As I proved last week, with facts and my mind, the big fear of adverts or PIFs was their unpredictability. Now, if you know that you have a marked aversion to, say, The Nightmare Man, you don't watch BBC1 on a Friday evening in 1981 or whenever. If, just as a random example you understand, you have an issue with a certain Thames childrens' programme featuring a lot of horrifying puppetry, we avoid CITV at around 4:00 every day. BUT WE DO NOT SPEAK OF THAT.
So you couldn't avoid the ads. You never knew what was coming next.
No matter how much you wanted to. No matter how much you dreaded hearing that voice. You know the one. The one that sounds like a Dalek that's had too much blue pop and is feeling all...stabby.
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| Metal knives not pictured |
So, you're trying to sell your instant mashed potato product. You've got a sci-fi hook for the campaign, tying in to the futuristic wonder of not having to do any work in the kitchen, mums (under British law, Dads were only allowed in kitchens after 1982, and then only to make corned beef hash). You have some entertaining characters. Bit of puppetry, like everything else in that decade. But you need a catch-phrase. Oh, hang on a minute. Here's one I thought of earlier.
Words have power. Words have meaning. Words carry connotation and define our reality. And children, the younger they are, lack the power to properly process language. Therefore, they might well miss the large concept that a sentence is trying to convey and just focus on the meaning or associations of one or two key words. Advertising companies must know this. And therefore, they must be a bunch of bastards.
Smash catchphrase?
THEY PEEL THEM WITH THEIR METAL KNIVES
Or, as I heard it:
Gosh, thanks for that, Smash. Still, at least they aren't watching me constantly.
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