Enterprising advertising creative working on the next campaign for high street electrical goods retailer Currys have been widely praised for their choice of music to appear in 30 second television adverts to begin next month.
The advertisements will feature extracts from The Beatles “Got to get you into my life” in what elderly veteran of London’s Blatant, Obvious and Smith advertising firm- Lionel Waits described as “What passes for a good idea in this industry.” Waits, appearing tired and jaded, was speaking at a dinner held in his honour after 45 years’ service in advertising and public relations. “The song speaks of the company’s desire to get prospective customers into the store so that they can spend their money there…” Waits muttered as he stared intently into his engraved commemorative ash tray “…context, subtlety and sincerity are not conducive to 30 second spots and this kind of subversion of heartfelt artistic sentiments is the cornerstone of our trade.”
Currys have previous in this regard having previously gained plaudits for the use of Eddie Grant’s “Electric Avenue” in a 2007 campaign. Alex Tool, the ‘creative’ brains behind that campaign explained as Waits’ left the reasonably priced hotel in which his function was held “In all honesty we didn’t see the cultural significance at first, we simply associated Electric Avenue with electricity and streets, then Irons, toasters and TVs with Currys, Simple!”
It was only later that an exasperated sibling pointed out to Tool that Grant’s 1982 hit was a direct response to the Brixton riots of 1981 as illustrated by the opening line “Down in the street there is violence.” Just 4 short years after the launch of Currys infamous campaign several hundreds of youths were filmed and photographed violently looting Currys across the capital and indeed the country. “Obviously this was great publicity for the brand!” Tool stated.
Currys are hoping for a similar though perhaps ironically, slightly more nuanced response to their newly announced campaign.