Peter York On Ads No 253: Weight Watchers - You don't have to be fat ...
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Your support makes all the difference.Deep Fried Potato Wedges, with a figure like yours? Mais bien sur, when it's Heinz Weight Watchers Mexican Chilli. Weight Watchers have gone for the woman thing in their new commercial, with swirly whirly moody images, a variety of filters - red, blue, gold and green - and a variety of big thoughts about the elemental wonderfulness of women. It's got something of the look of the Red magazine launch ad, but prettier and less crazed.
Thus we get a beautiful Rosie the Riveter working in a garage in lovely blue filtered gloom, putting on chains: "you don't have to be a man to be a mechanic."
Then we get a catwalk model - bright red filter, old-fashioned flashbulbs - apparently doing something swirly whirly with pretty children: "you don't have to be old to be a grandmother."
Then in front of a modern hole-in-the-wall log fire (neo-50s natch) bathed in a golden filter, another woman snuggles a beautiful dog. Her eyes are closed: "you don't have to have a man to feel loved."
Then, the last of these faces of woman (remember "I am woman" or "I'm Every Woman"?) - warm, elemental, wise, self-reliant, doing it for herself - is our girl having a dainty low-fat pasta supper on her own: "you don't have to be watching your weight to eat Weight Watchers."
Alas, this tribute to Bridget Jones is filtered in Halloween-weirdo green which makes her look thoroughly blue. Home Alone has to tread very carefully.
But it looks pretty and the music is lovely, a gorgeous cross between Burt Bacharach and an early period Marvin Gaye backing track - massed violins, a little bit Latin, a little bit soul. I wonder what it is.
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