With one more day until my cut-off point (15th Jan), I can still happily say this: Happy New Year one and all.
As shown by the yawning gap between this post and the last one, I’ve seen precious little to inspire me in the last couple of weeks, but – lo and behold – I came across something that’s broken the spell.
Now, I can’t remember when it struck me, but I came to the realisation that there’s a disproportionate number of animals in successful ad campaigns of recent years.
In each case, it’s either animals-doing-something-funny-that-they-wouldn’t-normally-do or animals-acting/speaking-as-humans.
Think; a gorilla drumming, a meerkat selling insurance, a panda selling (Foxes) ‘biscwits’, a dancing Shetland pony, cats pretending to be dogs (or ‘more dog’), cats running with humans (‘there are no wolves in Croydon’) etc etc.
It makes you wonder if there is anything else in the creative armoury these days (or if audiences react to anything else).
However, I’ve now seen one ad that still uses animals, but differently. It’s for Norwegian Association of the Blind, and I think it’s brilliant:
Actually, it would seem that Norwegian Association of the Blind have a pedigree when it comes to strong, creative work, regardless of the involvement of animals.
Here is their previous work:
It’s risque, but on point: it still delivers the same serious message at the end, about hiring blind staff (I do wonder though, would a similar charity get away with that in the UK?)
Hats off to both the agency – Try/Apt, Oslo – and the client for running this. Brave, different, but with a clear message.
So, praise be to Norwegian Association of the Blind and Try/Apt, but can we all now agree – for the love of cats/badgers/foxes/pandas – to find an alternative to anthropomorphised animals in ads this year?