I few weeks ago I exercised my right to free speech and lodged a complaint with the Advertising Standards Bureau (the ad industry’s voluntary self-regulation outfit) about a Nando’s ad which revolves (sorry) around poledancing. Today I found out that the numerous complaints received about this ad have all been dismissed by the ASB, which is not altogether surprising given their track record of seldom upholding complaints which have something to do with objectionable depictions of gender and sexuality. Of course there will be some complaints in this area which arise only from the ‘ick’ factor (the Mentos ad where a man grew long squirmy nipples is a good example) but all the same it’s interesting how few reasonable complaints are upheld. What’s explicitly at stake in ASB evaluations is not whether an ad measures up to some arbitrary moral standard, but whether it infringes against actual community norms, viz:
The Board cannot hope to please all members of the community in its decision making. The importance of the Board’s work, however, is that an impartial panel of community members can apply what it considers is the community standard on a particular issue. Such attitudes will change over time and will be reflected in Board decisions.
That’s just as it should be. But from looking carefully through their past rulings I am a bit doubtful about the integrity of the complaints process as the ASB actually runs it. There are two factors which seem to make it difficult for sexuality & gender-related complaints against ads to get through: first, the Bureau concentrate on what is literally said or depicted in ads while most complaints have to do with things that are suggested or implied, for example through double entendres, visual puns and camera angles. Second, the Bureau appears to find mitigation in jokes, humour and what advertisers tend to call ‘lightheartedness’ - tendentious material seems more palatable if it’s clothed in some sort of attempt at humour. Putting these two things together I suspect the Bureau runs by a system which the advertising industry finds it extremely easy to game. And the incentives are high: sex sells.
Just to give you an idea of what sort of thing does get the ASB thumbs down, here’s an ad they canned last month:
This television advertisement opens on a woman wearing black shorts, a white t-shirt with the CQuip logo on the front, and boots, using a water blaster to hose down heavy machinery. Voiceovers of men in the background comment “Wow, I’d like to touch that”, “I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on that beauty” with sounds of “ooh…aah..yeah yeah…”. Four men in overalls are then seen admiring and stroking a water blaster (the previously unseen object of their comments) as the voiceover continues “Let a professional supply you with the right tools to keep your gear clean”. As the men are further seen examining the water blaster, the woman continues to clean the machine in the background. The voiceover concludes “CQuip - operator not included!”
The Nando’s ad is considerably less crude and obvious than this, but otherwise there is not a lot of substantive difference. It also uses lame humour to present a sexually objectified woman working while a man perves on her, all in the service of promoting some completley unrelated product. (If you haven’t seen the Nando’s ad, it’s on YouTube here: tigtog has posted about it on her own blog and mentioned it recently on LP as well.)
My objections to the ad were straightforward: I think it’s demeaning to both women and men, but mostly to women. In my submission I made it clear that I don’t subscribe to the current idea that poledancing has been reclaimed as an empowering expression of female sexuality, nor do I see paying tips as an empowering way for men to express their appreciation of female beauty. I personally doubt that it’s possible or desirable to reclaim poledancing for girlpower (unless it’s the other kind of Pole dancing, the sort done so well by Sharon Strzelecki), but my final and key point to the ASB was only that the status of poledancing is very much the subject of debate in our community and people hold strong and wildly different views about it. The ad’s acceptability is predicated on the assumption that the prevailing opinion is uncontroversially in favour of poledancing.
The ASB’s full ruling did touch on these issues. I can’t link directly to it because of the annoying way the website is set up (you have to look under complaints for June 2007) but here are some excerpts:
The Board considered that this advertisement depicted a
strong in control woman who went about her work in a professional manner (wearing a suit to work), enjoyed her work, enjoyed being ’sexy’ and enjoyed time with her family. The Board considered that this advertisement depicted the woman as being a strong and empowered woman.
….
The Board also noted that poledancing is becoming more mainstream with it currently being a popular form of exercise. While noting the change in attitude towards pole dancing the Board agreed that this change was probably not widespread in the community. Regardless of this the Board considered that this depiction of pole dancing was fairly clinical and not overtly sexual and was therefore not vilifying of women or inappropriately sexual.
….
The Board considered that the man was depicted in a very sterile manner and not in a way that made him appear sexist or sleasy [sic].
“Clinical and not overtly sexual”; “sterile”; “not…sleazy” - a number of complainants quoted in the ruling mentioned the arse-in-face motif as seen in that screencap. I find that while the ad shows the woman’s bum from the side it does irresistibly make me imagine the view from the man’s perspective. Clinical & sterile are not exactly the words I would use (although it’s possible they were thinking about Pap smears.) In the literal way the ASB approach things, this mental picture is considered entirely my own personal psychological problem and thus outside the Bureau’s concerns. But surely advertising is all about harnessing the power of suggestion? A similar logic is operating in the ASB’s ruling on a Calvin Klein billboard which shows a side view of a topless man and woman embracing: the fact that you can’t see the woman’s boobs was judged more important than the fact that you’re strongly invited to imagine the sensation of her boobs pressing against his. Without getting into the merits of that one it’s clear that there is much more to the CK ad than just its pictorial content.
“A strong and empowered woman”: given the known views of some of the members of the ASB review Board, I’m not surprised they disagree with me about the empoweringmentness of gyrating around a lampost in your knickers. But I am astonished that they glossed over the fact that the whole ad narrative is framed as a massive send-up. A woman who is confident, wears a suit to work, enjoys being sexy, spends time with her family, and … is held up as someone bizarre, in a ridiculous situation, whose story we’re encouraged to snigger at, secure in the knowledge of being simultaneously right-on w/r/t edgy sexual matters, and smart enough to get point of the satirical humour.
In the adverse ruling on the water blaster-thing ad I mentioned before, the board said “the tone of the advertisement was demeaning and denigrating towards women, and that its attempted humour failed.â€? So we know they do recognise that jokes can involve cruelty towards (again, sorry) butts. Not many rhetorical strategies are as effective as jokes at sorting the audience into those who get it and those who don’t, with the added boon that those who don’t get it can be scorned with impugnity by those who do. (It won’t be many comments before some bright spark accuses me of humourlessness.) But what allows one joke to be judged a flop where another, structurally similar, apparently succeeds? There is an implicit recourse to standards of wit, cleverness and good taste involved here which I think has a lot to do with ideas about class. The mode of the water blaster ad is bogan but the Nando’s ad is yuppie. And we know which of those groups we’d rather feel we belonged to. As a press release on this page indicates, the board is anxious to be seen as “recognis[ing] the importance of humour in advertising by dismissing complaints against ads which were obviously using parody to convey a message.” If this is the kind of basis upon which the ASB board really makes its decisions, then it’s not so surprising after all that so many objections are dismissed - or that so many ads clothe their misogyny and racism in lame attempts at humour.
My faith in our institutions is restored.
Laura
With all due respect, you should have been sent a letter telling you to grow up. Good god, I thought only women wearing boilersuits in the 1970s were so tacky. And you are allowed to teach young adults at a university? God help them.
In fact women like you are enough to inspire one to campaign the tabloids to bring back Page 3 girls!
One of the downsides of moving back to Sydney after living in London and New York is the total lack of decent lapdancing clubs.
Do you have examples of the countercases you mention? Is there anywhere to watch them at? I dont think that that advertisement is particuarly demeaning to either men or women, I just think it is decadent.
, thats nice, but I think touch is different to looking, is it not?
Incognito, I don’t have links to any videos of the other ads mentioned. Those are all ads the ASB has ruled on in the past few months and because their website is set up in such a way that direct linking is impossible you can only get to the rulings from here http://www.advertisingstandardsbureau.com.au/pages/casestudy.asp
I don’t follow your point about touch, which is indeed different from looking.
After discussing this ad with my SO (and posting about it on my own blog), we came to the conclusion that it was at least partly about attracting attention by provoking outrage.
Laura, I was expecting a ‘women like you’ comment in the comments, and I’m sure you too thought it was inevitable — but to get it right up there at #2 is quite a distinguished achievement. Congratulations.
I wonder whether CMc or JG would care to present an actual counter-argument. If they can, of course. I mean, they’d have to actually read the post first.
Good call on the class thing, BTW.
The ASB is useless toothless tiger. I made a complaint about a beer advertisement that clearly breached the voluntary code relating to alcohol advertising but the complaint never got resolved because the ASB and some other alcohol industry self-regulation body kept insisting that the other was responsible for hearing the complaint.
I also complained about one of the many McDonald’s ads that clearly breach the Advertising to Children Code but it was dismissed due to the overwhelming strength of McDonald’s legal trickery.
Robert, I’m sure you’re right that the ad is at least partly trolling. (The comments at your blog are a bit frightening, jeez.) But that doesn’t make it less gross, in my view. It just makes it harder for the review board to evaluate it rationally.
My immediate thought on this topic was: “How would a woman who works as a pole dancer feel about this ad?”
Rather than the usual stereotype of the drug-addled loser, we see a woman who is obviously proud, confident, articulate and has an apparently happy looking family. As such, I surmise that a pole dancing professional would have a positive view of the ad. Of course I may be wrong.
I wonder how many poll dancers read LP?
“…(the Mentos ad where a man grew long squirmy nipples is a good example)…”
Great googly-moogly! What are they putting in the water down there?
Recycled sewage.
To be fair, j_p_z, it’s stolen from the UK.
Italy, it seems, had the sense to ban it.
Can my comment be released from moderation? thanks.
Melaleuca you wrote “we see a woman who is obviously proud, confident, articulate and has an apparently happy looking family.” But like the ad standards bureau you don’t take into account that she’s appearing in an ad which is, in the advertiser’s own words, “intended to be humorous and a parody.” The whole thing is nudge-nudge wink-wink and we’re not supposed to take her seriously.
Wow, I bet those lap dancers just queue up in droves to hear all about Homer and Aeschylus. I wonder whether quoting big chunks of The Iliad (in Latin) is all part of the fun.
Just something I read the other day from Jim Thompson:
“Satire can only exist in the rarefied atmosphere of excellence… it’s either excellent or nothing at all.”
and as Laura said, the punch line is that she’s a wholesome family mum and a stripper - pick one or the other for the necessary incongruity for the joke to work.*
And for mercy’s sake, enough with the mentos ads.
*Old country pub joke:
A woman walks into a bar.
So it’s an urban myth that the pole dancer’s client is in fact tucking a cartoon of Mahommed into the pole dancer’s g-string?
The Board’s response seems to reiterate the way that the makers of the ad would like to defend the message. Interesting.
The whole idea of industry self-regulation is a joke.
When I worked behind the bar in a strip club in Brisbane circa early 90s, there were at least two lapdancers doing their masters, one in classics. So take your patronising attitude and bite me.
Pavovl’s Cat was addressing John Greenfield, a person who knows all there is to know about Western Civ, and who is good enough to share his learning with any person within earshot. She was referring to this comment he put on a different thread. You were not to know this, of course.
Patronage Bad!
Out of curiosity, do the people arguing for this ad to be banned also want poledancing itself to be banned? It seems a little odd that you have an activity which is legal, with probably thousands of people going to strip clubs every night across Australia, and yet for some reason you shouldn’t refer to it in a TV ad.
In other words, what I’m sayin’ is that there are heaps of things in our society that could be construed as potentially “demeaning” to women or to men. If you wanted to get rid of ‘em all, well heck, the Playboys would be burned, the Calvin Klein ads would be defenestrated*, and we’d end up in a world that Family First and the Taliban would just love.
[*defenestrated is my favourite word, and I try to use it whenever possible.]
T’anks Laura, and yes, gogogirl, it’s true; my comment was indeed aimed elsewhere, and I was not patronising lapdancers for a nanosecond. ‘Hopeless, yearning envy’ is a closer approximation of my attitude to lapdancers, especially the one in the picture — my own bum has never, ever looked like that.
Patronage v.v. bad indeed.
Having been raised by an order of mendicant nuns, John Greenfield, I know I’ve led a sheltered existence. But I really don’t get the point of lap-dancing clubs. Is it that scantily clad women are meant to rub their naughty bits against your mighty manhood and you then cum in your trousers?
Or are you then meant to leave the club and score a drug-addicted 18 year old? Or go into the dunnies and jerk off?
Please do enlighten me.
I also think the above ad should be taken off air on the basis of its profound stupidity alone. It’s the advertising equivalent of nails being dragged down a blackboard, and in no way do I feel a sudden desire to eat chicken chewing-gum or whatever it is they’re flogging.
Paulus, when I complained to the ad standards bureau, as is my democratic right to do so, my ambitions only extended to getting the ad taken off.
It was the ad I was criticising, and the smug, smarmy way it presents an undressed woman for our laughter, all in the noble interests of selling pieces of fried chicken.
If it was an ad for actual poledancing I would perhaps not have objected to the ad. I might object to the poledancing, but not necessarily to the manner in which it was advertised.
Oh the irony, coming from someone who uses the pseudonym “Christine Keeler”!
(P.S. Apologies if that is actually your real name.)
You must be thinking of my evil twin…
Ok, this comment has done it. http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/06/21/laughing-at-with-the-advertising-standards-bureau/#comment-378517
I cant hide my true feelings any longer.
I love you, CK.
Jesus Christ, you really have gotten some serious personal validation out of this little exercise of ‘democratic rights’ and ‘freedom of speech’, haven’t you Christine. And all it took was a phone call to the ad standards board. Good grief. Did you stop to consider that the ad itself was a really super duper exercise of those totally awesome democratic rights you’re so eager to remind us that you have managed to exercise?
Forgive me if I don’t join in the celebration of prudishness. Men and women are often conceptualised as sexual objects. Always have been, always will be. Blame the Catholics for the disgust with which we are apparently expected to reflect on that fact, if you like. Happily, these days only the too-serious-for-words PC Thugs(TM) bother banging on and on in public about the objectification of men and women, and the supposed demeaning of humanity thereby. These are, by the way, the same people who make themselves cum to sexually attractive people, just like everyone else.
Cheers
BBB
I guess the fundamental question here is, if sex sells successfully, then can it really be said to violate community standards? I guess I would prefer authorities to err on the side of perhaps censoring too few things rather than censoring too many things.
I’d agree with you heartily, BBB and Damien, if the traffic was equal and two-way. If there were an equal amount of Spearmint Rhinos and Gentlewomens’ clubs catering to women wanting to look at a parade of buff man-flesh, I’d be in complete agreement. However, you overlook the status of women as a sex class catering to the whims of men. It’s not a matter of “prudery” or being anti sex per se.
Can we start a new bingo card here? “Prudishness”, “PC”, I’m sure it won’t be long before that old favourite of the opinion pages, “purse-lipped” makes an appearance. Yawn.
What about women who do poledance - feminism is about choice not what you choose - an individual woman who chooses to be a poledancer is not sexist or anti-feminist. I hate the “you’re only feminist if you make the “right” choice” attitude.
Not every act a feminist chooses is therefore a feminist act, just like not every act an environmentalist chooses is necessarily an environmentally friendly act.
Sure, feminists can be poledancers and still be feminists. The job pays well and income is important for self-sovereignty. That doesn’t make poledancing in and of itself a feminist act.
BBB, my name’s Laura - Christine is a different person entirely.
The rest of your comment is quite mad, but thanks for making it anyway.
Of course I know the makers of the ad have the same rights as I do, and yes I do unapologetically think those rights are super duper awesome and shiny. If you were less intent on having a go at me you might have appreciated that I mentioned the free speech angle because posts like this one invariably attract accusations of favouring censorship.
As for the rest, cumming to sexually attractive people is delightful, but I persist in thinking cum and barbequed chicken don’t really belong together.
M.L. Brewton, how I look at it is this: whether poledancing is compatible with feminism is a matter of opinion, but the idea that we should snigger at a woman who combines poledancing with motherhood and wearing a suit strikes me as the very opposite of feminism.
Laura i agree but as i said, the thing that upsets me is the almost automatic condemnation by some people when a woman makes a choice like taking her husband’s name or going into poledancing/lapdancing. My aunt took her husband’s last name but she is still a person devoted to feminism and equality
Good for her, M.L. Brewton.
No-one in the world can be a perfect idealist and survive (unless you live in a cave, weave grasses for coverings and the birds bring you food out of the goodness of their hearts). We all have to make compromises with our ideals in order to avoid the negative effects of social iconoclasm - strike a balance between our beliefs, bread on the table and being part of a community.
Making compromises shouldn’t mean that one gets drummed out of the ideological movement of your choice, certainly. The Purity Parade scorekeeping gets tedious and counterproductive.
On the other hand, having people point out that one has indeed made a compromise with our ideals is a valid criticism as well. If we can’t be honest with ourselves about the social pressures we choose to bow to as well as the social pressures we choose to fight, then we aren’t truly acknowledging the power of social pressures, and that will make us less effective as activists.
OK M.L.
I am delighted to hear about your aunt.
Thanks Laura and Tigtog
Um is there is any way to contact you off-blog?
There are contact details for us both on the About LP Bloggers page, ML.
Why are you projecting me on to Laura, BBB? I just think it’s a particularly crap ad. My question is whether or not the Nando’s execs who authorised this steaming pile of kangaroo droppings have still got jobs?
What the hell. They’ll probably get a pay rise.
Interesting contrapunctal interchange between progressives and libertarians.
For libertarians it raises the issue of which sacred cows are fit to slaughter and which to preserve.
For progressives it raises the issue of the relationship between repression and social progress.
Now that Ratty has donned the khaki camo again, this time to protect Aborigines from stick mags, would his flying squad seek to ban the Nando ad from screening in Wadeye?
Just took a look at this commercial, and honestly I couldn’t even figure out whether or not to be offended, because I was so busy being confused.
The ad is a weird train-wreck of strange film grammar and cluttered signifiers. There are at least three lame jokes (and maybe more) simultaneously fighting each other and tripping over each other’s feet. Forget about censorship questions; whoever made this thing just needs to go back to film school for a remedial course in how to make sense.
It’s always funny to see how even the film style of commercials is so different in different countries. Australia seems to mostly use choices in film grammar and production design that are very similar to the UK; to an American eye, they’ve always looked a trifle peculiar. When there was that fracas over the beer commercial a while ago, where the people hurled the ingredients into the sky and then it rained beer, I read the description of the ad here, and I thought the premise sounded hilarious. Then I watched the actual commercial, and I found it dour and wrongly-paced and almost sort of upsetting, not nearly as funny as the description. But obviously it was a hit over there, which I guess just goes to show there’s different national ways of telling a joke.
So, a guy walks into a cafe… wait, wait, let me start again. All right, a guy walks into a bar…
It’s funnier already!
1) Buttocks too sharp.
2) Needs a sammich.
This is the third thread on this silly ad on LP and the commentary and perceived offense still make absolutely no sense to me. The ad is dumb and misrepresentative of pole dancing, we get it. Somehow, because it’s a bad joke, that makes it offensive, I don’t get it. Does that mean if I tell a fantastic joke I can get away with whatever I like?
This is reminding me, it’s about time we went to Nandos for lunch again.
Craig, I’m curiously hungry for some spicy chicken meself, but I can’t help but think of all the undernourished actresses out there who can obviously barely afford to eat at the places they advertise for, so I’ll be donating my $10.00 into the nearest g-string and going hungry as an act of solidarity.
I appreciate the point you make about Australian humour, j_p_z.
It is observable that while there are many funny things in Australia, there are few amusing things beyond Melbourne.
David did you read the post? It’s not just a rant against the ad, it’s also about the complaints process.
Two ads with the same puerile content, ok? the ad standards board let one go (this poledancing one) and wagged the finger at the other (water blaster thing). The only material difference is that the waterblaster one was judged to be a failed attempt at a joke.
So yes it does seem that if you tell a ‘fantastic joke’ you can get away with whatever you like.
“My question is whether or not the Nando’s execs who authorised this steaming pile of kangaroo droppings have still got jobs?”
CK you really have me thinking about this ad. I kept looking at that introductory post picture and thought, this was not the place for a sensitive new age bloke to enter.
Once the devil had forced me to watch the u-tube, my very bad mind kept thinking that the advertisement could only be improved, if the model had dropped a “steaming pile”, of her own “droppings” on the nice gentlemans’ foot…. winked, then talked about her ‘peri-peri’ cravings.
Please Ratty don’t send the “khaki camo” unit here.
Laura wrote:
and:
Given that neither of us has seen the other ad (depicting a bunch of men openly lusting after a woman—wait, a pressure cleaner) I’d dispute this point and your earlier one.
In the (unseen) ad, we have a woman being lusted after in what is clearly a non sexual situation. It is, and remains, unacceptable to portray the mens actions in that context as funny (because, in that context, they are threatening).
The Nando ad clearly shows the pole dancer as being in control of the situation.
The board (bunch of conservative idjits that they are) are right - context makes the difference. Their ruling in no way condones pole dancing, but they are making the distinction that the women in these ads are being depicted in clearly different ways: one is the potential victim of a predatory pack of bogans, the other is extracting cash from an idiot where the power situation is reversed.
So to answer my own question: No, you can’t get away with anything as long as the joke is funny enough, the context of the joke matters. Not all pole dancers are victims (likely some of them are), but all pressure washing ladies in too-tight pants and a wet t-shirt should be free from the open salivating of a horny pack of bogans because it’s threatening. See the difference?
j_p_z - I didn’t like that beer ad at all, either. Like a lot of ads made in the same period, it had a creepy, almost j-horror vibe about it. Of course, the original version also depicted two young women being flung into the sky as a sacrifice to the beer gods, which kind of pushed it from creepy to repulsive.
I’d still like to know what the connection is between icky processed artifically flavoured meat and perving on some total stranger’s ladyparts …
Oh, wait.
David - she’s powerfully extracting cash from an idiot, good for her - but this is happening in an ad ‘intended to be a parody.’
Unless you think the guy in the club is the butt of the joke?
Now, now, PC - you can diss the ad all you like but they do make a damn fine chicken, with actual herbs and spices and lemon juice (from out of a lemon!) and chillies.
Credit where credit’s due.
Laura wrote
Perhaps he could sniff the butt of a joke (sorry).
I think the Nandos ad doesn’t work because the message isn’t coherent. The premise is that our Portuguese-style grilled chicken is yummy and addictive. What if we create a bizarro world in which our peri-peri seasoning is so addictive that cigarette-type remedies are necessary? To show that we are in a bizarro world, we will twist the stereotype of the efficient working mother and, instead of showing her zipping around banking or lawyering or performing surgery, have her do the spiel against the background of her poledancing job as if that is completely zippy and white collar and wholesome.
So is the chicken addictive in the real world or not? Nando’s answer: A little bit, but wholesome enough to enjoy whenever you like. Audience’s answer: What are you talking about, and what’s the deal with the stripper?
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m with Bismark.
I found myself way too confused to be properly outraged. I confess that I really love good advertising, but this was, well, moronic.
I agree Bismarck. The comments on the youtube video support what you’re saying as well.
So is it too Machiavellian to wonder if the triple-twist is intended to do away with objections by confusing them into inarticulateness.
JPZ and Bismarck et al are right about the ad’s incoherently bad visual grammar — to me, the message it conveys is ‘Our chicken is addictive and costs so much that you have to spend every day shaking your money-maker in the face of some chump with more cash than sense in order to be able to afford it. Sort of like heroin. Isn’t that a scream?’
What it’s pandering to among other things is the sexbot equivalent of the superman fantasy — wholesome white-collar working mum takes off her suit and her glasses (presumably not in a phone box) and is magically transformed into every sad little tosser’s wet dream.
Laura
I have given money like that. And I’ll compare IQ’s with you any day.
Success! I never thought I’d see the day when Anna, Laura AND Pavlov’s Cat agreed with me on anything. If only Tigtog and Kim would weigh in, it would bring a tear to this crusty old right-winger’s eye.
The ad is very confusing. The first couple of times I saw it I thought the guy recoiled in horror because the woman had eaten Nandos and was emitting some kind of foul peri-peri bum gas. (There really was no other way of putting that.) Thank god it’s been posted on youtube - now I can fully appreciate the intricacies of the narrative.
BTW, there’s a Bob Jane T-Mart ad on at ze mo that uses much the same formula as the rejected CQuip ad, although the tone is a bit less threatening. Two blokes approach an appropriately blokey car against which two “babes” (that’s Ralph-speak, that is) are rubbing their backsides. “Are they yours?” asks one of the blokes. “Sure are,” says the other bloke. Are they talking about the ladeez? Because, surely, in this day and age, etc, etc. But no - they’re actually referring to the car’s tyres. Which of course everybody who watches the ad will immediately buy, even those like me who don’t own a car, because the ad is that damn clever.
Well that’s a more coherent criticism than my ’steaming pile of crap’. I have no idea what it’s supposed to be flogging. Chewing gum? Chicken? Portugal?
My guess is that it’s done by the same agency that does that ridiculous beer ad with the bogan in the farmyard growing beer from mescalin.
I think that Bismarck has been too simplistic in his deconstruction of the ad.
At the narrative level it’s the story of one woman’s journey to wholeness.
1. She tells a story about her conflicted past from the point of view of he new status as a white-collar professional.
2. [Backstory] In the bad old days she grew addicted to peri peri.
3. [Flashback] She then became a pole dancer.
4. But her attempts to control her addiction with patches undermined her performance.
5. She found a more effective way of controlling her addiction.
6. She now happily indulges her addiction by eating Nandos with her family. She still uses the gum. “But Nando-fix gum comes close.” Perhaps her patchless hindquarters snagged her husband. And now sex, domesticity and peri peri form a pleasurable, integrated motif in her life, which gives her the confidence to tell the story of her past struggles.
Ostensibly, the gum achieved this transformation. But the woman is clearly an unreliable narrator. She does have time for cravings, which she acknowledges, and on occasions gives in to.
And yet her state of denial seems to have done her no harm…
… except for the probability that she is not a financial district professional but still a pole dancer.
At the sub-textual level the ad is about narration and denial.
Oh, Bismarck, just for you: I agree with your analysis of the ad.
This feels very strange.
Come clean TT. That black cat is actually Julie Bishop, isn’t it.
“growing beer from mescalin.”
Haven’t seen that one CK, but it’s a hell of an idea.
Tigtog: Bliss!
Sincere apologies for the mix up, Laura and Christine! I should have been more careful.
Cheers
BBB
My first thought whenever I get confused by an ad is to assume that that’s what was intended. Most ads can so easily be decoded in a uniform way that they never break from the mundane and are never memorable. In other words I reckon it’s designed entirely to ellicit Laura’s, Katz, PC’s interpretations, renarration, objections etc. (Of course this is not to defend the ad at all - quite the opposite - just to acknowledge some level and form of calculability).
TT - a slap on the paws for that entirely captionless cat pic.
We can haz caption competion?
Im in ur parifarel vishun, crepin u owt!!1!
Im in ur feminzm, betrayin ur principle
Im on your khat foto, not being pertanunt to saym
“Who’s drivin’ da car, missy?”
paws
The advertisement is boring,and if women who find some intellectual understanding of why it is boring,in themselves,and want it banned then, fools the ABS. I looked at the Board, and frankly if those people cannot find it boring and unreal, then being a success in Australia is too easy. I think,like the advertisement itself they,the Board have a limited shelf life. They couldnt apply their own sense of substance to whatever guides their decisions and say no, its boring and depicts women in a way that is exceptionally unreal. Sure lets have attractive females in business,if that is what they want,that pole dance. But the advertisement isnt about your achieving female business person who likes as a past-time pole dancing in front of people and getting cash put in her g-string. So would she sell poles this way,and would that be unreal!? In winter,without knee warmers!?
Yes, Bismark, I agree.
Okay, but can I just say this insider-clique-ness of commenting about other blogs on this blog is what makes many people stay away from these discussions - it is seen as such an ‘insiders club’ that unless you are part of some weird blog-network universe you don’t get in.
I can see how you feel that way, gogogirl, but it was explained to you very quickly - you weren’t being kept in the dark.
Also, we’re very welcoming, and you’ll find it even more enjoyable to participate when you know the people and can remember previous discussions with them. It’s like any conversation with people you know - they don’t happen in a vacuum.
Anna’s right gogogirl, we’re very welcoming. And creative. Have you seen LPs proposal for Australia’s new defence equipment? It’s quite stylish http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/06/22/defence-a-make-work-project-for-indolent-industrial-states/#comment-379008
Interesting. I work in market research and have done a lot of advertising development work.
The ad is a shambles, so the “creative” as it is known, may not have been pre-tested. I can hear all the arguments around a table, with the agency explaining how wonderful it all was to worried Nandos executives. The question of whether the ad was offensive would certainly have been considered, big companies are always concerned with their public image.
One point I’d like to make is that most people greatly over-estimate the effect of advertising. IMO the main effect of advertising on established brands is to raise or maintain top-of-mind awareness of the brand. This is the reason that so much intrusive or risque advertising is created.
So oddly enough, the Nandos ad might be quite effective, simply because it’s so crap or confusing that it’s memorable. And the “main message” - Nandos is so tasty it’s addictive - is not so difficult for the target audience to decode. That said, I wouldn’t be proud to be associated with this campaign.
One final thing, if an ad leaves you cold or you find it confusing, it may be that it’s not aimed at you. You’d be surprised what pushes the buttons of 18-24 yo spirit drinkers, for example.
Anyway, though you might like a view from inside the industry.
Well that’s good James, because I couldn’t figure out WTF it was about.
Christine, look you’re right, it’s a very convoluted sell, and a terrible execution. I was only trying to explain how such things get made, and how they might be evaluated.
Do you still have the chair?