Trouble in the Balkans needn't be painful

Spreadbetting company Capital Spreads provides some evidence that the age of intelligent and witty copywriting isn’t necessarily over. In the company’s current campaign on the London Underground, they pose a series of questions to readers.

“The Chinese wrap up mineral rights throughout West Africa,” reads one ad. “Do you (a) Get on the blower and order a 21, two 16s and some butterfly prawns. (b) Start buying copper and enjoy the ride.”

Another execution tells us “There’s trouble down in the Balkan regions. Do you (a) Arrange a private screening with your GP, just in case. (b) Seek temporary refuge and buy gold.”

It’s rare these days to see a textbook piece of advertising that ticks all the boxes. Here, the writer has a clear idea of the central insight and proposition – that potential spread betters pride themselves on their ability to read markets in turbulent economic and political times. They then dramatise the proposition through different dilemmas, which use appropriate humour and are likely to engage the target audience. They achieve consistency across the various executions, by following a recognisable pattern, but giving the creative a unique twist each time. This allows them to take over, say, the Waterloo & City Line and actually encourage passengers to read every single display card in their section of the carriage.

Finally, but significantly, they draw on cultural reference points and language that reflect the milieu of the likely customer. Chinese restaurants, double entendre, the use of the old-fashioned word ‘blower’ to describe a phone.

It's all done with type and the ads aren't much to look at. But I still looked at them. Art directors take note.

© Phil Woodford, 2008. All rights reserved.

Phil Woodford lectures in marketing and advertising at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Winging it with the creative

I’m not sure I can make head or tail of the current British Airways advertising campaign. One poster shows a street vendor rustling up some food on hot plates and runs with the headline “You can’t smell a city from a coach”. Quite why this is an argument in favour of plane travel in general – or using BA in particular – is beyond me. You can’t smell a city from a plane either, guys. In fact, it’s probably necessary to alight from any form of transport to gain full olfactory satisfaction.

The proposition is clearly that travelling by coach prevents a passenger from experiencing everything a destination has to offer. You’re whisked from place to place, with no time to explore on foot. Fair enough. But the dramatisation of the idea fails miserably at a logical level. If you wanted to explore London on foot, you’d be hard pressed to do it from Gatwick. Unless you’d packed a few blister packs and had a couple of extra days to spare.

Same idea done better: we see bewildered people staring out of blurred coach windows as they hurry through bustling city streets. Even now, we still encounter a logical problem. If the target audience decides coach travel is unsatisfactory (and they may simply favour it at the moment because it’s cheap), they can still choose to go by car, ferry, train or some other means of transport.

No, it’s back-to-the-drawing-board time, folks. I’m afraid I smell an ad concept that just doesn’t work.

© Phil Woodford, 2008. All rights reserved.

Phil Woodford lectures in copywriting and creative writing at University of the Arts London.