Canning canes Clemenger’s Carlton campaign
August 23 2010, 2:14 pm | | 58 Comments
In today’s Media section, the Australian’s marketing writer Simon Canning questions whether one of Australia’s most lauded, awarded and entertaining advertising campaigns has finally run out of puff.
58 Comments
For once, I agree with canning.
Canning’s full of newspaper.
Just because I have to say it first –
I nominate McCanns Labor Party election campaign as one of the 10 most talked about campaigns of the year.
Only 9 most talked about campaigns to go Mr.McCann.
Oh dear, another one who doesn’t get it.
Slowmo isn’t the idea; pisstake is the idea.
Just like big ad- a pisstake of big ads.
This is slow mo- a pisstake of up their own arse slow mo ads (like Schweppes).
Pretty simple innit?
boloney
Well i for one must say i like this ad .
it made me laugh.
it appeals to the target market.
and it makes me think of changing my brand.
well done all involved.
i think judging by the lame standard of most ads on our televisual devices this does get a clap.
yes there could have been some more pertinent observations but having got this through research and death by jury firstly the client and the agency should be lauded and thanked.
well done.
jayf.
He’s right, and you all know it. the Emperor is all out of clothes…
12.59 you are a twat.
No idea=no idea.
Why are you even in this business?
Has a boys night at the pub on Friday. The ad came on and they all started talking about it. They all loved it. One even said it was the best ad ever. Nuff said. Job done.
“Simon Canning is The Australian’s marketing writer and has been completely missing the point for 16 years”. ?
Thanks 2.59 for pointing out the bleeding obvious … “Slowmo isn’t the idea; pisstake is the idea.”
‘Made from Beer’ as a brand thought comes to life in ads that take the piss out of bloated, austere advertising. When CUB/Clems moved away from that core thought and into Tingle territory, it proved to be a huge mistake. Personally, I loved the Tingle ads but for any other beer brand.
Rightfully, those ads were canned and now they’re back to owned territory with a completely new way of doing something they do better than anyone else. Play the TVC to a large group of people and watch them guffaw with laughter and admire how Carlton Draught as a brand understands it’s audience and how they consume the product.
Canning is so far off on this one, but then again he would be wouldn’t he? Otherwise he’d be writing award-winning ads instead of writing about them.
Breeding hate. Its a fucking funny ad, with an idea. Get over it, and stop being cunts for the sake of point scoring. You too Ben.
Seems like he need to fire his researcher.
On the top line, he’s right. George Patts came up with Made From Beer and did Horses, Canoe, Big ad and Flashbeer.
Then the account went to Clems who produced Skytroop, Drop the Bomb, Tingle et al and now this.
As I said, on the top line this is all factually correct. But if you dig deeper Horses, Canoe, Big Ad, Flashbeer, Skytroop, Drop the Bomb, Tingle = all written by Ant Keogh.
This, while it might not have been written by Ant, was CD’d by Ant. So I’m pretty sure he’s touched it in all the right places.
From reading some of the comments here and on other blogs, it would appear that the original idea was to use the exact same music as Schweppes ‘Burst’, but Ant overruled and changed it.
Could this have anything to do with all the publicity Clems were receiving about their ‘in-house’ style of piss take ads a few months/weeks ago?
Saying that, why do we try to read so much into beer ads?
It’s beer. It’s an ad.
In this case, I find both of them enjoyable.
It’s Canning’s opinion and he is entitled to it – some will agree and some won’t – but sadly for Clems half a million people read it this morning and most of them are highly influential business people.
Sometimes the media prints what you don’t like – suck it up girls….(and do it in slow-mo – it’ll look like a piss-take…..)
shame on you canning, shame
he’s spot on…
Here’s a thought: people don’t always have to agree. Intelligent, well-meaning people can have different views. Ultimately, advertising is subjective. I think this is funny but not brilliant. It’s a heap better than anything I’ve ever done. But so what? Piss take as a strategy is limited, to me. For piss takes to work, it needs to be fresh. It needs to be nailing something that needs nailing and that no-one thought of doing before. Otherwise, it’s predictable, formulaic and desperate. This isn’t quite there yet but it’s closer than previous efforts.
3.39pm – i don’t think highly influential business people are the target. And if they really are highly influential business people they would not be influenced by Canning.
And, (i agree with 3.23) if Canning could write ads he’d be writing them.
Very enjoyable ad that the target already loves.
For some reason people seem to find slow motion fascinating…. and lets be honest, Schwepps pretty much stitched up the slo mo market along with couuntless wannabees since… this is not a great ad …..and Canning is right. It seems to be produced to a different strategy and is not a patch on the earlier work.
4.25pm ring up your mates at OMD (you are obviously at Clems), and ask them for the reader profile of the business section of The Australian……you might find them to be reasonably influential….you know people like marketing directors and MDs of listed companies….they may even be more influential than you..?
Canning’s right. The ad just isn’t funny. Sure it’s a piss-take, I get that but surely it needs to be funny as well?! One man’s meat … I guess.
This time Canning’s on the money.
Sorry 2.47 only 8 more talked about campaigns to go from McCann who could forget
Cheerios.
4.51 did you read what i said? Coz you’re answer doesn’t make sense. Cheers 4.25
I just said if they are ‘influential’ they wouldn’t be influenced by Canning. And that they’re not the target market for Carlton Draught. Chill out angry skimmer. Stop and read things, then breathe, and absorb. BTW, don’t work at Clems.
Canning… Canes… Cans… Cannes?
5.20pm highly influential people are the people reading the story in The Australian – not watching the ad! That’s the point……use your brain.
As if readers of The Australian like beer….
This new work is average at best. ‘Tingle’ will be discussed on Gruen this Wednesday. We can only hope this will re-open the debate about that, and this.
All of the Carlton Draught ads are pretty damn good. Some are brilliant. More importantly, they are all loved by the punters. Even the Tingle series. Just ask those who viewed them.
The follow up to a great piece of work is always hard. Ant ‘n’ Grant and more recently Ant ‘n’ others have done a terrific job turning out many executions of the ‘Made from beer’ campaign idea. Not many of us (in recent years anyway) can lay claim to that.
I tip my hat to Ant and everyone who has been involved with this campaign over the years. I also think Mr Canning should have at least acknowledged this and also the fact the same creative people (in Ant & James) are still driving the ‘Made from beer’ ideas.
Too much concentration on the personnel involved from the Ant etc fan club. Some of you are way too close to this to be anywhere near objective. Given that advertising itself is subjective, and only a matter of opinion, can you see the irony? For what it’s worth my (experienced) opinion is that this spot is weak, and not fit to clean the boots of the earlier work by the same (or similar) creatives.
Whatever you all think on this blog, the business community of Australia all read and took Cannings message- Clemeger’s creative is getting stale.
Looks like I’m becoming the Piers Ackerman of advertising.
Seriously 3.26, breeding hate? It’s a subjective opinion, my opinion – a person who has been a fan of this series all the way through.
But I would like to make one thing very, very clear to 3.23 and 4.25, about by being some sort of frustrated creative.
I’ve been a journalist for nearly 30 years, pretty much all I ever wanted to do. Have never sought a job in advertising nor would be interested. I’m a journalist, not a copywriter so please don’t suggest you know what I really want to be.
If you want to suggest what I would be doing if I could, then goaltender for the New York Rangers or a V8 Supercar driver would be a lot closer to the mark.
Thanks for all the feedback, good or bad, it’s great to know what you think.
Simon
Canning gets a caning from the fan club!
Hilarious stuff.
It’s the closest advertising can get to the shallowness of most art criticism:
“It must be good because so and so did it.”
It’s an ad; just an ad. Not awful, not wonderful. Just an ad.
It’s the kind of thing Fast Forward would have knocked out a few years ago for one small part of one episode of the show.
And that’s the problem. Once is pretty well all the times you’d want to see it. After that first viewing, it’s snoozeville.
It’s a full moon
Well said Simon.
@Simon,
It’s 3.23 back again. I never accused you of being a frustrated creative or suggested you wanted to be a creative of any stripe. I said you write about ads rather than writing them – and evidenced by your column, you’re no great critic. How fitting that your response shows the same lack of basic understanding that many here objected to in the first instance.
My issue with your column is not whether you made a subjective judgement call on whether it’s funny, or even good. These things, after all, are subjective. I like it, the public seem to like it, you don’t. Welcome to the ‘Armond White Club’.
No, your column showed a laziness around understanding what the campaign is actually about (not to mention that you didn’t bother to communicate that whilst the brand moved agencies, the creatives went with it). You were right to assert that slo-mo is not an idea, but it’s plainly obvious that no one from the client to the creatives to the beer-drinking punters said it was.
If you don’t get that this ad works in the same way as the Big Ad and Skytroop – by taking the piss out of bloated, self important competitive advertising – then you’d be well-advised to call the New York Rangers now and let them know you’re on the market.
This ad will sell truckloads of beer and win a modest number of creative awards, proving you either wrong or out of touch.
Good luck in your 31st year!
Simon,
Always read stuff and think you’re usually fair and obviously smart.
But I really don’t think you need to lower yourself and respond to anonymous comments.
So please don’t respond to this one, it doesn’t deserve it.
Tingle was the funniest Carlton campaign out of all of them (yes even Big Ad). The only reason we are watching this drivel and discussing its ironic nuances is because the client just wasn’t brave enough to go for it (again ). So what we are left with is a stale safe moronic spot that although may seem like a real pisstake to those in the know will just be seen by the average Carlton drinker as just another sl mo ad.
If this were a competitions campaign and it was up against Tingle you’d all be ripping the shit out of it and telling everyone it was a poor inbred cousin with limbs missing.
Shit
Mr. Canning may have been covering the industry for 16 years but has he ever worked in a creative dept? Has he ever judged at awards?No, and it shows here.
I think in this case, he doesn’t really understand this commercial or the industry. The idea isn’t slow motion. If this is the case no one can ever use slow motion in an ad ever again because Schweppes have done it before. What crap. This is a great ad compared to 95% of the other crap on Australian commercial breaks. This ad will, and deserves to win awards both here and overseas. I’d bet on it and I’ve been working in the industry for 22 years as a creative and have been a judge at creative awards.
At the end of the day the average punter loves it and they’re the ones buying Carlton Draught. Job well done. Every time someone gets some stray food spat in their face at the pub from now on they’ll both pause for the awkward moment and say “Just like in the ad!!”
I’ve judged at many Award shows – many of them full of giggling Thai, Indian and Brazilian judges who’re there based on their hilarious Cannes winning scam.
They have very little understanding of branding, degree of difficulty or even, in fact, ads that ran last year.
As such, they’re hardly the yardstick for Advertising wisdom.
I’d rather trust a journalist to be honest.
10.33, your comment just about sums up what’s wrong with the industry.
That is the most inward looking and just plain dumb thing I’ve read in years.
Canning is a bad judge of ads because he hasn’t worked in an ad agency creative dept? (That also cuts out most of our industry.) Oh, and he hasn’t been an awards judge! Well let’s just hang the bastard now.
Hey, you might be surprised to hear that the people we’re selling to generally have the same outrageous failings. Perhaps we should hang them as well if they don’t buy the products our brilliant, award-winning concepts are supposed to promote.
Jesus wept.
Love this comment.
“…this ad works in the same way as the Big Ad and Skytroop – by taking the piss out of bloated, self important competitive advertising..”
Bloated, self important competitive advertising?
Big Ad was the most bloated, self-important ad in our history, and rather than taking the piss out of competitors, it actually started the entire (and thoroughly embarrassing) war of self-important bloated beer ads.
The public stopped noticing years ago (if they ever really noticed at all – they tend to love the simpler, un-awarded ads, like Telstra’s Great Wall/Rabbits ad). Ad people are the only ones interested, and not many of us are either.
‘Pisstake’ – Definition – We didn’t have an idea so we copied a good one from someone else, but then we couldn’t do it nearly as well or with as high production values, so we called it a pisstake.
If I recall rightly, Big Ad was a pisstake of the old Britiish Airways ad, using exactly the same visual idea almost to the frame.
The odd thing was, it was a pisstake of an ad the target audience had never seen.
That’s something worth taking the piss out of.
LOUD NOISES
The real endline for Carlton Draught is ‘Brewery Fresh’
This ad “takes the piss out of bloated, self important competitive advertising..”
Oh, so THAT’S the idea. I was wondering what it was.
11.30, are you assuming that no one born before ’84 drinks beer?
10.20….ok
I like their old stuff better than their new stuff.
The ‘Tingle’ was balls out and going for it proudly. Something we don’t see in this country’s advertising much.
‘Slo-mo’ is parody in a pub. Something we’ve seen a few times in the beer genre.
Very safe CUB brand management that ticks plenty of boxes, but they’ve done the best they can being forced into that confined creative box by a nervous client that has already done a chunk of change on a previous ad. Not a bad bridging campaign to regain the trust with head honchos. Look forward to Clems getting out the balls again on the next batch.
Let’s see you guys take another leap – loved the last one – even if so many didn’t get it.
Looks like a lot of people aren’t getting much up, and not just at work.
Bored, sad people.
Pretty damn good for a real client with a ‘holy shit we need an ad because the board knocked back our tingle flandingle fucking quick’ problem.
4.5 stars. Out of 4.5.
Let’s hope it works because the ads of the last couple of years haven’t. Draught sales down. CUB beer sales down.
The chances of the Japs buying the brand are the only things going up!
It’s a shame the taste of Draught has become worse and worse over the years, especially on tap.
I really love this commercial, but no matter how much it makes me laugh, the beers crap and I won’t buy it.
9:33 – a good commercial will make a bad product fail faster.
Needs an integrated push, from the product line up.
Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where’s the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
Anne has written in asking: Where have all the good men gone?
Well Anne, thanks for your question. It’s one of the most perplexing of our time. I can’t speak for those other poor fools but what I can say is this: In between chopping down mountains with the edge of my noticeably large hand, I’ve been doing some thesis-level research. And I’ve come to the conclusion that, with your sharp mind and wry humour, you’re looking for love in all the wrong places. Anonymous advertising blogs, yes whilst they may serve a purpose, are often frequented by frustrated girly men creative types with lady-scented body smells. You’re better than that, Anne. You’re no pushover. You… are hard to get, like me. So if you’re really holding out for a hero, Anne, remember, that man has to smell right.
I’m on a mouse.
Simon Canning really liked the Australian Tourism TVC.
Enough said.
It’s nothing special, but its Paul Middleditch the most overrated director in the country
A mate just sent it to me on the other side of the world – so its already going viral. It’s a brilliant pisstake. Super slow mo is the new production cliche just as big/epic was. Journos mightn’t get the irony but punters and juries will love it. Very cool.
At least Middleditch can direct. Just had 4 scripts butchered by a pretentious wannabe who charged more than Paul and didn’t deliver one iota. Worse than that, couldn’t take direction from client or creative.
It’s a good spot. Lose the hate.