Gorilla Marketing February 18, 2009

“A Gorilla, drumming, to Phil Collins, extreme close-ups, purple everywhere!” The madman rantings of a fraught ad agency creative who has finally cracked under increasing pressure to find new and fresh advertising forms, right? Wrong.

You’ve all seen the ad. Some of you YouTubers may have even been so lucky as to have seen the drum and bass remix, the Rugby World Cup England special, the Pudsey bear cameo or the titillating Wonderbra spoof. But following the launch of Cadbury’s latest spot, the question on many people’s lips was, ‘What in God’s name does a Gorilla playing the drums have to do with chocolate?’

The answer A Glass and a Half Full Productions spun us was that “it just seemed like the right thing to do. There’s no clever science behind it - it’s just an effort to make you smile, in exactly the same way Cadbury Dairy Milk does.” How tenuous a link; no doubt a desperate backronym contrived to appease the sound-bite-hungry industry press, or convince their psychoanalysts they hadn’t actually lost the plot. The real answer: nothing. 

The advertisment’s distant cousin - the product - has long been disowned and is rarely even seen at the most special of family occasions. Fact is, you’d have to be a sucker not to have noticed its departure. Hands up those who remember Flat Eric’s endorsement of Levis’ jeans. How about Honda’s Fischl-and-Weiss-inspired ‘Cog’ spot. Not to mention Budwieser’s frogs, Guinness’ horse-crested ocean waves, and Sony Bravia’s ‘Balls’ (Jean Cabrel directing both this and the Cadbury’s spot). In each, it is not the product which is being sold, but some abstract quality or image. 

Big time Madison Avenue moneymaker and industry expert Jerry Della Femina pin points the ad which marked this paradigmatic shift as far back as 1949. This ad, for Volkswagen, simply said, ‘Lemon’. The copy for ‘Lemon’ basically declared that once in a while we turn out a car that is a lemon, in which case we get rid of it. We don’t sell them. And we are careful as hell with our cars, we test them before we sell them so, chances are you’ll never get one of our lemons. For the first time, a company was being honest in admitting error. It was telling people what it didn’t sell, rather than what it did. A dangerous strategy ultimately paid its dividends. But the question still remains, what forces lay behind this shift? 

Some point to postmodernity as the sole perpetrator; the age of consumerism in which the signifier no longer corresponds to the signified, the object being created in the image of our desires, Cadbury’s confused message telling us more about our confused culture than it does chocolate. But while this semiological explanation sounds plausible, and is in many cases an accurate insight not only into advertising, but many aspects of our present day lives, it grossly overstates its case. Besides, when have I ever ‘desired’ Phil Collins?

The nature of the changes occurring in the advertising industry at present gives rise to a simpler, more probable explanation. All the afore mentioned ads have been successful, not in selling us the product on its own merits (the age of the product demonstration now long dead, save for the somewhat parodic Barry Scott), but in simply getting us on their side; positioning themselves not as a rude interruption to our viewing, but as light entertainment, a friend who tells a good joke. Not only does Cadbury’s effort gain allies on the basis of good humour, it is passed around like a virus – hence the name viral - through countless ‘touch points’ (as the zeitgeist has it) like YouTube. So, when we come to the point of buying, and are confronted with a range of brands, the idea has it, that we will pick the one we remember having put something interesting on our screens. The brand is built.

If you need further convincing, simply look to one of Honda’s latest spots in which they piece together a giant car from jigsaw pieces and claim that they love solving problems. The car advertised in this ad is not currently available in the UK, so what is the point in advertising it? No doubt, the idea is that we see Honda, as a manufacturer, in a good light (an energy efficient light at that), placing all Honda’s models under one warehouse roof, so to speak.

Should we be up in arms about this new model of advertising? Is it taking advantage of our good nature? Preying on the easily amused? I think not. Instead, it is making those inconvenient ad breaks not only easier to swallow, but in some cases preferable to the main program (take the now famous Super Bowl commercials for example). The buyer must have their wits about them, that’s always been the case - but what we can be thankful for is the creativity and entertainment this new model brings to our screens. After all, who can say they didn’t break a smile the first time they saw the Cadbury’s gorilla?