Celebrity Sell Out

The actor Dominic West has recently become hot stuff (and now he’s flogging it, but more on that later).

From his career-launching portrayal of detective Jimmy McNulty in HBO’s brilliant drama The Wire and his slimy baddy in Zach Snyder’s ridiculous but enjoyable comic book movie ‘300’, to playing Oliver Cromwell in Channel 4’s non-too-subtly titled ‘The Devil’s Whore’, West has been enjoying a rather high profile of late.

So what does he go and do?Advertises instant coffee is what.

West has signed up as one of three “desirable” male actors promoting Kraft Foods’ Carte Noire brand (the others being Greg Wise, who we’ve heard of – he’s married to Emma Thompson – and Dan Stevens, who we haven’t).

In the same way that the term “premium” doesn’t sit easily with the phrase “instant coffee”, the juxtaposition of Dominic West with Carte Noire is just awkward.

Carte Noire owner Kraft Foods is spending £2m on the multimedia campaign aimed at women, which includes TV ads. Its centrepiece is a tie-up with book publisher Penguin, and three films featuring each of the thespians reading love scenes from romantic novels. It can be viewed on the Carte Noire website www.cartenoire.co.uk.

Yet in the world of marketing, simple things are often blown way out of all proportion. Hence we have a coffee campaign claiming its granules mixed with hot water can give women “a more seductive coffee break”, to quote its slogan.

Of course, linking instant coffee to the concept of seduction is nothing new. There are literally hundreds of millions of examples of campaigns that have done just that – Antony Head in those fondly remembered Gold Blend ads for instance.

Anyway, back to Carte Noire.

The films look as if they were directed by the late Dame Barbara Cartland (but during her ‘brown’ phase) – shot in cheesy soft focus, each actor sitting in a brown leather chair, looking up ‘seductively’ at the camera as he reads some ‘sexy’ prose from a book.

It has to be said, West’s performance is slightly awkward (you can almost hear the producer telling him they’ve only got one take because they blew all their budget on his fees).

West introduces the book - Pat Barker’s ‘Life Class’ which is fine. But then prepare to cringe as West looks into the camera and says: “Are you sitting comfortably?” He then sort of makes his eyes smoulder, does this lip-pursing movement and adds: “Then I’ll begin.” (I nearly finished at this point.)

And he’s off. Droaning through the book, not that I was able to listen to much of it. You can’t because you are thinking “Hmm… hasn’t McNulty gone all posh.”

There is one memorabe part of the reading when he utters the words “illicit sex” and flicks out a tongue over his not insubstantial lips. This is clearly the point at which the director, if not West, imagines that things are getting steamy for the female viewer.

Then we can imagine the director shouting: “Cut to the cup! Cut to the cup!” as the camera switches from West’s mug to the one  by the side of his chair,  presumably filled to the brim with hot seductive Carte Noire.

The climax is finally over and West’s reading reaches his conclusion and he looks slightly bemusedly at the camera, before the scene fades to black.

To be fair, the campaign oozes (or percolates) quality. But the problem with high-production values is that they sometimes only serve to emphasise the shallowness of what they’re trying to convey. After all, the idea of a cup of drinking coffee being seductive is, well, a bit silly.