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This Week In Advertising

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When Creativepool went looking for a fine fellow to write a column called ‘The Week In Advertising’, it made very good sense to search for a writer with a calm perspective and a measured, balanced approach. Well, they were all busy, so they press-ganged a bitter old copywriter into the post. Hello.

As luck would have it, I not only find myself with this new gig, I also find myself in Florida. Which is why this inaugural piece might be more accurately titled ‘The Week In Advertising In The Southern USA’. But that takes too long to type.

American TV advertising provides a fair measure of the political cycle out here. If it’s a presidential election year, every second spot is occupied by some slick in a suit having a right old pop at a similar lounge lizard. We’re actually in the mid-term, but the Senate and Congress now belong to the Republicans, so everything political is settled – hence, no hollow promises or rank bitchiness to be seen. Instead, Thanksgiving is coming up quickly (the last Thursday in November). Thanksgiving is a massive deal the to the Americans. It’s like Christmas, but with even more turkey. And they have Christmas too. So, right now, all the big grocery outlets are jostling for position, all with very similar offerings. ‘All you need for the big day, slightly cheaper than the other guys’, captures the proposition pretty effectively, although there’s less of this sort caper than you’d think. Largely because of a thing called ‘Black Friday’.

Sounds sinister doesn’t it? But it’s not. Or at least not in the way you might imagine. ‘Black Friday’ is actually one massive national retail sale, taking place on the day after Thanksgiving. So, anyone with a deal to do, or stock to clear, is banging on about their BF specials. You’d recognise the drill from our own January sales. That is, they start well ahead of the time given in the name. Many of the shops I’ve visited this week have their BF discounts in place, and there’s more than a week to go. They’re quite shameless about announcing the fact on the telly, too. JC Penney are pushing clothes, Hyundai can cut you a competitive price on an oversized car, and WalMart will flog you anything you can imagine, and many hundreds of things you can’t.

This is all good fun, and for an Englishman abroad, unfamiliar and novel. However, the perennial problem with US ads, is still present and correct – they’re largely cheesy, conservative and obvious. Of course, this is a style to which the Americans respond well, but it’s also a bit disappointing. The USA is the epicentre of the free-market, and yet the actual marketing is pretty trite and predictable. If the campaign is for a new pack of chicken parmesan (a dish which is heavily promoted on American TV, for some strange reason), then an assertive voice-over bloke will tell you how delicious it is, while the screen fills with images which show how delicious it is. And that’ll be it. No irony, no in-jokes, no high concept – just the chicken and the voice. There is a long-term, ongoing piece for Gieko broadband, with a funny gecko, but stuff of that nature is the exception, not the rule.

On the whole, and despite the countdown to Thanksgiving and Black Friday, I can take comfort in the fact the UK ad business clearly remains the most creatively adventurous on the planet. That’s always apparent, whenever I watch TV in America. Let’s hope the same is true of bitter old copywriters and their columns about advertising. 

Magnus Shaw is a blogger, copywriter and consultant

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