There should be an annual TV awards special for ads. Fine, some might argue there may not be enough quality material to fill a lengthy awards programme. All the better. Even the Oscars, not to mention the Bastas and Iftas, get boring after a while.
Apart from the entertainment value of such awards as a TV programme, it might also help to push upwards the standard of advertising generally. That said, it can be pretty good, particularly on TV.
These days they must be, to hold a disgruntled audience as viewing is interrupted. That is never welcome and not least when, thanks to the likes of Netflix, people have an alternative, albeit one for which they pay.
What prompts this modest proposal was a sequence of high quality TV ads I saw in the one programme break during a later night watch last month. The timing may account for why such comparatively lengthy ads were broadcast more or less back-to-back that night. Being later, it would have been cheaper.
One was for Heineken and featured a pubfull of rugby fans who fell into a morgue-like silence as onscreen the number 10 lined up to take a penalty hundreds of miles away only for their concentration to be disturbed by a bartender polishing a pint glass. Wonderful.
Next was one for McCain chips, focused on families. A voice over asks “when it comes to family, what is normal? Normal isn’t normal.” And it featured mixed coloured families, families with disabilities, gay families, single-parent families, grandparent-led families, etc. Moving.
McCain said they commissioned it because research found that 80 per cent of those surveyed could not recall seeing anything in popular culture that featured a family like their own.
And then there was that truly stunning ad for Colourtrend paints wherein actor Fiona Shaw narrated that exquisite poem Pied Beauty by Gerald Manley Hopkins against a montage of luscious Irish scenes reflecting his words.
It is outstanding. I’ve watched it again and again, on Youtube. I mean, who watches ads on Youtube? Again and again? Ahem . . . well, moi!!
And then there is one of my favourite poster ads. It is on the Loop Line railway bridge near Dublin's Custom House, just north of the river Liffey. For Bulmers, it reads North Cider or South Cider?'
Advertise, from Latin advertere, to direct ones attention to/turn around.
From ad , 'to, toward' + vertere, 'to turn'.
inaword@irishtimes. com
