I’ve been seeing this Westpac ad recently on billboards along my tram route. I gather the intention is to express that Westpac has made commitments to environmentally and socially responsible lending practices. This isn’t, though, my immediate association on seeing the ad… In many ways, in fact, this might make an excellent model for one of the demotivational posters at Despair.com.
[laughs] This is awesome! I hate advertising; it’s so satisfying when it goes awry!
Yeah, I have to admit, I did a real double-take at this. Before I realised it was a Westpac ad – when I was seeing it out of the corner of my eye – I thought this would have been a global warming related ad (which, on one level, I suppose it is – but a mobilisation of the concept to… er… sell financing… There’s a certain irony – in trying to track down an image of this ad so that I could write this post, I saw their other recent ads (some are linked from the SMH article linked above), and the tagline to those is something like (sorry – too groggy this morning to look it up) “because each generation should live better than the last”).
But what is funniest is that my very first thought on looking closely at this image was, “Jeez! How’s that penguin not gonna fall off that thing?” and then, “Hmm… I wonder if it could survive falling off that thing?” Not really the chain of associations I suspect Westpac was after…
It looks very Titanic-like. Very dramatic with a sense that something major is about to happen. And that we are metaphorically going to melt/sink with it and the penguin.
Again, not exactly the positive – we’ll fight global warming – message I think they were trying to present.
When I realised it was Westpac I actually thought for a brief moment: Wow! They’re admitting they do nothing for the environment. Hmmm. Wishful thinking on my part perhaps.
I’ve noticed I haven’t seen these posters lately – perhaps other people had similar reactions :-)
(Sorry you were held in moderation – in theory, it should only happen the first time you post…)