2010′s ‘best-loved’ adverts
These were, apparently, the best-loved adverts of 2010, according to some kind of complicated algorithm from Nielsen.
The research includes 1.5 million votes cast by British viewers on the 'likeability' of various adverts and how much they remembered it.
On this basis, the ubiquitous meerkat adverts came out on top, with a 'likeability index rating' of 256; 2.56 times more popular than the average new commercial during 2010.
Second was an advert for Magners, one of many overwhelmingly Oirish adverts that blighted the channels over 2010; while utterly forgettable adverts for the likes of Maltesers, Cushelle and Velvet were also ranked in the top ten.
So, what does all of this mean? Very little, beyond the redundancy of many tracking metrics deployed in advertising and marketing to reassure advertisers and marketers that they're doing a top-hole job.
These adverts may have been ranked as memorable and likeable, but it's hard to read anything more significant into these figures. Are these good adverts? In the main, no. Did they give a return on investment? There's no data here to suggest they did. What was the penetration? Who knows? Did they raise the profile of the brand? Perhaps, that's the easiest conclusion to draw from this bizarre set of data, though how familiar and fondly thought-of the brand already is is debatable; as is how memorable they after after a year; while how these adverts automatically become 'best-loved' is beyond me.
No doubt Nielsen would love to tell you more about its advert rankings and audience research - for an absolutely whopping fee. I'd be more than happy to give rather more succinct views on the adverts below, for a much smaller one.
'Best-Loved' Adverts Of 2010
(Descriptions in italics are Nielsen's; in plain are mine)
1. CompareTheMarket.com
Story of meerkats fighting an army of mongooses in a snowy landscape
Meerkats uber Alles.
2. Magner's Irish Cider
Clonmel home of Magners Cider; lorry over golf course; through brick wall
Begorrah, bejoisus, becroikey. Fucking champ. Patronising Oirish drivel.
3. Maltesers
Two couples watch a movie; girlfriends position boyfriends so that they are cuddling
Meh. Variation of the stupid-Dad meme.
4. Santander Bank
Family driving in car; boy falls asleep with red legos; featuring Lewis Hamilton
Everyone likes lego; kids probably like Lewis Hamilton (though probably don't do a lot of banking).
5. Snickers Candy
Mr. T doing pushups; listen up, suckers; get tough, one-fingered push-ups
Hard to ignore, hard to forget, hard not to like - at first at least.
6. Cancer Research
Race for Life this summer, beat cancer, enter now
Don't remember ever seeing this.
7. Marks & Spencer Christmas ad
Come on girls first positions; featuring Peter Kay, Twiggy and Dannii Minogue
Noisy, unloved-celeb cluster-fuck.
8. Velvet Paper Towels
Boy in suit points to where trees should be planted in forest; adults hold trees in pots
Quite like this, couldn't connect it with a brand though.
9. Cushelle Bathroom Tissue
Cartoon koala bear leaps and hugs pack of tissue; new name (previously Charmin)
Eh?
10. Pepsi Max
Professional footballers, including Lionel Messi, play kids for a Pepsi Max
Cash-spunking corporate obligation pay-day.
Just For Men advert – More Ties
Just For Men adverts have always been on the radar because of their lazy cro-Magnon concepts and appalling dubbing. In fact, the dubbing tends me to be so bad it leaves me to speculate as whether it's deliberately bad - designed to leave a lasting 'WTF?' pinballing around your bonce.
The set-ups tend to follow a pattern: Man notices grey hair; man is told by wife or colleague that he will be more sexy, virile and generally cool with dark hair; man gets dark hair.
This one is different, and seems to feature something hitherto taboo in these kind of incredibly conservative memes: a single-parent family and a jobless lead.
All of this may appear rather brave, though it should be pointed out that it's easy to infer that the guy in this ad is single and jobless because of his greying hair.
And, before we go lauding the company in question for its open-mindedness in featuring a single-parent family - has there ever been one of these ads featuring a black guy? Or a gay man? Possibly in the States, but in the UK? Just asking.
There's a lot of fun to be had in this ad speculating as to just what kind of catastrophe has befallen this guy. Did his wife leave him because of his grey hair? Did she run off with a bald guy? And just what is up with this relationship, where a teenage child presents her father with hair dye and reassuring advice?
Troubling questions. I like to think he goes to the bathroom, tears out his stupid dyed hair and strings himself up from the shower rail with his tie. He didn't get the job after all.
The Stupid Dad meme
The Stupid Dad meme started to gain traction in the 90's, when notions of sexism eventually caught up with the ad industry.
Even in the 80's women could be portrayed as fairly stupid without a hint of irony, but by the last decade of the 20th century chauvinism went the way of smoking adverts, the Hofmeister bear and chimps forced to drink tea.
I'm sure if you go back far enough and look long enough there are ads that are explicitly racist and homophobic too, but nowadays it's really only men who get it in the neck in ads.
Sure, you can make all sorts of arguments about the male gaze with no little basis, but women are off-limits to the ad creative if you want to make someone look clumsy, oafish or generally the butt of a joke.
The Stupid Dad has several key characteristics. Generally it pays to have a Stupid Dad with a regional accent. This makes the Stupid Dad look more stupid.
He must be obviously middle-aged, balding or bald, fat, decidedly stupid and unashamedly emasculated. Every Stupid Dad has clearly been castrated by his wife. Perhaps from time to time the kids taunt the Stupid Dad by throwing his unattached testicles to each other while he looks on haplessly.
Another key trait is that the Dad must be made to look stupid in the advert, preferably by his wife or small kids. This usually occurs when the Dad ridicules the product being sold. This reinforces the idea that to not buy this product you must be a bit of an arsehead.
There are several adverts that currently subscribe to the Stupid Dad meme: the Sainsburys Pork Chilli ad; some Butlins ads from about a year ago; and some ads that seem to be trying to encourage some vague form of environmentalism.
Probably the most offensive version of the Stupid Dad meme is a Somerfield advert from late 2007. Here, John is made out to be a complete duffer and publicly humiliated by his wife, Rose, for forgetting some groceries. The pair have now left our screens, probably due to the fact that John eventually snaps and stoves Rose's head in with a frozen leg of lamb.
The Stupid Dad meme is a funny one. I don't subscribe to the idea that the only persecuted demographic in the UK is the white working-class male, usually an excuse for racists to bemoan the fact that they're not alone to say n*****, but try putting any ethnic minority, child, woman, OAP, homosexual or otherwise-abled person in the Stupid Dad role and there'd be mayhem.
It's a curious, if fairly harmless, double standard that rather seems to reflect the way the middle-aged man is shaping up in society. Beyond their procreational use they're permanently bemused, technophobic, balless, sad and despised. The real role of the Stupid Dad is simply to be utterly redundant.
Megan Thompson-endorsed, is it?
In the latest batch of Sainsbury's adverts, foul-mouthed chef Jamie Oliver has been replaced by an ordinary family, albeit one where the mother used to be an annoying Yorkshire prostitute in EastEnders. It's part of a deliberate attempt to reposition the supermarket, ramming home the idea that you can "feed your family for a fiver". Rich toffs who like vine ripened tomatoes and swordfish fillets are dead. Long live commoners who eat things like "pork chilli".
Using an apparently "real" family to get across the authenticity of your product is, of course, an entirely original idea, provided you discount the long running Oxo family commercials from the 1980s. And the recent Quorn adverts with the nagging teenage girl. And the dysfunctional BT Broadband family.
In the most recent Sainsbury's advert, called "Chilli Endorsed by Child", we are introduced to the father of the house; a slightly overweight stripy polo shirt-wearing dummy whose one saving grace is his ability to knock up peasant food for his ravenous Neanderthal clan. (His backstory, presumably, is that he is a tradesman of some sort, perhaps a heating engineer or plumber. He likes his football and the occasional pint with his mates but he never gets drunk and "would do anything for his kids". He drives a Vaxhaull Meriva.)
Here we see the pestering child motif run riot. The girl of the house starts banging on about composting and recycling, you know, like they do. One can almost sense the smug nods of recognition among the parents who make up Sainsbury's target demographic as the dialogue unfurls. In reality, of course, their kids are on MySpace threatening to stab each other.
The child whines:
What kind of pork is it?
To which the father replies:
Pork from a pig pork.
Thus his familial role as well-meaning but ultimately clueless is cemented. Still, the old bastard gets his own back. Mercifully, he refrains from tossing the pan of boiling acid gristle all over his daughter's homework and instead seizes his moment at the dinner table to give the little cow a masterclass in sarcasm.
After getting the reluctant child to admit the shit on the plate actually tastes alright he delivers the killer line.
Megan Thompson-endorsed, is it?
You sense this may culminate in violence as Megan hits puberty. Luckily the scene terminates before blood - or chilli - is spilled.
