The recent Cadbury's campaign is (not unreasonably) considered one of the most radical pieces of advertising to be seen in Britain for a few years. Without belittling the achievement in any way, this is a terrible reflection on how sameish most other TV advertising has become.
Like many other landmark advertising moments, the brilliance of the Cadbury's approach lies in what it leaves out.
Imagine, at the end of the ad, if the gorilla had paused to enjoy some chocolate, or a pour-shot had interrupted the build-up; suppose a cheesy voice-over had forcibly supplied the logic with "there's almost nothing that can beat the joy of Cadbury's milk chocolate". You then would have been left with a pretty average, if still watchable, ad. Nothing more.
Like a few other significant landmarks (B&H, say, First Direct, or the brilliant but under-appreciated Lucky Star advertisement for Mercedes from CDD - which, through the failure of juries to recognise it, has forever dented my faith in advertising awards) the communication works because it does not hand-hold the viewer down every step of the logical path.
The convention of TV ads (one exacerbated by pre-testing) holds that at the end of the 30s anyone of even limited understanding must be able to parrot a one-sentence explanation of its single and unambiguous meaning.
The assumption is that Joe Public likes his messaging pretty direct. It's reminiscent of a passage in Saki's Reginald in Russia:
"Both Egbert and Lady Anne would have preferred something from The Yeoman of the Guard, which was their favourite opera. In matters artistic they had a similarity of taste. They leaned toward the honest and explicit in art, a picture, for instance, that told its own story, with generous assistance from its title. A riderless warhorse with harness in obvious disarray, staggering into a courtyard full of pale swooning women, and marginally noted "Bad News,'' suggested to their minds a distinct interpretation of some military catastrophe. They could see what it was meant to convey, and explain it to friends of duller intelligence.
To those unfamiliar with the Munro oeuvre, I should explain Saki here is not being kind. (He is very rarely, if ever, kind).
Now if we assume that all target audiences are like Egbert and Lady Anne, and require an explicit nudge (geddit?) so as to be told what to think, that may be fine, if slightly patronising. But then what is to explain the millions successfully spent on non-explicit forms of communication? Design, for instance? Or sponsorship? Noone feels that an elegantly redesigned new pack needs a sentence of justification. Or that an Olympic sponsorship needs a line of explanation. What would it be in any case? In Japan, which spends a higher proportion of GDP on advertising than almost anywhere, they have a remarkably non-explicit approach to advertising - the Cadbury's approach there would have been considered especially mould-breaking.
Why do we apply certain standards to good communication in one medium which we believe don't matter in another? And where is the justification for this framework which has become the standard strait-jacket approach to TV?
Moreover, has it occurred to anyone that it is the oblique and enigmatic which often works best. Indeed the value and sincerity of a message is often destroyed by the revelation of self-interest.
Think of a message as a kind of present. Those presents which mean most are those which have no whiff of the self-serving. Which is why, for the chaps among you, your wife will be more delighted to receive a diamond necklace than a Hoover this Christmas - or, worse still, lingerie.
