Sir Peter Bazalgette on Amazon. One of 121 stories from Brand Stories from Brand Champions, which I devised and curated for The Store, WPP.
Zal kills germs, it kicks them out/Zal leaves the smell of pine about"… "Say hello, say hello to Pilsbury Dough" … "1001 cleans a big, big carpet for less than half a crown" … "We all like Ricicles/They're twicicles as nicicles" …" Gales, Gales, Gales/Pass the honey please."
A not entirely welcome party trick of mine is to sing the jingles to ten or more TV ads from my youth in the 1960s. It's a testament to the pervasive influence of TV advertising that I can still recall them. When I sing the slogans (increasingly on my own in a hermetically sealed shower) I'm making an emotional connection, via the products, to a place and a time 50 years ago that is increasingly hard for me to reach. TV allows me to make that connection and the evidence remains that it's TV that is the power that makes brands great.
One brand that I find endearing is Shredded Wheat. This started for me in the late 60s when the cereal's advert used the then popular idiom of folk music: "There are two men in my life/ To one I am a mother/To the other I'm a wife/And I give them both the best/ With natural Shredded Wheat." Trendy … but not exactly empowering. Over the years this was followed up with the sustained attempt to get us to eat two not one of the crunchy treats for our breakfast. Hence the enlistment of Ian Botham and the assertion that real men eat two. There was then a charming campaign in 2015 featuring a family of Northern Soul fans and their friends, dancing the night away and only able to do so because of their healthy lifestyle. Particularly their breakfast choice, you won't be surprised to learn.
You'll deduce from all this that I like stories weaving the human element together with the creative in a way which really captures the prevailing mood. More recently, there's one brand that I've decided means the most to me. It is Amazon and their ad, produced back in November, 2016 was called 'The Gift'.
Two priests, one a Christian and the other a Muslim, get together for a cuppa and a chat. They smile, they laugh, one touches the sleeve of the other in recognition of their friendship. Then they get up and mutually groan as their much put upon knees grind arthritically. This makes them laugh again. When home they each have the same idea. By coincidence they both order knee pads from Amazon for delivery to the other as a seasonal present. Their pleasure when they open the packages goes beyond the gift to the bond between them. It closes with the delicious comfort they experience as they kneel in their respective church and mosque. The ad succeeds in giving a behemoth of an organization and a brand a human face and reminds us of the pleasure of both giving and receiving.
But there's something much more profound. Five months earlier Britain's highly divisive EU referendum had unleashed ugly racism, both on the street and online. At the time of the ad there was also the poisonous, aggressive US presidential campaign approaching its dispiriting climax. We're tribal by nature, the seeds of racism lurk in us all. It's the values of a civil society which help us conquer these base sentiments with respect and tolerance for others, who may at first seem alien. That's when we discover we're far more alike than we're different. 'The Gift' did that, just at a time when we needed it. That's why it's my brand story.
Sir Peter Bazalgette
Sir Peter Bazalgette is Chairman, ITV and recently led an independent review into the UK’s creative industries as part of the Government’s new Industrial Strategy. In September 2017, Peter was appointed as a Non-Executive Board Member of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Peter is also Chair of HM Government’s Holocaust Memorial Foundation, serves on the Advisory Boards of BBH and YouGov and is currently Chair of the Baillie Gifford Non-Fiction Book Prize. From 2013 until 2017 he was Chair of Arts Council England. He is a former Non-Executive Director of the DCMS, former President of the Royal Television Society and Chief Creative Officer of Endemol where he personally devised several internationally successful formats such as Ready Steady Cook and Ground Force. Peter’s book about the business of TV formats, Billion Dollar Game, was published in 2005, and in January 2017 he published The Empathy Instinct.
There are 120 more. Brand Stories from Brand Champions collects 121 people writing about the one brand that shaped them. Amazon UK · Amazon US. The full index is at www.davidroth.com/brand-stories/stories/.