Switch off for a second and you’ll miss it.
In the Paddy Power ads, featuring José Mourinho, he talks about ‘being special in Milan, and Madrid’ and that it’s ‘not easy being special’.
He then goes on to say ‘we are all judge on results’.
That’s not a typo. I didn’t mean to write ‘judged’. He says ‘judge’.
He speaks fluent English, and certainly speaks at least one more language than I do, but there are little José-isms in his speech. ‘Judge’ is one of those.
But you know what that ‘judge’ does – it just makes the ad seem real. It makes it seem authentic. It makes it work.
Similarly, but for slightly different reasons, the Yorkshire Tea ads just work.
There’s the one with the Kaiser Chiefs playing live hold music – I like that one.
But the best one for me is where Parkinson is giving an interview to a potential candidate. It’s brilliant. It gives the ad a proper Yorkshire feel (or, as the tagline goes; ‘where everything’s done proper’). It makes the ad seem authentic.
The JD cross-track ads have been running for years (it feels like decades) and they just work. Yes, we all know that Jack Daniels is mass produced generic whisky, but the ads give it that real down-home feel; it’s made in a small, rural town by people who feel part of something. The ads make JD feel genuine – authentic.
It’s really hard to get right, but if you nail it, your product will seem like the genuine article – adding to its brand equity – and people buy into the genuine article.
What doesn’t work, for me, is the bloody Lloyds Bank ads and that stupid, saccharine, acoustic music played over the top of a galloping black horse.
F*ck off with that nonsense.
You know that Lloyds would snap up a struggling small business in a heartbeat.
Anyway, that’s my two penneth.
Authenticity – important and hard to achieve.