There’s still a good couple of weeks until we actually reach December, so of course that means it’s supermarket Christmas TV advert campaign season, where all the major retailers remind us that it’s actually Christmas at the end of the year just in case any of us had forgotten.
In the past, adverts have achieved widespread attention for all sorts of reasons – everything from a touching re-enactment of the no-man’s-land Christmas football game of 1914 to omg lol a dog on a trampoline lol omg that’s class. This year, however, one particular ad is doing the rounds for a completely different reason that no marketing department could’ve predicted or hoped for.
Not content with that winning combination of D-list celebrities singing about prawn rings and a defrosted gateau, Iceland (the supermarket, not the country) has touched upon the environmental impacts of mass consumption and how much they’d like to try, in some small way, to limit the damage. Touching, if a little jarring for the typically festive season.
The ad itself hasn’t been cleared for TV broadcast by the advertisement clearing people, which has incidentally created additional social media buzz around the short clip, essentially getting more people to pay attention to it than they probably would’ve done if it was lumped in with all the other ads. While this is, by and large, a good thing for getting a serious message across to large numbers of consumers, there’s something slightly more worrying to me about that sharing is coming about.
The reason for the ban comes from the fact that the animation has either been created by, commissioned by, or a vast portion of the material has been utilised by the organisation Greenpeace. (I’m not entirely sure about the level of involvement but I’ve made my best efforts to find out. The point is, there’s a connection to Greenpeace there.) As an environmentally conscious organisation, they’re hardly evil genius supervillains, stroking cats in armchairs and holding world governments to ransom. However, because of their historical lack of impartiality on controversial matters, they’ve been ruled as unable to advertise on TV on political grounds. Yes it’s all a bit vague and I’m not quite sure I understand the logic and reasoning behind it, but I understand that such a ruling has been made.
Even though the Iceland (supermarket, not country) advert doesn’t include any references to Greenpeace and the organisation isn’t mentioned, the fact that the animated material has been created by/used by/associated with the environmental group essentially means that it’s not eligible for broadcast on said political grounds. There’s very little in the actual content of the ad to cause an issue as far as I can understand (then again, I’m not an advertising standards body), so it seems to me the political reasons for the ban are to do with the association with an environmental body that’s not been cleared to advertise on telly.
Of course, all of the above doesn’t neatly fit into a tweet or a Facebook post, and even if it did, there’s extremely little chance that the average joe scrolling through their feed would stop and take note of it all to make their best efforts to understand the reasoning behind the ban. So it’s put into simpler terms that people can grasp a little more quickly, even if at the expense of additional explanation.
“This advert has been banned from TV for being too political. Let’s share it now and make everyone aware.”
The issue I take with this simplistic clickbaity kind of approach is that all the average joes viewing the ad – who haven’t necessarily done the legwork to find out the reasoning behind the ban but may take the words “too political” at face value – have this misconception that the reason for the ban pertains to the ad’s content. All of a sudden, we believe that ‘the man’ is trying to stifle this important issue informing us about the effects of deforestation and palm oil.
It’s a subtle change in the wording that ends up slightly altering the meaning – Chinese whispers – to go from “this advert is ineligible for broadcast based on certain political grounds” to “this advert is too political”, but the latter provokes a better reaction from the online masses. This opens up a wider issue that goes beyond Iceland (headquarters: Deeside, not Reykjavík) and touches upon that modern classic: “fake news”.
A massive divergence here, but the creator of Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker, recently stated in an interview promoting the upcoming fifth season that it might be interesting one day in the future to create sequels or follow-ups to one or two of the standalone stories previously showcased. A gossipy, entertainmenty news site later tweeted along the lines of: “Black Mirror Season 5 contains sequels to these classic episodes…” prompting Brooker himself to debunk this with a simple “No” (both tweets since deleted).
The point I’m struggling towards is this oversimplifying and miscommunication of complex information to appeal to the masses. Sure the immediate effects are subtle (ordinary people are incensed at this important environmental message being stifled for inadequately explained reasons), but the potential knock-on effects this can end up having on a populous society could very easily spiral out to somewhere unpleasant.
Basically, people, just be better at questioning things and taking the time to find out the whole story, rather than just taking it at face value as presented to you. Or I’m moving to Iceland.
This is really from way earlier in the year, but after recently winning this year’s Welsh Music Prize, now seems as good a time as any to bring this to the plate. Nearly every song of the album sounds completely different in style and tone so there’s probably something for everyone in it. However it makes picking a single song here all the more difficult.
So going with this one, it’s a short jaunt that packs a bit of punch but leaves you a little lost and wanting more come the end of its two minutes. If the fish-eye lens doesn’t hurt your eyes too much, you might appreciate that it looks as though this particular video was filmed in the social club from Phoenix Nights. I did anyway.
Boy Azooga – Loner Boogie
Jamie Walsh 
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