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Fighting fires. Why that Vodafone ad is such a terrible mistake.

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Getting an advertisement completely and utterly wrong is quite an art. For starters, it takes two parties who at least profess to know what they're doing: the client and the agency. Then the brief must wildly misunderstand the nature of the audience and the messages to which it will positively respond. Finally, the whole shooting-match needs to be approved, green-lit, budgeted, produced and broadcast - all without anybody sticking their heads above the parapet to proclaim the project an enormous mistake.

Pleasingly Vodafone have managed just that.

Vodafone have problems. Not that they have no money (they do, loads of it), or that they're not an internationally recognised brand (they are all over the place). No, their problem is that many people don't like them very much. This is partly thanks to the fact most people are deeply suspicious and hostile towards massive corporations, but mostly due to their habit of arranging not to pay the corporation tax they owe the UK exchequer. Along with Google, Starbucks and others, Vodafone are high on a hit-list of company's doing rather well in Britain, but somehow avoiding the levies paid by ordinary folks and smaller businesses.

Whether or not you share the outrage directed at the mobile telecoms giant, or couldn't really give a stuff, is entirely up to you. However, it would be a fool who didn't acknowledge the damage such publicity does to a brand. Usually, when an advertiser experiences a level of bad blood, they ensure their campaigns either counteract the criticism or, more often, ignore the issue altogether and continue to plug the benefits of the product or service they're selling. Not Vodafone.

'One stupid and very glib advertisement.'

It's hard to know if the 'Firefighter' ad, currently enjoying heavy rotation on commercial telly, is designed to reassure those who believe the firm to be grasping, heartless monsters, or whether it was made in blissful ignorance. Either way, it's a disaster.

My superficial objection is to the spot's tooth-grinding triteness. All that slow motion heroism as we view a manifestly unconvincing fireman completing a hopelessly staged mission, is worthy of a nineties Gillette commercial. Add an equally inauthentic female voiceover (with a quaint regional accent, naturally), bemoaning her husband's reluctance to let her know he's okay, layered over a slab of forgettable music which somebody imagined was emotionally stirring, and you have one achingly stupid and glib advertisement.

All this would be horrifying enough, but then we must consider that dastardly taxation difficulty. You see, what Vodafone is pushing is a claim that 77% of the emergency services use their networks. They don't elaborate, so we have no idea if this is in a personal capacity or as part of their life-saving duties. And it doesn't much matter. Because screaming in our heads is one thought: 'Yeah? And how are the emergency services funded, Vodafone? Through taxes, that's how. And you don't pay your share do you? You cheating twunts!'

I'm summarising here, but that has been the general drift of the social media comments I've read. Did they really imagine the reaction would be any different? That this heap of vacuous bilge would set everything straight and we'd all love Vodafone again? Because it doesn't and we don't. Not one tiny bit.

Nevertheless, my mobile friends, congratulations are in order. Because Vodafone and its agency (I won't name them, they can probably do without the embarrassment) have managed to produce an ad which misses every target with unerring efficiency. And that really takes some doing.

If you really wish to see this thing, it's here: 


Magnus Shaw is a copywriter, consultant and blogger

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On Creativepool

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