Tag Archives: humour

It’s a wrap! What was your favourite Christmas campaign?

29 Dec

It was a hard choice this year don’t you think? Let me know your favourite.

2018 has been another tough year for retailers. In Australia, Myer has had it’s woes, while globally we saw Toy ‘R’ Us go into liquidation. In a trading period during the Christmas months which can be the busiest for retailers, getting your Christmas advertising right is paramount to seeing great returns, but also high customer experiences around the brand, brand love and engagement. If your brand can connect on an emotional level during this time, it can last into the following year, but also have high brand conviction and loyalty moving forward in what will be another tough year.

John Lewis

Elton John stars in this blockbuster and it doesn’t disappoint. A beautifully crafted story about thoughtful gifts and not just giving for the sake of giving. It is about how an inspired gift can change your life.

With the tagline of ‘some gifts are more than just a gift’, the John Lewis campaign called ‘The Boy and the piano’ takes you on a two-minute historical voyage through different stages of Elton’s life, with glimpses of early days of concerts, memories and parties.

Each scene features Elton at his piano, with the conclusion of the ad at his first school concert, before eventually showing the first note four-year-old Elton John played on his newly-regifted grandmother’s piano for Christmas. Heart stopper ‘Your Song’ plays in the background and agency adam&eveDDB have really hit success with this.

This campaign is totally integrated and John Lewis sold iconic Elton T-shirts. If you happen to be in London, the flagship Oxford Street London store was renamed ‘John’, but even more impressive was that the 3rd floor has been dedicated to an experiential space where customers can explore many aspects of the ad including the recording studio, living room sets, listen to recordings and immerse themselves while shopping.

Not a John Lewis fan? But still love Christmas lights and store windows? Well every 30 minutes from 4pm, you can see an amazing one minute light show featuring another Elton classic, ‘Step into Christmas’. Watch some footage here (32 min:46 is where you will see John Lewis, but there is cool footage of London lights 2018 and it’s worth skipping through if you have time over your Xmas break)

But do not fear dear readers if you can’t get to Oxford Street. There is  a very long video here of the Christmas lights around London. Watch it here.

Elton John T shirts

AirNZ

Always a winner, and this year, Santa and the elves are back and it’s a winner. This year Santa messes up and sends out his naughty list to one of the boys on the actual ‘naughty’ list – as Santa is not very good with email! This would have to be my favourite, even though I loved the John Lewis campaign. But I do love Elton John. But I did also enjoy ALDI Australia’s effort.

 

Pedigree

Get the tissues out. This ad is delightfully shot and like John Lewis’s theme, it is about a gift for life, and has many life themes. You can watch & read about it here.

ALDI Australia

BMF Australia’s second attempt for ALDI Christmas campaign is heartfelt and totally Aussie. Its images are funny as well as beautifully shot. All against the backdrop of the Australian outback. The narratives are easy to follow: friendship, pitch in just like Aussies do to help a friend, and if someone pops in, you’ll have enough food.

ALDI Santa.png

 

ALDI UK – Kevin the Carrot is back and this time in a three part series! Part 1 is a Spoof of the CocaCola truck of happiness. In this case, our hero Kevin is driving the truck.

Read about it and watch it here. More links at the end of this post.

CocaCola saw the funny side to this campaign (and would have appreciated the parody and free advertising), after all isn’t the best form of flattery copying? CocaCola got in to the Christmas spirit and tweeted this clever response:

Coke ALDI

Part 2 & 3 – Kevin the Carrot fights to save his family from Pascal, a wicked Parsnip living in a dark castle. And Kevin saves Little Red (carrot) Riding hood in a spoof of the fairytale. Both fun productions with fabulous imagery of amazing food.

 

Let me know what your favourites were for 2018?

 

Extra viewing & reading:

ALDI Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/AldiUK

ALDI – http://www.bandt.com.au/advertising/aussie-christmas-ad-ever-aldi-goes-outback-years-spot-via-bmf

John Lewis – https://www.johnlewis.com/content/christmas-advert

House Beautiful – https://www.housebeautiful.com/uk/christmas-adverts-round-up/

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Air New Zealand, your 18th safety video is another fine example with ‘It’s Kiwi Time’!

6 Nov

New Zealand have always pushed the boundaries with interesting and out-there advertising. I can think of  a couple of examples. Last year’s police recruiting ad, or this golden oldie from L&P from 2006 that you really have to watch to believe! Yes you won’t be disappointed by watching both.

And now, Air New Zealand have done it again. They are always trying to outdo themselves and this is their 18th take on safety videos. They usually use OS talent, but this time it’s all local. Their creative Ad agency must have so much fun pitching crazy ideas. Every year AirNZ’s safety and Christmas ads are always worth looking forward to. And this year is no different. My next blog post will be on the Xmas ads!

In a 600 strong cast, ‘It’s Kiwi Time’ takes the classic song, Tricky as it’s base for their safety video, which really is a music video disguised as a safety video. This song dates back to the late 80’s which means that many people may hear the song and be enticed to watch the video out of interest. A new target market I hear you say?

Screen Shot 2018-11-06 at 7.37.32 am.jpg

And while some people are saying, ‘what happened in the 80’s should have been left in the 80s’, most viewers are hailing it as another success story for AirNZ. You can watch it on YouTube by clicking here. What do you think? Yes, it is long, but it is entertaining, and just as you would expect from this creative company. Air New Zealand really put their key stakeholders at the centre of their campaigns. Mostly it’s their staff (cabin crew, engineers etc), but this ad sees a lot of thought go into it by using various destinations from around the country, and using singers, dancers and talent from 30 community groups.

Air NZ have been proud of who they are and their country and locally grown talent, and it shows. You would be proud to be a staff member, or a shareholder. Or a passenger. It’s another aspect of marketing that often gets lost. AirNZ are all about relationships. They want one with you, and once they get your attention, you want to find out more. Just like I do every year when I write my Xmas blog post, as I look forward to their ads! You can read my AirNZ 2017 Xmas ad review here and watch the campaign. And if you head over to @FlyAirNZ twitter account, you can read the love coming in for the new ad. Also it’s great to see that AirNZ have a great social media team who actually respond to posts.

In previous years, The All Blacks have always been a feature of the airline’s TVCs and YouTube ads, this one is a take off of Men In Black back in 2015, and if you have a spare 5 minutes (yes it reads long, but it is worth your time) click here to watch it.

With the runaway success of The Lord of The Rings, AirNZ played on New Zealand being the home of Middle Earth. This meant a lot of safety videos featured cameos of many of the actors, AirNZ staff and the famous Director himself, Peter Jackson. Humour was always central to these videos. But also awesome scenery!

More recently, they have used talking and loveable animals, Dave the Goose (voice by Aussie actor Bryan Brown) and Pete the Kiwi. Pete’s voice is from another loveable Kiwi, Sam Neill (pictured below). Enjoy!

Sam Niell will be the voice of the campaign's mascot, a CGI kiwi named Pete.

Source: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/96138062/sam-neill-the-voice-of-air-new-zealands-global-campaign

Other reading:

600-strong cast front Air New Zealand’s largest scale safety video ‘It’s Kiwi Safety’ via True NZ, Campaign Brief, 2018

Air New Zealand Safety video Divides a Nation, Stuff, 2018

#weareAMPR #AirNZSafetyVideo

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Christmas (advertising #3) just keeps getting better – but you will need tissues for both crying and laughing

10 Dec

Yes I may be a little bit obsessed with Christmas advertising, but after you’ve read my 1st post and 2nd one about Christmas, how can you not be?

Just to refresh your memory: amazing ALDI brings back spunk Kevin the carrot and he slays it promoting the movie Murder on The Orient Express. And my other favourite, Debenham’s clever modern day take on Cinderella.

Aldi-Christmas-advert-2017-Kevin-the-Carrot-1121237

Bring out the tissues as these two latest campaigns are gold. 

BBC One – The Supporting Act (click to watch)

Another fantastic UK offering (aren’t they all?), this time by BBC One’s in-house creative team. This works for me because I remember that song lyrics to Cats in The Cradle,

“When you coming home Dad? I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then, you know we’ll have a good time then?” by Harry Chapin, or more recently Ugly Kid Joe.

We’ve all had a parent, sibling or carer that was too busy to play with us, to read with us, jut to sit with us and chat. Life is busy! This is a simple and gorgeous story as we see a single Dad trying his best, and the daughter just keeps dancing and being happy and thinks that Dad doesn’t notice her. You’ll be toe tapping and up dancing before you know it. Love it BBCs in-house team BBC Creative.

ALERT: More tissues

RSPCA Christmas 2017 (click to watch)

Sniff, tissues, heartstrings, RSPCAs tearjerking film highlights the kindness of RSPCA staff as they all contribute to saving animals’ lives. Woody the puppy, represents all the animals that the RSPCA cares for, from exotic pets, horses and small animals to dogs, cats, rabbits and everything in between. Also great message about a pet is for a lifetime, not just for Xmas.

Now to finish with a really good ROFL

AirNZ have done it again, with a(nother) rollicking and brilliant ad that plays on the Kiwi accent. Remember the brilliant safety videos when they played on The Hobbit ? Or the videos that saw real (and nude) employees covered in body paint uniforms with the Nothing to Hide campaign? First class (pun intended).

Remember last year 2016, with Ronan Keating’s hilarious effort with child actor Julian Dennison? Mixing up vowels and confusing the entire world with their crazy words!

If you were confused with 2016 lines such as ‘a brown bird instead of a blue bird’, and jandals, this year you’ll be even more confused! We love the Kiwis (aka New Zealanders)!

2017s offering is just as good. What starts off as fun phone calls from Chinese children talking to Santa about what they’d like for a present, we then see the faces of Santa and chief elf turn to horror, the music changes, bells toll and we know the story is about to start. You will need the tissues, but this time for crying with laughter.

We will have two weeks until Christmas, so I am assuming I have at least one more Christmas advertising post! Until then…..  have a look at this hilarious recruitment video for NZ Police (stay for the bloopers at the end, plus dancing to rival Miley Cyrus 47 seconds in, the actual Police Commissioner at 1.47 and so much more).

 

Further reading:

https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/bbc-one-the-supporting-act-bbc-creative/1451862, published December 5, 2017.

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Keep it SIMPLE

3 May

K.I.S.S – (Keep it simple stupid), a principle that is so under-rated and means that we don’t have to think!

Today has been full of meetings that were full of too much overthinking. I wish I had $1 for every time that I said today, “We need to simplify this”? Why do people want to overcomplicate issues?

And why is it that the most simplest of things are often the best?

A picnic with minimal wine and cheese. A drive down a country road not knowing where the road will take you, or mind you, not caring where it takes you. Fish and chips. Walking in the rain. Chilling out with your friends, or children, just ‘being’. A funny joke. Listening to your old 33 albums or 45s (am I showing me age)??!! Ok, maybe listening to your old songs, but on your iPod. Heading out to the sanctuary of your farm or going boating on the weekend. Going for a run or mountain bike ride. We all have those special ‘sigh’ moments that are simplistic. Why is it that people try to over-complicate issues?

Humour can take on the same approach. You don’t have to be funny to be noticed, but it helps! You get noticed if you’re sad, grumpy or overcomplicating – but not for the right reasons. One of the motivations of why I love marketing and advertising is that often the simplest messages are the best. The ones that are timeless.

Think about these for simplicity….  Let’s have a break?     Just Do It.       Heinz means ….. You know the answer to these… and I could go on!

I visited a PR blog yesterday (www.PRdaily.com), and there it was. The most simple of messages that conjured up childhood memories of singing the song. But the attraction lay in this BIG green T-Rex. He couldn’t, well, I won’t spoil it for you, it made me laugh. The message was so simple. Just look at the picture!

Get noticed by keeping it simple.

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