It may be cruel humour, gentle humour or black humour.

The John West advert for salmon with the bear it is an example of wit and whimsy. A bear is on screen but at first you are fooled into thinking the scene looks like it is a real life documentary. The John West's man presents to you that John West's will go to any lengths to get the best salmon. A man tries to get the salmon from the bear, with great difficulty. The bear fights back in the manner of a boxer and you realise the bear is man produced in a very realistic bear suit. The advert is slapstick and contains a humorous twist. The bear gets kicked in the genitals and curls up like a real man would.

I think this advert becomes memorable because at first it does look like a real documentary and then twists to become man produced, an advert. It is obviously funny even to a person with no sense of humour.

The next ad uses cruel humour and black humour. It is the Red Devil advert starring Vinnie Jones. It was eventually pulled because the cruelty to the animatronics bird devastated children. In the ad Vinnie Jones plays his usual cruel, mean man character that he plays in his films yet at first there is a twist to his character. This was put in to shock people, it was rather like the Gary lineker adverts. Gary lineker was mean in his adverts but was a nice person in real life. This is what happens in the beginning of the Red Devil advert. Vinnie Jones actually seems nice!

Vinnie takes an empty bird feeder and goes inside to fill it up. This is where the twist comes into his character. He goes back to his usual mean self. We then see a full bird feeder hung up and Vinnie drinking a can of Red Devil. The bird feeder looks like it is on the outside of the window but in fact it is not. A bird flies towards the bird feeder and hits the window and slides down the glass. We then see Vinnie Jones laughing.

For me I think the advert and the product are memorable yet this is not the case for most people. Most people remember the advert but not the product.

The next advert I am going to talk about is memorable because of its sheer originality. It is the Guinness advert called surfers, made in 1999. Jonathon Glazer made it. The director set out to create something visually and emotionally arresting and that's what they did. They were looking for something epic and something that has great importance and length. They realised it took 119.5 seconds to pour a pint of Guinness and they latched on to the idea of time. The idea was that good things come to those who wait and that is why the first words of the advert are "He waits that's what he does...." And then the voice over saying "Tick follows, Tock follows, Tick follows, Tock follows, Tick...."

The other idea was that Guinness was worth waiting for. The advert was based on the film Moby Dick and a painting with white horses, which was made by Walter Crane. It was about-facing the ultimate challenge.

They then set off for Hawaii in search of the perfect wave and the perfect people to surf it. They found a man under a palm tree who was not a very good surfer and was afraid of the 40 ft wave he was about to face. The people try to represent what is going on in inside of the eye of the man and that is where the horses come in. The horses are symbolic.

As soon as the advert starts there is an instant drumbeat. It reminds me of a beating heart or as if an important announcement is about to be made. When the ad first starts you only see a horse treading in the water and then you instantly think what is going on here? The voice over says "Ahab says I don't care who you are, here's to your dream." We then see the men entering the sea to catch this wave. Meanwhile the drumbeat is still going on. Next we see a man pouring a pint of Guinness. The voice over then says "Here's to you Ahab. The first drum hits the beat withal his heart...." Then we get back to the wave and you can see the horses in the waves clearly. Now you know why a horse was treading water earlier in the advert. We then stay with the men surfing this 40 ft wave. You can see the fear in eyes of the man. The men then run onto the beach satisfied in what they have achieved. Then the voice over says, "Here's to waiting." The slogan appears with a pint of Guinness. This advert will always be memorable to me just because of its originality and because it is symbolic, but if nothing else is memorable in the advert, the drumbeat is.

Other adverts become mini soaps and each advert is like an episode. The Oxo adverts were like this. The Oxo ads reflected society at the time. It was the wife making dinner for the husband to keep him happy. At the time the Oxo adverts were subliminal, it advertised the women who used Oxo would keep the family happy. They tried to make it up market by using people with posh accents. The same people were used in each advert and it was like a new member of the family is introduced in each ad or episode. When the new family was introduced in 1983 they were more up to date, more with the time. Although it still showed the woman of the family cooking it was not to keep the husband happy. It was in the early eighties when women became more powerful. Everything had changed for the better. The product was directed at housewives and maybe that's why the adverts were pulled in 1999, because society was not like that anymore and some women would be annoyed to see this.

If you wanted to know what a real English family was like this was the perfect family. They were so real people thought they actually were a real family but they weren't. This is why the Oxo family were so memorable.

The Nescafe adverts started in 1987 and were more glamorised than the Oxo family yet they were also subliminal. The people in the ads were more glamorised and business like. Every advert was like a new episode. The people started off by meeting at work and eventually became a full-blown affair over many "episodes". The message was if you drank Nescafe you would be like the middle class people that were in the adverts. Most of the ads advertised a dinner party lifestyle scenario. It was an ongoing romance.

Yet these were not the first ads of its sort. The Cointreau ads presided the Nescafe ads. The Cointreau ads were the first adverts to have an ongoing romance. The first advert, which was released in 1974, was very glossy and false. The ad consisted of a French man explaining the contents of Cointreau to a woman who is hanging on his every word. Cointreau is a liqueur so you can equate the product to the lifestyle. If you have seen the Cointreau adverts you can see where the Nescafe adverts came from. These were memorable because they were the first of its sort they were the originals.

Other adverts are on TV most of the time but my next advert is seasonal and only appears on our screen sat Christmas.

These are the Famous Grouse adverts. The adverts consist of a bird doing something for ten to twenty seconds. The adverts only appear at Christmas because it is the key time for gifting opportunities. The type of person that would drink Famous Grouse is likely to kick their shoes off and relax in front of a log fire.

The adverts consist of a bird doing something that you would never see another bird do, for example ice skating or tap dancing which is then followed by the pun line which separates it from other whisky ads.

These adverts are memorable because they use animatronics in a very clever way; the bird does something totally unrealistic.

My final advert is not on television. It was shocking for people and had to be seen everywhere. It is the opium adverts starring Sophie Dahl.

Some people said the advert was very offensive yet women did not complain when the advert was in women's magazines. This is because in magazines they have the choice to look at the advert or not and was directed at a specific audience. 700 people complained about the advert.

It was deemed sexually suggestive and degrading to women. It is not the fact that Sophie Dahl is naked in the advert. It is the pose she is in; she is saying "Give it to me." People say the advert is a danger to drivers and children should not have to go to school and see that on a billboard when they go to play in the playground. Some people even thought the advert suggested rape. In Bradford the words "We are not for sale. This is a rape fantasy." Were sprayed on the poster.

At first the advert was seen as too sexy yet a few days later it was described as "Beautiful, beguiling and photographic art.". It has been said that pictures of skinny clothed models promoting anorexia and bulimia are far more vulgar than seeing Sophie Dahl's healthy size 14 body. Many reviews in papers prove this.

Myself I do not find this advert offensive yet it is not right that it is on billboards directly outside primary schools. The children would mature too fast and would not have fun like they should be at that age. I can also see why people could see the advert suggesting rape as the pose Sophie Dahl is in is very passionate and does suggest sex.

The advert is memorable because of the amount of complaints it received. Some companies will even make an advert outrageous on purpose to get publicity, so that the advert and more so the product will be memorable.

Basically adverts are memorable for many different reasons. It may be because they are funny or because they are unique in their own special way but just because an advert is memorable it does not mean that the product is. So next time, when you watch an advert just think if you will remember it, when you are older.

By Ayan Wright

10VM

Ayan Wright

What Makes An Advert Memorable? 23/04/07 Page 1