Christmas is upon us again. A period when we get to spend way too much time in the company of our loved ones, sacrifice a frighteningly large, genetically enhanced mega-chicken and most important of all - exchange presents. Christmas is a time for giving, a time for sharing. A time for advertising. That’s ok though – we live in a consumerist society and advertising has probably existed since the time of cave drawings.
Long gone are the days when the function of an advert was to simply sell us a car (for example) on the strength of it being safe and fuel efficient. We all know that the purpose of many adverts these days is sell us an image or an ideal – that by driving a particular car or using a particular mobile phone network we are aligning ourselves with the other awesome motherfuckers partaking in the same on our TV screen.
Long gone are the days when the function of an advert was to simply sell us a car (for example) on the strength of it being safe and fuel efficient. We all know that the purpose of many adverts these days is sell us an image or an ideal – that by driving a particular car or using a particular mobile phone network we are aligning ourselves with the other awesome motherfuckers partaking in the same on our TV screen.
So yeah, plenty of adverts are shallow – nothing new there. However, alongside the usual adverts we see at pretty much any other time of the year, Christmas regularly unleashes a particular kind of advertising. The shit-chucking-monkey-fucking-crazy world of fragrance advertising.
Fragrance advertising falls into two categories. The first category is the sexy kind. But hey, we’ve grown up with sexy ladies fellating Cadburys Flakes, so no matter how much booty Beyonce shakes it’s not gonna be anything we’ve not seen before.
The second kind is the best kind, if best kind means completely fucking insane and absurdly intense kind. We’ve all seen them. They typically feature a Hollywood movie star, speaking dialogue that even the late great Leslie Nielsen would struggle to deliver with a straight face.
Hi, I’m James Franco and I’m burning up inside with the heat of a billion suns. Wanna sniff me?
These adverts are just so fucking intense. We’re not talking Hans Zimmer levels of intensity. We’re not even talking the look Christopher Walken might give you if you drunkenly violated his daughter and then hit her with your car. We’re talking "when worlds collide" levels of intensity. We’re talking about something so super intense and serious that everything else in the universe can just damned well go and fuck itself. Hostages in the Middle East, who have seen Omar enter the room, lay a big knife on the table and clumsily fiddle about with a webcam, have not experienced the same emotional intensity that James Franco feels while he walks down a corridor in slow motion.
I don't know who this bloke is, but he's almost certainly thinking about killing us all.
