Ads in the age of the EPIC

Over the past few years, there’s been a growing trend in advertisers going all-out feature film on us. Average Joes raised to godlike stature seems to be the pitch a la mode. Those geniuses have cottoned on to our secret past-times of imagining our lives as films: meeting a loved one accompanied by soaring strings, strutting from petrol station to car on a blazing day, visualising our distraught friends at our funeral.

Carling probably led the pack with their You Know Who Your Mates Are campaign (running from 2007), a lads’ night out set against a backdrop of outer space, with God himself as the bouncer. Lynx made worshipful the skinny, untanned man by convincing four million bikini-clad hotties to chase after him. And, more recently, Lurpak celebrated the “intrepid fridge forager” with a dramatic fusion of cinematography and omelette.

Then there are the soundtracks to match: Chris Rouse’s Flute Concerto: Elegia for Carling’s Space, Alexandre Desplat’s Canis Lupus from the Fantastic Mr. Fox soundtrack for Lurpak’s Kitchen Odyssey. Orchestral walls of sound which wouldn’t be out of place in the most terrific of battle scenes are now synced to the lighting of a gas hob.

In a somewhat ironic twist, Terrence Malick’s recent film Tree Of Life (which, for what it’s worth, I found to be heart-wrenching and beautiful) was accused in a Guardian review of being “a colossal commercial selling us a hymn to life”. Hmm. Imagine, a film, using epic imagery and classical music to conjure emotion. How rude!

So will we ever tire of EPIC being shamelessly harnessed to catch our attention? Personally, I find a trailer-style voiceover with juicy brass section and/or angelic voices has an ever-decreasing effect.

I can’t help thinking that, in a typical underestimation of public nouse, there’s a danger of creating a rift here—a widening gap between the product itself and the shiny media image of it. Do you feel closer to Carling or Lurpak, or does the super-slickness of the ads only serve to make you mentally congratulate the team behind it? It would be interesting to compare its success – in terms of brand association – with the less palatable, but possibly more effective, earworm jingle.

Kitchen Odyssey is, admittedly, strangely alluring; the gloop of raw eggs never made me well-up, until now. I remember finding the Carling campaign inventive, witty and attention-grabbing. Having said that, I’ll only ever drink it if everything else is off.

Update, April 2015:
Four years later, in answer to “will we ever tire of it”…apparently not.