It’s not often that Celebrity Sell Out can claim to have influenced the marketing community - what an awful thought - but in the case of Melanie Sykes we could have a case to push the idea.
Mel and daft talking dog
Following CSO’s critcism of marketer’s use of old 90s pin ups like Nell McAndrew, Sophie Ellis-Bextor etc to flog things to mums, insurance brand Churchill has seen fit to buck the trend. The financial giant best known for that stroppy little dog has brought in Sykes as the first celebrity in a new TV advertising campaign.
So how do we know Churchill is not using Mel for her mumsiness? How about this quote from Marketing by Matt Owen, head of campaigns at Churchill Insurance: “This is actually the first time a celebrity has touched Churchill,” he says, “as she reaches forward and strokes him. The use of humour in our adverts is always well received by the audience.”
Watch out Churchill: here's one our Mel broke earlier
Whether touching a plastic dog is funny or not I don’t know, but entertainment has a rich heritage of human/ puppet flirtation, none more so than ‘The Muppet Show’ one of the most popular of its type. This is not the place to go into the sexualisation of puppets but I will mention that pre-watershed both Kermit and Ms Piggy spent a large degree of the show (mostly verbally but with the odd touch) accosting various guest celebrities. It worked then, but will it work now? What was harmless puppet flirtation then could be construed as an advocation of sexual harrassment in these enlightened times, and that is bad. Just as bad as that guy off ‘The One Show’ - I’m sure that is a programme where many inanimate objects are stroked.
Of course, that’s not to say Mel’s doing anything like that and anyway she is touching the dog so maybe that makes it better. Although I personally would have found the ad more humourous if she brought a hammer smack down and crushed its plastic bobbing skull. It would be worth it Mr Owen, as a former colleague who has been witness at close hand to a displeased Mel said “she looks lovely when she’s angry.”
Oh for what might have been. Perhaps she could have made a new post-Boddington’s name for herself destroying terrible financial brand icons. Let’s see, after killing Churchill Mel could go on a vertible rampage and clattered that Direct Line phone-on-wheels, which is long overdue a terrible death, and then what next? Michael Winner? Maybe the elephant at Elephant.co.uk. Elephants shouldn’t have to sell insurance.
Now that would make her a pin-up again.
Comments closed