Banking on a Candid Camera
Advertising has long been adept at depicting the bad guys and the new series of commercials for Ally Bank ( formerly GMAC) have stretched the villain and child combination to Hansel and Gretel proportions. Created by Bartle, Bogle and Hegarty, the spots make a conscious attempt to appear vintage and the use of the candid camera and unusual decor recalls to some extent, Kubrick’s Space Odyssey.
The children are metaphors for adults who are lost in the banking maze of long legal documents, small print and clauses of repossession and dispossession not beyond the undiluted guile of the banking community. Something akin to taking candy from babies. The moral of the message is lost in the narrative where Ally’s positive message is less vivid than the negative image in general about banks and the compensation of the suits and ties than run them.
”There’s genius in the nostalgia. The hidden-camera setup, each of which stars kids (one boy starts to play with a toy that is cruelly yanked away), is a great way to metaphorically acknowledge the anger and frustration people feel towards “banks” — and deflect it long enough to make a case for a bank without being booed off the stage. (Banks and bankers are now held in such contempt that advertisers seem noble by comparison.) Also, using kids suggests a mythic time before zombie banks, when the world was innocent and honest.”( Barbara Lippert, Adweek)
| Do Re Mi
Lots of folks back East, they say, is leavin’ home every day, Oh, if you ain’t got the do re mi, folks, you ain’t got the do re mi, You want to buy you a home or a farm, that can’t deal nobody harm, If you ain’t got the do re mi, boys, you ain’t got the do re mi, ( Woody Guthrie ) |
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