In comparison with the tabloids, The Guardian uses television advertising sparingly. This may be a cost consideration, but actually ensures a rather pleasing impact when a spot does appear.
In the past, the paper's TV efforts have been intriguing, thought-provoking and intelligent. The messaging always avoids pointing to features, writers or columns in favour of promoting an overall ideology of free-thought, objectivity and integrity. The Guardian knows its target audience well (left-leaning, intellectual, politically engaged and opinionated) and is very adept at reaching out to them.
The most notable example was the skinhead execution of their Whole Picture initiative in 1986, which you can see here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3bfO1rE7Yg
So now, in these turbulent times for society and the media, The Guardian has invested in a new TV advertisement from BBH. And, as we'd expect, it's a high concept, visually striking piece designed to provoke chin stroking and knowing nods from the intelligentsia (and possibly shrugs and head scratching from the more tabloid inclined). Here's the ad:
To a greater extent and this may also explain why the paper is so modest in its TV exposure The Guardian is preaching to the converted. The advertising is highly unlikely to attract readers from The Telegraph or Daily Mail to their title, nor to motivate those who don't read newspapers to begin the habit with The Guardian. The paper shares its constituency with The Independent and few others, so expensive television commercials wouldn't be the best tactic to take on a single and lesser rival. The Guardian's advertising, therefore, is much more concerned with brand building and shoring up loyalty with the existing readership. Which are positive and valid aspirations, of course.
But does the new work succeed? The ad plays out as a reconstruction of a complex and divisive breaking news story and the ways in which it is reported, polarises opinion and ignites social actions and other stories. Using the Three Little Piggies.
For a highbrow paper it's an odd choice, but I can see the need to work with a story with which viewers are familiar. However, the tale is related with screaming headlines and knee-jerk polls quite unlike the sober and considered approach of The Guardian itself. Tweets from readers are cut into the developing porcine saga, but these too suggest the title's readers are given to curt outbursts rather than constructive comment. We also see a mock-up of The Guardian's website running the sensationalist line They boiled the wolf alive which, as Private Eye points out, would fall foul of contempt-of-court laws if this fairytale trial were actually taking place.
The ad's climax reveals the piggies are actually guilty of destroying their own homes in an insurance fraud (you're right, it does start to get a bit a daft) which sparks an ill-defined anti-capitalism riot - possibly as a result of the public not being better informed as an earlier stage. I can't believe this is the message BBH or The Guardian were seeking to push.
There really is a very smart ad here, trying to push its way through a somewhat messy and vague clip, but the proposition, and vehicle for delivering it, are nowhere near as sharp as they should be. The script certainly requires several further treatments because, as it stands, the portrayal of the multi-platform news process actually tells us that Twitter, the web and newsprint can muddy the waters. I glean a suggestion that journalism struggles to cut through the weight of public opinion, too. The polar opposite of the position The Guardian is trying to assert, surely.
As a lifelong reader of the paper, this really matters to me. I genuinely believe The Guardian to be the best example of all that is vital, incisive and essential in British journalism. So it's more than a little disappointing when the title fails to sell its most outstanding qualities on the rare occasion it runs a television advertising campaign.
Close, but no cigar.
Magnus Shaw - writer, blogger and broadcaster
www.magnusshaw.co.uk
www.creativepool.co.uk/creativepool
