Ads in Canada are filled with animals (not the actors). Telecoms (three of the four major ones: Bell, Telus, and Fido), TP (Snub and the one from the bear I don’t recall), hand soap for kids (forgot the brand), mayo (Hellman’s, a dog preparing a sandwich, ), cars (Puss the cat from Shrek for Chrysler), you name it.
Interestingly they follow two “animal ad strategies”: single species and zoo. Bell and Fido for instance use single species; Telus goes with zoo. Bell, being recognized as the most traditional Canadian telecom invested in beavers, Frank and Gordon. The beaver is one of Canada’s national animals so it makes sense. But their tricks and jokes playing with Bell’s range of products (wireless, satellite cable etc) is overwhelmingly boring. But their PR is good, to the point a radio announcer spent almost 5 minutes talking about how cute and funny they were (liar). The same week a local news report was showing the ad on TV.
Fido deals with dogs, and dogs only. It doesn’t matter the breed. They (ad agency included) even had the cynical idea of copycatting one of the most acclaimed campaigns in world advertising (animal category) a few years ago. Recently Fido aired a campaign where the dog closely resembles its owner. Pedigree launched an offline campaign about 10 years ago using the same concept.
Telus is all about testing animals, the “zoo strategy”. That’s it, testing. They tried pretty much everything living and non-homo sapiens. The list includes monkeys, rabbits, ducks, giraffes, birds, exotic frogs, ferrets, badgers, and more recently flamingos. Indeed, flamingos. What it has to do with telecom services I don’t know, but the exotic rosy animal is there. It’s not even worth placing a link for you to watch.
We can’t forget some advertisers really need to use animals because it’s their target (or reason for existing). But in this case, Whiskas and Iams (to mention but a few) and humane societies are losing space to this whole fauna invading the commercial break. Their ads are becoming even boring for obvious reasons. Imagine the following situation: the first ad has a bear on it; the second, a flamingo, the third, a dachshund, a pug …Overexposure is psychologically and practically bad.
My tolerance is zero for companies randomly and irrationally using animals. This is not the case of Whiskas, who produced an excellent campaign using people performing as animals. The message was clear, the whole thing was very creative and they didn’t have to explore the image of a poor cat (except for a few seconds of him eating at the end of the ad).
Interestingly they follow two “animal ad strategies”: single species and zoo. Bell and Fido for instance use single species; Telus goes with zoo. Bell, being recognized as the most traditional Canadian telecom invested in beavers, Frank and Gordon. The beaver is one of Canada’s national animals so it makes sense. But their tricks and jokes playing with Bell’s range of products (wireless, satellite cable etc) is overwhelmingly boring. But their PR is good, to the point a radio announcer spent almost 5 minutes talking about how cute and funny they were (liar). The same week a local news report was showing the ad on TV.
Fido deals with dogs, and dogs only. It doesn’t matter the breed. They (ad agency included) even had the cynical idea of copycatting one of the most acclaimed campaigns in world advertising (animal category) a few years ago. Recently Fido aired a campaign where the dog closely resembles its owner. Pedigree launched an offline campaign about 10 years ago using the same concept.
Telus is all about testing animals, the “zoo strategy”. That’s it, testing. They tried pretty much everything living and non-homo sapiens. The list includes monkeys, rabbits, ducks, giraffes, birds, exotic frogs, ferrets, badgers, and more recently flamingos. Indeed, flamingos. What it has to do with telecom services I don’t know, but the exotic rosy animal is there. It’s not even worth placing a link for you to watch.
We can’t forget some advertisers really need to use animals because it’s their target (or reason for existing). But in this case, Whiskas and Iams (to mention but a few) and humane societies are losing space to this whole fauna invading the commercial break. Their ads are becoming even boring for obvious reasons. Imagine the following situation: the first ad has a bear on it; the second, a flamingo, the third, a dachshund, a pug …Overexposure is psychologically and practically bad.
My tolerance is zero for companies randomly and irrationally using animals. This is not the case of Whiskas, who produced an excellent campaign using people performing as animals. The message was clear, the whole thing was very creative and they didn’t have to explore the image of a poor cat (except for a few seconds of him eating at the end of the ad).
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