How many of you gun-slinging advertising creatives remember the movie – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, directed by the spaghetti western maestro, Sergio Leone?
Well, I was a mere oyster-mushroom waiting to be fertilised when it was released, but I do remember years later seeing it with my dad at the Piccadilly cinema on Louis Botha. Ok, yes, it’s a brazenly butch movie, and Clint Eastwood is downright dirty, yet the plot is simple and the visuals so gritty, you feel like you need a lavender infused Dettol bath straight afterwards.
So where am I going with this? It’s simple. It left me with a feeling, something emotional and awkwardly satisfying. The pole opposite experience to the flaccid and not so good, oh so bad, and unpleasantly ugly Olympics advertising I’ve seen. And not even one advert moved me. Maybe my bowels! If only I was left with a smattering of the feeling I got when watching Sergio Leone’s western.
But no, it gave me nothing, not even the hint of deep-vein thrombosis.
Where was the creativity? Where were the hurdles placed in the shopping malls? Where were the random flash mobs passing batons to unsuspecting shoppers? Where were the 25 metre dashes inside supermarkets? Where was the demonstration of the warm up, the sprint and the cool-down? Where oh where did it all go too? It went to a place called commercial complacency and draconian censorship. That’s where.
Well, if I have to choose between: A. Subjecting my already over stimulated brain to such trite advertising attempts at evoking the spirit of human endurance, or: B. Sticking a rusty dessert spoon into my thigh, I’d choose the latter. At least with that choice I’d end up feeling something.
Image: BBC Olympic advert. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cVrjFlt4hI
