Just as readers in the UK (and there are several, or more) may not have been aware of Zebra & Giraffe’s new single, which I shared yesterday, so readers in SA (yes, I haz them too) might miss the Sainsbury’s Xmas ad if I don’t share it on here. So, here we go:
Aww. What a wonderful story. And what a lucky cat.
The John Lewis Man on the Moon ad which I shared last week has come in for a lot of criticism via the social media mob (see how zeitgeist I am?), namely because it set out to highlight the plight of elderly people who might be lonely at Christmas time, but it didn’t come for free. In fact, apparently allegedly, it cost £7 million to make: cue angry people telling us that the money would have been better donated to charities helping elderly people to be less lonely this Christmas. And maybe it would, but that’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works. That money belongs to John Lewis, and – maybe you need to take a seat before I reveal this next fact, folks – they can do whatever the fuck they like with it. It’s not their responsibility to make sure that old people aren’t lonely this Christmas. It’s not specifically anyone’s responsibility, (which is basically the root of the whole problem). But people in glass houses etc: What were you doing about it before the mildly creepy Man on the Moon made you realise that some elderly people might be lonely this Christmas? What are you doing about it now?
Hmm. Exactly.
I now await, with some anticipation, those same individuals going after Sainsbury’s, whining that they could have spent their advertising budget on buying smoke alarms for apparently otherwise fairly well-off households in middle England. Or that the Ad Wizard should have saved his travel budget and not rented that casino, instead providing a Slovenian dancing girl and a bottle of budget brandy to everyone in Struisbaai, or some equally random SA village. (Obviously, while I disagree with the reasoning behind this argument, I’d actually love to see the results were it actually to be done) (as opposed to the smoke alarm thing, which would be dull.)
Whatever. I tire of this constant requirement to find fault with anything and everything.
Why can’t we just enjoy these ads for what they are: Mog’s Christmas Calamity for being a wholly implausible but eventually rather endearing story of community spirit at Christmas time, and Man on the Moon for being a rather dodgy looking, apparently undead pensioner spying on a young girl with a hugely powerful optical device?