Katie Moffat – PR & Online Communications Consultant » Advertising http://prandsocial.com social media, pr, digital, tech and other goodness Thu, 22 Mar 2012 09:24:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Acting the part http://prandsocial.com/2011/11/16/acting-the-part/ http://prandsocial.com/2011/11/16/acting-the-part/#comments Wed, 16 Nov 2011 07:16:40 +0000 Katie http://prandsocial.com/?p=446 When I was growing up in the, ahem, 70s, big budget advertising was the only way in which we came into contact with brands, it was how a brand established itself; set out its stall and companies jostled with each other to create the next BIG advert.  And so it was that some brands went for the option of working with a ‘proper’ actor, either as a one off or in a series of ads, certainly during the 70s & 80s it was a popular option.  If done well I guess it has the benefit of aligning a brand with certain key attributes of that actor but these days it seems less common. Is it the cost? Perhaps it doesn’t seem clever enough? And of course the decline of the mass market audience means that brands are frequently diverting money away from the ad budget to other ways of communicating with their audiences.

The new advert from American Airlines sees a return to the big tickets actor approach, by using Kevin Spacey in its latest advertising campaign.  I am a huge fan of Kevin Spacey after seeing him a few years ago in Richard II and of course his other various amazing performances in American Beauty, American Confidential, The Usual Suspects plus many other brilliant film roles , he really is an incredible actor.

I like the new American Airlines ads, I think they use Spacey’s talents well.  They made me nostalgic for an era of big name ads. So welcome back Rutger Hauer & Guinness

and of course, Joan Collins and Leonard Rossiter (non better).

With thanks to various friends on twitter who reminded me of some of the old school ads.

]]> http://prandsocial.com/2011/11/16/acting-the-part/feed/ 0 Credit were credit’s due http://prandsocial.com/2009/01/28/credit-were-credits-due/ http://prandsocial.com/2009/01/28/credit-were-credits-due/#comments Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:35:32 +0000 Katie http://prandsocial.dev.digitalblahblah.com/2009/01/28/credit-were-credits-due/ There has been lots of excitement over the new T-Mobile ad in which lots of people dance at Liverpool Street Station – how clever, how interesting, "golly can you imagine if that actually happened"…but no one seems to have pointed out the fact that it's not remotely an original idea – have a look at Improv Everywhere's brilliant Grand Central Station or Food Court Musical. Hmmm….OK so it's not exactly the same but you'd have thought the makers of the T-Mobile ad would have at least given a hat tip to the (to me) obvious source of their inspiration. 

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