Arrrrr Bisto, you patronising bastard

So the new Bisto advert wants us all to get together for one night a week, all sit at the table and eat 'proper' food, with a 'proper' gravy. Take a look below if you haven't seen it already.

Well guess what? Most people I know do that already, when they can, and Bisto is not 'proper' gravy, I've seen Karen make proper gravy, it's it's way too much effort, to bother with.

What really annoys me about this advert is its misguided attempt to make 'Britain better', by striking a simple concept into the homes of broken Britain. An idea so utterly inane it could only have come from a advertising executive, a concept so pointless and patronising that it comes out of nowhere, based on nothing but a whimsical notion of how much better life used to be, the idea that we'd all be happier if dad came home from work early and had dinner at the table.

Well fucking guess what, dad would dicking love to come home early and eat with his family, but he's busy earning the money for the morally engrossed gravy they're all busy eating. So don't make him feel bad for putting your shitty product on his own table, and not being there to enjoy it.

You know what Bisto, most people are sitting at the tables and eating 'proper' dinners, but if they're not, it probably, is because they've got something more important to do, it's because it's 2012, times are hard, people have to work when the work is and sometimes that's at tea time, so get off your high horse and stop preaching to England like you're some kind of moral compass for all families. Your a corporation that makes gravy, we don't need you to tell us what to do, we just need you to make some fucking gravy granules we can pour over our shitty teas.

Speak to Citizen about, not being patronising, gravy and swearing in blogs. Call to action of the year?

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Too Busy to Save Lives

If you take a look at this post and figure you can't read it in a minute you're going to 'do one', and that's fair enough. Attention spans are at a critical point, nobody has anytime for anything these days.

People hate reading instructions, wading though tutorials, watching How-To videos and anything that's going to teach them to do something properly, everyone is obsessed with the idea they're busy, and their time is ultra precious, why would they waste it on something they can probably skim read and 'fudge'.

A recent example of this is the Vinnie Jones CPR ad. It's a brilliant advert, the message is great, the script is funny and succinct, and the casting and music are spot on, but take a moment to think about what an important message that is, and how childishly it's been spoon fed to the public.

When the guidelines for first response medical recovery changed last year there was an important message to get out to the public, in the 80's they might have considered a Public Service Broadcast to get people's attention, but these days that's exactly the kind of thing people don't have time for, so instead advertisers have to think of ways into fooling people that they're not having their busy, busy schedule eaten into, and the only way to do this is to blitz them with 'fun'.

The ad takes an important set of instructions for SAVING SOMEONE'S LIFE and breaks them down to BeeGee's song, so we can all remember them. Is this evolution, is this how sophisticated we've all become, is this where our hectic schedules have got us? We all think we're a more sophisticated generation then our parents, but I'm positive they were never too busy to watched a boring Public Service Broadcast about how to save a life.

I'm not blaming the ad, it's brilliant, I'm just saying if we carry on being so busy we have to be spoon fed life saving information to music, then I see a not too distant future where One Direction sing the news, and event though Harry's hair is beyond perfect, we can't allow that.

Hope that was less than a minute. Thanks for your time.

Here's the ad:

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

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Or call 07738 175 614

Stop worrying about 1984, it's over...

People think they hate adverts, they think they hate being marketed too, and that all promotions are evil ways of trying to suck some money out of their wallet. They think this, until they see an advert that appeals to them and makes them spend some money, then after that, they hate adverts again. 

This is how our generation is, we're all about skipping the ads on Sky Planner, ignoring them in magazines and moaning about them on websites, 

What if every advert was directly for you, what if you'd grown up in a world where advertisers only bothered you when they had something you wanted, at the price you wanted to pay for it? Then advertising isn't annoying, it's helpful. Well, this is the world we live in today, and until we stop being scared of a faux 'Big Brother Society,' and stop worrying that someone is going to download our saved games on Grand Theft Auto and a million photos of us in the pub, then our generation is never going to get there. We've got to be flexible on what we consider to be 'Orwellian Measures' and accept that fewer, more relevant messages is far more acceptable than a thousand irrelevant ones.

Web and mobile Location Services are the key to this. The kids growing up now think nothing of broadcasting their location every minute of the day on sites like Facebook and Foursquare, but us grown ups snigger at them for thinking 1984 was just a year Band Aid happened, they don't understand the dangers of people knowing where they area all the time, back in our day nobody knew where we were, and obviously that was much safer!

As ever the kids are alright, they're the ones accepting this, without knowing why they need to hide themselves all the time, or without understanding the social pressure to fear corporations and data collection, they are in fact freeing themselves from an old, crippling school of thought that opens up endless opportunity, and potentially declutters their lives from pointless communications.

Of course I don't want to publish my PIN code on Facebook and I don't want people to know when I'm doing a poo, but that's not how these things are set up, they're built with care and security and we have to trust them. Ultimately that's easier if you have nothing to hide, but Location Services aren't there to catch people out, they're there for a new generation of Nano-Targeted advertising, they're there so when you breakdown you get an advert for the AA, when you're having a party you know where to get a cake, and they're there to free you from the DFS Bank Holiday sale advert where everyone's laying on an unmade bed - unless you want a bed of course.

The youth are never wrong about these things, just like they were about The Beatles, Punk Rock and Wham Bars, they know how to live in their times. They'll laugh at us in 40 years as we cower away in an old people's home paranoid the government is spying on our phone, then they'll take us to the toilet and post on Facebook we're doing a poo, so you see, we can never win.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Dadvertising - Mum's Not Dead Honest.

It's finally happened. 

Fathers, at last, after burning our papooses at Westminster we've battled our way into the public consciousness, we're being represented in non-tragic scenarios and it feels great.

Dad's have at last become a worthwhile adverting proposition for products other than toiletries and power tools. We have created a new breed of advert that a picks a hole at the notion 'Mum does all the shopping' and finally recognises that Dad does a bit as well, our hard work has lead to the long awaited birth of 'Dadvertising'.

The first strike in our campaign was the below advert for Sainsburys

I really liked this advert from the start, the first time I saw it, it was shot beautifully, the music was great, and without being overly sentimental, it managed to intelligently steer a path through real situations that a father aspires to share with his son.

In fact, it made me feel so happy to see a father and son interacting this way that I was sure it was going to be a Cancer Research advert and the Dad was going to turn out to be a ghost. Such is the way advertisers have ignored us for so long.

OK, so maybe the message is secretly aimed at mums, and, at the end when the Mum pokes her head around the door is probably backs that up. Personally, I think that last scene devalues the ad a little, but, you can almost hear panicked Account Managers saying; "WHAT IF EVERYONE THINKS THE MUM IS DEAD!", which is why these kinds of ads never happen, but nobody ever wonders if Dad's dead when they see Mum washing little Timmy's clothes do they?

The depiction of a Father-Son relationship like this for a major retailer that has no motive other than to sell groceries is a bold step, and one that genuinely warmed my heart, this was the first big success for Dadvertising, there are more and my favourite will follow on Wednesday.

Let us know what you think? Are Dadverts going to take over TV, is the word 'Dadvert' annoying you?

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614