Saturday, July 22, 2006

What does your marketing say about you?

This is 2 of 4 of recent missing posts. If it turns up, apologies for the duplication.

My views on the whole 4x4 thing are well known (and if you don't know them, then there are around 400-odd posts to work back through to see that I don't own one, don't see the need for most to have one, but feel there are much bigger fish to fry, less divisively, than the current obsession some activists have with the stupid things. Any road up (geddit?), I was sent the latest Greenpeace 'viral' (not, as I thought was meant to be the way, by a chum, but rather the PR guys) and presume I am meant to pass it on. So here you are.

www.viralchart.com/media/clips/gasguzzler.mov Quicktime
http://www.viralchart.com/media/clips/gasguzzler.wmv Windows media
http://www.viralchart.com/media/clips/gasguzzler.swf Flash

As an ad person, I have seldom seen such an overlong, indulgent bit of tosh in my life, delivered with so little wit. You can affect change with satire and lampooning (I have some footage in mind that could be cut to mock Chelsea Tractor drivers with their own words), but not like this. I almost felt like buying one if only to stick it to the whole backstabbing, besuited, Specsaver-wearing, sneering bunch of them. While I didn't quite agree with the message, I was impressed with the anti-nuke version not so long ago, at least as an execution.

I presume that it was all shot to the highest ethical standards and carbon whatsits, and no member of the production team, cast or crew arrived on anything but a bike and drank only from taps.

But I just live for the moment that anyone involved who thinks its hip or smart to gob in someone's cup for making a currently free consumer choice gets hoist with their own petard. For instance when my mate the farmer's daughter gets out of Uni, and when she's asked for a decaf decides to get her own back for missing the train scraping Greenpeace posters (more concerned with advertising their sponsor's energy tariff) off her Dad's Land Rover.

This was a lot of money, too (unless it was all a porty job by some daft agency with more hype than sense in its sights). So I hope the extra subs they may get pay of the office, director's bonuses and pensions, with enough left over for the awards ceremony dash to Cannes and, oh, maybe some decent planet saving as well.

Because I very much doubt this will stop any potential purchaser (should they ever see it, which I doubt, unless Jeremy Clarkson has a go at it, which he might - see conspiracy theory in earlier posts), and simply set those with a grudge on a path from which no one will benefit.

Nil points.

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