TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/071591/0715250.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7.1 KB | 146 lines

                                                                                VIDEO, Page 71

Advertising Spoken Here


At an international festival of television commercials, the
hottest spots reveal a world of cultural differences

By MARGOT HORNBLOWER/CANNES


    Five weeks after its glamorous film festival, the French
Riviera town of Cannes once again becomes the scene of a major
international competition. Top filmmakers from around the world
-- from Argentina to Yugoslavia -- offer their work. World-class
directors like Ridley Scott and Spike Lee capture the moment.
Performers from Madonna to Mickey Rourke play to collective
fantasies. But this time there is one crucial difference: most
of the movies flash by in 15 to 90 seconds.

    This is the other Cannes festival -- the 38th
International Advertising Film Festival. Here some 4,500 art
directors, copywriters and filmmakers gathered to assess nearly
4,000 of the world's top television commercials. Schmaltzy or
sexy, slick or surreal, suspenseful or satirical, the hottest
spots were awarded 80 gold, silver or bronze "Lions" by a
23-member international jury.

    The U.S. always submits the most entries: 781 this year,
followed by Britain with 387, Spain with 336 and Japan with 318.
But it no longer wins the most awards. The recent explosion of
commercial TV in Europe, Asia and Latin America has fostered a
burst of freewheeling talent. This year's grand prize went to
a stylish French commercial (also aired in the U.S.) in which
a lion and a tawny woman climb up opposite sides of a mountain,
and at the peak the woman outroars the lion for a bottle of
Perrier. Another winner was a spectacular English spot for
Reebok sneakers in which a Mohawk steelworker sprints and leaps
atop an Atlanta skyscraper. The ad is so scary that it was
banned from British TV. Overall, Britain won the most Lions --
20 compared with the U.S.'s 14. Australia and Spain tied for
third place with nine awards each.

    One U.S. entry met a shocking rebuff. It is a
lump-in-the-throat spot about Mike Sewell, a youth born with
Down's syndrome, who found a job and happiness at McDonald's.
The crowd in the giant auditorium at Cannes greeted it with
raucous boos and whistles. "This is the most vicious, cynical,
jaded audience in the world," said Marcio Moreira, creative
director of McCann-Erickson Worldwide. "They don't like to have
their emotions manipulated."

    The reaction was a reminder that advertising, no less than
any other art, bares the psyche of a nation. "Schmaltz is an
American idiom," said Moreira. "We're a people who cherish
wearing our feelings on our sleeve." Along with wavy fields of
grain and golden, hazy images of plump grandparents, another
American penchant is for the hard sell: buy because it tastes
good, or because it works better.

    By contrast, the British are embarrassed by the direct
approach, preferring humor. "British ads are funnier because the
British themselves are funnier," says Dutch adman Bart Kuiper.
One cheeky British spot, titled The Hopping Pecker, shows a
cartoon image of a male organ knocking at a red heart-shaped
door and being refused entry until it coifs a condom.

    Humor is rarer in France, which goes for abstract, elegant
and often sur realistic images (such as the
Perrier-on-the-mount spot) with no direct message. In one French
ad, a handsome man picks up a svelte woman on the road and
drives her home through a thunderstorm as they exchange long
glances. It turns out to be a spot for Renault -- but it says
little about the car. In contrast, German ads are mostly blunt:
Buy Soviet-made Ladas, one East German distributor exhorts,
because they cost no more than secondhand West German cars.
Italy's gold winner is a frankly self-mocking spot with shots
of fully dressed men adjusting their underwear in public. "We've
cured Italian men of a bad habit," intones the announcer,
leading into a pitch for Johnny Lambs boxer shorts.

    As for Japanese ads, it seems only the Japanese understand
them. One baffling spot features a man eating a parking ticket
in front of a meter maid; I LOVE OSAKA, says the kicker. "The
cultural gap is so great," commented Allen Rosenshine, chairman
of BBDO Worldwide and president of the Cannes jury, "that it is
almost impossible for the West to appreciate Japanese
commercials." But the Japanese clearly have cachet. One
prizewinning Italian spot for oven paper has a Japanese
delivering the sales pitch in his own language, without
subtitles. For most viewers, his body language must suffice.

    With the world's economy in a downturn, many industrial
clients opted for safe, conventional pitches, leaving some of
the most daring filmmaking for public-service spots. Torture,
smoking, rain-forest destruction, homelessness and global
warming are among the issues that prompted 209 such entries. A
heart-stopping British ad against incest shows a little girl
lining her stuffed animals against her bedroom door to prevent
her father from entering. Most controversial was an Australian
insurance company's antispeeding campaign, showing violent car
crashes with screaming victims and dying, bloody children. It
won a gold Lion -- and a chorus of angry whistles from the
audience. "Terrorist advertising," charged French television
producer Jerome Bonaldi. But BBDO's Rosenshine defended the
spots' "irrevocable impact," saying, "You're never going to
forget them."

    The prevailing serious mood was mirrored in the growing
use of ecology as a selling tool. In an irreverent German spot
for Mercedes-Benz, a man admires his gleaming sedan with its
catalytic converter, then climbs onto a bicycle instead and
rides away. "We can never really do enough for the environment,"
says the narrator. An offbeat British ad shows a Navajo trucker
trying to send smoke signals from his exhaust pipe to friends
across a canyon. It doesn't work because he has switched to
Shell diesel fuel.

    Even that old advertising standby, naked female flesh, was
rare in this year's festival. True, one Norwegian ad shows a
jolly couple making love. But then they pause, and the woman
winds up her partner with a huge key. Declares the voice-over:
"Det Nye is the magazine for girls who make their own
decisions." In another feminist campaign, the latest Maidenform
underwear spots from the U.S. invite viewers to contrast today's
free-form lingerie with the historic oppression of women within
bone- and wire-framed corsets and bustles.

    In Europe audiences flock to movie theaters early to watch
the commercials and break into applause for the best ones.
Americans are more casual, even disdainful about ads, but when
they gather at their back fences or around office water coolers,
they discuss them as avidly as they do the shows that surround
them. The five-day Cannes festival celebrates the wit and
imagination that prompt that interest. As New Zealander John
Doig of the Mc Caffrey and McCall agency put it, "We come here
to remind ourselves that ads don't just sell. They also make the
little hairs stand up on the back of the neck."