Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Brilliant English rugby team ad, Offensive ad or a send-up & 15 hidden social media features



Offensive or send-up?
I have to say when I started reading this UK Independent article about a backlash against an Australian company’s TV commercial, my first thought was, “oh here we go again, the PC brigade on the march – it’s getting to the stage that ads will have to be completely bland just to ensure no-one is offended.”  The reason people took offense is that a larger woman was used to play the part of her other self - i.e. how a woman feels when she has her period.  And she was shown as highly emotional. But the fact is – that is how many women do feel at that time of the month – bloated and moody! However, one of the twitterati made a good point – the same woman could have been used and presumably made look less attractive and wearing baggy clothes. Only then did I actually watch the ad – it’s totally OTT – I’d take offence from that and the fact that it’s way too long and that the product they’re promoting won’t change a mood and won’t make someone feel less bloated!

“Make them Giants” – a top ad
I love this regular feature in The Guardian – it’s their Top 5 ads which this time features a brilliant piece of work “Make them Giants” from O2 about the English rugby world cup team (naturally hoping they will shrink if they play us at some stage during the tournament!) and a lovely heart-warming tear-jerker “I will survive” for the Blue Cross.  The excellent Gareth Thomas ad from Guinness is also ranked here – it’s a brave ad in every sense of the word – for the brand as well as for the man.  However, the Trainline ad didn’t do it for me at all and the Nike ad just left me cold.  See what you think….

15 hidden features of social media
This is a really useful infographic from Salesforce on PR News detailing 15 things you might not know you can do on Twitter, Facebook, Linked In or Google+.  These include ‘muting’ someone on Twitter rather than unfollowing them, finding out who has unfollowed you, explaining what the ‘other’ inbox on Facebook is and messaging someone on LinkedIn that you’re not connected with.


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