Media: Good Ad Bad Ad-GGT Wrigley's
In which a leading advertising expert picks some of the best and worst around. This week Dave Buonoguidi, joint creative director, St Luke's, on television commercials high and low
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Your support makes all the difference.When I saw this, I almost became violent. Some creatives sitting in office have just blatantly sat and watched a film - David Lynch's Wild at Heart - and copied it.
There's a guy and a girl in an American roadside diner. He looks down a length of chewing-gum and says it's like "the journey through life". He chews the gum, and then tells the girl that in this light, she looks "OK". She replies, "That's the nicest darn thing anyone's ever said to me", and they go out to his car. He invites her to get in, and she tells him to "hit that minty highway, Norman!"
You can tell it's all meant to be kitsch, but a lot of people aren't going to pick up on that. It's all right for the people who work in this industry, but you're selling chewing-gum to people who've never even heard of Wild at Heart, let alone seen it. It's a little bit like all that fuss over the Ferrero Rocher "ambassador's party" ad, about which all the Soho trendies said: "It's so bad, it's brilliant." I get bored with all that. If anyone turns round and says that whoever wrote this Wrigley's ad did so with irony in mind, they need shooting.
It just sums up everything I think is wrong with the industry: people have the nerve to call themselves "creatives" while stealing from every other medium. And it would be bad enough if they were ripping off a new film - even new films are a year out of date, because it takes that long to make them - but the film they're ripping off is seven years old, which I just find laughable.
I'm sure there are lots of problems with what the client wants, but even with restrictions, I'm sure it's possible to do something original. Maybe I'm just being purist, but I think creativity is about problem-solving.
Interview by Scott Hughes
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