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steepholmWhen I was finishing my PhD I tried to get a job with the marketing department of Rowntree's chocolate factory in York, where I was then living. It's lucky I failed, because had I known it they were about to be bought up by the evil Nestlé corporation, and I'd have had to resign almost immediately.
In those days I was a great admirer of Rowntree's advertising (the Kit Kat panda ad is perhaps the most famous). But the Rowntree crown was soon to be stolen by Marmite, who took the old "love it or hate it" adage about their product and ran with it in a way that makes Pheidippides look like a sprinter. Here's an early effort on that theme, from some time in the early 2000s:
Simple, yes, but ground-breaking in that the entire advert is based around someone hating the product.
After that, they became far more sophisticated, and developed a brilliant line in spoofs on TV genres. Here they are riffing on the animal rescue programmes:
For a long time, I thought they wouldn't top that. But now, along comes the DNA test reveal advert. This, in my opinion, is simply genius. Here is modern Britain in a nutshell (not that Marmite contains nuts):
In those days I was a great admirer of Rowntree's advertising (the Kit Kat panda ad is perhaps the most famous). But the Rowntree crown was soon to be stolen by Marmite, who took the old "love it or hate it" adage about their product and ran with it in a way that makes Pheidippides look like a sprinter. Here's an early effort on that theme, from some time in the early 2000s:
Simple, yes, but ground-breaking in that the entire advert is based around someone hating the product.
After that, they became far more sophisticated, and developed a brilliant line in spoofs on TV genres. Here they are riffing on the animal rescue programmes:
For a long time, I thought they wouldn't top that. But now, along comes the DNA test reveal advert. This, in my opinion, is simply genius. Here is modern Britain in a nutshell (not that Marmite contains nuts):
(no subject)
Date: 2017-09-11 04:03 pm (UTC)If those are the reasons for having Marmite despite not using it, the rescue service parallel reads as offensively totalitarian rather than humanitarian.
Oh, I get that the other ad has a variety of genres and situations, but they don't consistently read coherently within the DNA testing template. The one I mentioned would read better in an adultery template.
Ah, but if that's the national stereotype, then the man in the park bench ad would be far too reserved to react with violent revulsion to the offered sandwich. I myself, though an outspoken American and not British at all, have quietly and calmly eaten foods I dislike when they were served to me, even by other Americans, to be polite.