Santander 2013

This advertisement should be in the running for the Turner Prize.

It is one of the most unsettling pieces of film that I've ever seen, reducing advertising to a set of blank and bland facts, to be recited out of the mouths of an apparently arbitrary collection of sports stars. What are the celebrities doing in other people's houses? Have they broken in illegally? Or are we to suppose that they are ghostly apparitions? The atmosphere of the ad is one of oppressive silence, like that of a family that has lost a member but refused to ever discuss it. It's difficult to know what is stranger: the fact that Jenson Button is standing behind someone's fridge door, dressed in his racing gear, or the fact that he is sharing tips on gas bills, or the strange resignation to all of this on the part of the man using the fridge. Jessica Ennis is represented as a sort of track-suit-clad bag lady, who bothers people in the street with unwanted - and almost certainly false - information. The ordinary people, trying to go about their days in peace and privacy, exude a sad resignation that capitalism now drops (real? hallucinatory?) celebrities into their bathrooms and kitchens, to talk at them uninvited. If they could speak, what would they say? Their faces project fear and anxiety, as if they are now are trapped. Mostly they just want to be left the hell alone, to live, walk and paint; but this is the wish that sport, finance and above all advertising clearly will not grant. Is this a warning of some kind?

Comments

[Dave Timoney]

There was a series of adverts by Paddy Power a few years ago that employed the same device, in this case old footballers like Des Walker and Carlton Palmer popping up in the closet or the bath.

The "punters" then looked either perplexed or scared. In the Santander version, they appear less surprised, even (as you say) resigned. Perhaps we're being gradually acclimatised to a future avertising model in which CGI celebrity avatars bother us with personalised messages.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33LvfgOti10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qsLvBkNvHo

[Paul]

Even weirder is the idea that you'd want to sign up for a financial product whose rate is dependent on a sportsperson's performance. You get an extra 0.1% if Rory McIlroy wins a major... very odd.

[Julesevans77]

Totally agree. The ads have managed to take beloved household names like Jessica Ennis and turn them into creepy invaders from Mars. Its defamiliarized them and made them scary - exactly the wrong tactic! Plus they look very uncomfortable playing scary androids...

its from a new school of advertizing playing on the idea of advertizing messages as intrusive - the meerkats appearing in your room while youre sleeping, or the GoCompare opera singer being annoying. Not convinced by that school at all!