Alice Cooper in the Sony Bravia ad
Only days ago on this very blog were we lamenting the ubiquitousness of Ozzy Osbourne in ads and the unimaginative scripts that go with them. Then along comes Sony Bravia’s latest ad, starring Alice Cooper, publicising the brand’s “television scrappage scheme” — a sales promotion campaign cleverly disguised as a recycling initiative.
You could probably all storyboard the ad without any help from us, but here we go. Sony helpfully alerts us to what is coming with the opening shot, a sign proclaiming “Alice Cooper Sold Out” (they couldn’t fit the letters “years ago” underneath so you just have to imagine it).
The ad then goes on in mockumetary style, with talking heads telling us about the supposed 1980s trend for throwing televisions out of hotel rooms. Essentially it advises us that instead of throwing our television sets out of a window, we’d be better off trading them in for a Sony Bravia. And they say there’s no truth in advertising.
To be fair, Keith Moon, who is probably the inventor, if not the populariser, of throwing television sets out of hotel windows, is sadly no longer with us and therefore not available for Sony’s advertising. And to be fair on Alice Cooper, he has never hesitated to capitalise on mythological rock’n'roll antics to shift product.
So the chances are he didn’t storm off to his manager after seeing the script complaining that he was sick of being typecast and that it was actually the 1970s when rockstars threw televisions out of hotel rooms. And to be fair on TBWA it’s not even a bad ad, especially compared to Ozzy’s bizarre Samsung outing. But why let that stop us blogging about it?
Alice Cooper turns out to be even more ubiquitous than Ozzy in ads — he’s already done the Aviva name change spots this year (did everyone else also think that his real name, Vincent Furnier, was actually a really cool sounding name for a shock rock star by the way?). He’s also played up to his wild man of rock image in a Virgin Atlantic ad and then debunked it in an ad for Sky Plus where he sat on a sofa with Ronnie Corbett drinking tea.
In fact, even when he’s not appearing on screen, there’s the advertising rule that every single ad having anything to do with school holidays in the whole history of television and radio advertising must use Alice Cooper’s 1972 hit ‘School’s Out’ as a backing track. Maybe it’s time for him to have a little break.
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