The latest sensation in the advertising
world is the new Google India 'Reunion' ad., which you can catch on
YouTube. It's definitely worth taking a look at. In many respects
many of today's film-clip adverts are more engaging and interesting
than a lot of modern day full length feature films. I guess unless
producers are prepared to take risks and actually buy and pay for
some new script or storyline that isn't a total re-hash of something
already done, dead, buried, resurrected, gone to heaven, fallen back
to earth, and then beginning a whole cycle all over again – movies
are just going to go the way of everything else sucked dry by this
parasitic era.
Google India's 'Reunion' ad - check it out on YouTube |
Ogilvy Mather created and produced this
ad for Google and there are certainly one or two things worth noting
about this agency. David Ogilvy was the absolutely nonpareil
advertising guru of all time, really – the man who created the 'Man
in the Hathaway' shirt concept.
The standard biographies claim that
Ogilvy worked for the British Secret Service and he may have done...
But his original employers and business
partners, the Mather and Crowther and Dawson families, have more
interesting histories. The actuality of who in that crowd worked for
secret agencies was that one of these families possessed sets of
twins, who were stage performers, and who travelled all over the
world, coming into close contact in those days, with the dying-out
Bohemian families – which consisted of Russians, Pomeranians,
Armenians, Hungarians, the Belgian aristocracy, even some French
remnants of the Louis' aristocrats. It was never that these groups
lost entirely the wealth they once overtly possessed, rather, the
major wars in Europe, invasions, political aggression, all caused
them to take their wealth underground. The word 'hotel' in French
history did not quite have the same sense of a place open to the
travelling middle classes, and the Majestic Hotel in Paris served as
more or less, the administrative Capital of every ruler of France
since Napoleon until and including Hitler.
This hotel ( The Paris Majestic) was
built and owned by an Armenian who said he was a Tunisian, and it was
here that the famous Sarkies family got their training in hotel
management and I suppose, entrepreneurship.
Secret services to this day employ
twins...
Nostalgia is a funny thing, some people
get taken over by prejudices of childhood or youth and young
adulthood implicit in marketing that exploits nostalgic visions and
end up missing out on the rewards of the future being born.
Another old guy's nostalgic vision? |
I would compare and contrast Lily
Allen's latest music video 'Hard Out Here' side by side with the
Ogilvy 'Reunion' ad. The Ogilvy ad relies on viewers suspending some
disbelief at certain points, in order to get the emotional messages
through in a short time-span – and it's getting a lot of positive
response. Allen's music video is copping a huge amount of criticism,
on the other hand. Her vision is probably not as kind, on the
surface, to the historical subject that she deals with.
Personally I find the two examples virtually equivalent. I don't
think there is anything underhanded in Ogilvy's nostalgic vision, and
neither do I see anything underhanded in the way Allen treats her
subject matter. The public's reaction though, seems vastly different.
Lily Allen |
My own perspective may have something
to do with the peculiarity that absolutely nothing at all has changed
in the cherished components of my life, over considerable time and
through horrendous external ructions. I presume I tend to see which
things are inclined to remain, and which, time and fashion are bound
to jettison. I could be wrong. I'll have to wait a little longer
to find out. But I can see myself nodding sagaciously to the others
who waited with me... Waiting, let me tell you, is a vastly
underestimated thing.
Fabius (the Waiter) Maximus.