A few years back, there was a massive flood in our street in Hampstead.
Everything was under several feet of water.
There’s a really nice gay couple next door, and they were telling me their whole library was ruined.
They said they had it themed on ‘The Titanic’.
They did it because of the bit where Leonardo di Caprio holds Kate Winslett over the bow of the ship.
Where Celine Dion sings, “I Will Always Love You”.
That was their song.
So they’d bought lots of Titanic artefacts.
Things that had been recovered from the actual wreck.
They had them on display in their library, but the flood had ruined them.
So they were going to claim on their insurance.
It made perfect sense to them.
But I think, if I was insurance company’s loss-adjustor I might have seen it differently.
“Let’s see if I’ve got this right:
These items have been laying 7 miles down under the Atlantic Ocean for ninety years, and you reckon an unusually heavy rainfall in Hampstead ruined them?”
But, although that may not make sense to everyone, it made perfect sense to them.
Things sometimes make sense in one person’s world that don’t make sense in someone else’s.
Take censors.
The TV censorship authority is called Clearcast, it used to be the BACC.
We wanted to run a TV campaign for Holsten Export.
We had the comedian Neil Innes in different locations.
In one particular commercial he was playing the piano on the moon.
Around him were lots of cans of his favourite beer, Holsten Export.
The BACC said they had a problem with that.
We asked what the problem was.
They said, “You’re showing too many cans of Holsten Export. That could imply excessive drinking.”
So we asked how many cans of Holsten Export we could show.
They said, “That depends, does he have a fridge?”
Well, we said, he could have a fridge on the moon if it would help.
They said, “Well if he had a fridge he could conceivably be getting his week’s supply of Holsten Export ready to chill in the fridge.”
We asked how many cans that would be.
They said, “Well it’s okay to suggest drinking two cans a day, so two times seven is fourteen.”
We said okay, we’d have fourteen cans on display and several huge crates.
They said, “Ah.”
We said, are the massive crates a problem?
They said, “Massive crates of beer could suggest excessive drinking.”
We said he’d come all the way from the earth to the moon.
He’d have to bring a large supply of his favourite beer with him.
They said, “If you had ‘One Year’s Supply of Holsten Export’ clearly stencilled on the side of each crate. That would show it’s got to last a long time.”
So that’s what we did, and that’s how I ran.
I don’t think anyone but the BACC ever noticed it was there.
You’d need to freeze-frame the picture to see it.
But it made perfect sense to them.
Another time Dave Waters and Paul Grubb did a campaign for The Daily Mirror.
It featured news footage of famous people falling over, or pulling funny faces.
Dave and Paul wanted to superimpose a copy of the Mirror hitting them immediately beforehand.
So it looked like they were reacting to getting whacked.
We had lots of funny footage of famous people.
One particular clip was Frank Bruno, the boxer, getting his OBE at Buckingham Palace.
As he held up his award for the cameras, his top hat fell off.
We thought we could add a copy of The Mirror to make it look like it was knocking his hat off.
But the BACC had a problem.
They thought that Frank Bruno wearing a top hat looked too much like Baron Samedi.
One of the main deities of the Haitian voodoo cult.
And knocking off his top hat could cause offence on religious grounds.
Now in that situation, your immediate response is to say, “You’re joking, right?”
But if you say that, your commercial won’t be allowed to run on TV.
So you say, “Hmmmm, I see your point.”
And you take the scene out.
Because, whatever we think, it makes perfect sense to them.
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thank god there’s no BACC thing over here. but i have noticed that given the first opportunity the TV networks will gladly climp up on a high horse. like at superbowl time. and the oscars.
and its invariably about the ads featuring their shows are full of: violence, sex, profanity. etc.
i once had a beer ad for the oscars questioned because “nothing sensible” seemed to happen to it.
Someone told me this years ago when I wanted to try and work in London. Thought was a joke, but not so sure now. It was also for beer. Apparently, you couldn’t show a guy leaving a pub after he had a drink - that could mean he was going to drive. BUT if he carried a mac (not the computer, this was 80s), then the inference was that he didn’t have a car and so it was Ok.
The guys where I stay have finally started putting recycling bins. But they put it some distance from the flat - next to a shed. Trouble is, when it rains, people don’t want to get wet. So they don’t recycle. I’ve tried moving the bins to the vacant ground floor. When the bins are there, many recycle. But yet, every day, some idiot moves the bins out. Why? Because dustbins should be hidden from view as they’re not pretty things. Howd daft can you get?
The BACC also has a man called Dr Harding who would let you know if anything on your ad flashed a bit too much and was therefore a danger to epileptics. You had no idea what his conclusions would be, he wasn’t readily available and there wasn’t usually much you could do if he deemed the flashes were too frequent. I don’t know if he’s still around, but I spent many a late night at the Mill at his behest.
I’ve been tearing my hair out before at BACC feedback, but it doesn’t come close to the Baron Samedi story. That’s hilarious. I don’t even think the ‘different perspectives on life’ theme can justify the plainly absurd decisions that they come up with though.
Ben,
Ah yes, The Harding Test.
There’s now a whole new department at post-prod facilities.
Plus an expert with expensive equipment.
Hi Dave,
It’s absolutely insane isn’t it. I guess your neighbours could have claimed Acid Rain damages the artefacts whereas seawater is closest to Plasma by content, and therefore “Refreshes the passenger ships other waters cannot reach.” Worth a try for a few quid.
I know the BACC’s bad. But one time, I was doing some work for a semi-fundamentalist Asian country. The client was for a camera. And the concept involved cowboys. But the rules were “no blue jeans”. Really. Because bj (blue jeans) are a sign of American decadence. But jeans in any other colour was fine. So we had the cowboys in brown, black and dirty jeans.
Plus, their equivalent of the BACC met once every 2 months. So if your script was rejected, then you waited another 2 months minimum.
To borrow a Bachman Turner Overdrive/Grubb/Waters TV spot, “You ain’t seen nothing”.
Sorry Dave, fantastic blog, but the Celine Dion track is My Heart Will Go On. Just for the record.
Hi Lucy,
That’s reinforced my blokey credentials.
Dave
It sounds like you’re getting your Celine Dion’s mixed up with your Whitney Houston’s.
I’d check if you put the right record back in the right sleeve if I were you.
Very good point, John.
Ciaran
jesus, the “harding test”. shudder!
Hi Dave, I run Clearcast so hope you’ll let me chuck in a couple of points on a good read.
The first point to make, which you’ll know but some of your readers may not, is that UK advertising is self-regulated by the industry and the TV rules are made not by Clearcast but by BCAP. BCAP is made up of representatives of the advertisers, agencies and broadcasters. The alcohol rules that we apply are based on industry consultation and consensus.
Clearcast’s role is to work with agencies to get ads on air ensuring that they meet the BCAP rules. Again, for people not familiar with the setup, we are owned by the commercial broadcasters and help them meet a licence obligation that all ads are pre-cleared against the rules before they are broadcast.
Inevitably, some of the decisions that we make are qualitative in nature. However, they are shaped not just by the rules, but by previous ASA adjudications. In the case of alcohol advertising there is a raft of adjudications, both upheld and not upheld to work with. It’s an area that prompts a lot of complaints, some from consumers and others from pressure groups that would like to ban alcohol advertising altogether.
The examples that you cite sound quite old, and may or may not be accurately stated so I’m not going to respond to them as they quite possibly predate Clearcast. However, what they do show is two things: that we worked with you to get your creative treatment to air and that in the event of a complaint both sides would be able to demonstrate proper consideration and account being taken of the codes. The latter point is important, my experience of the vast majority of alcohol advertisers is that they want to ensure they act responsibly and although the clearance process may be a pain for creatives, it does provide comfort to advertisers who don’t want to be named and shamed in Wednesday’s newspapers when adjudications are published.
Specifically on the Hardings test, this is applied as an industry response (and now an Ofcom regulation) to a particular ad that caused a photosensitive epileptic reaction amongst a small number of sufferers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs0WCUZqoJg if this isn’t you). This is serious stuff if you are a sufferer; if we didn’t flash test you could be unwittingly exposed to content that prompts a photosensitive reaction, and as a result lose your driving licence for two years. The most recent case of this was when broadcasters showed footage of the London 2012 animated logo being launched at a press conference (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6724245.stm).
If it makes sense to us it’s because we work with this stuff day in, day out whether that’s reviewing ads against the codes or defending our clearances against ASA complaints. That said, all our decisions are open to discussion and there’s an escalation process if agencies feel we’ve made the wrong call. It can be found on our website here: http://www.clearcast.co.uk/NR/rdonlyres/79B6E911-9FA8-4099-B0F1-7DD586354E30/0/ClearanceProceduresJan09080509.pdf .
Our role is to help get advertising to air, and keep it there, and we’re happy to be held accountable to that.
Hi Chris,
You’re right, those examples do predate Clearcast.
They’re either ITCA or BACC.
Also you’re right about something else too.
Like everything else, it works better when we work together.
The most helpful people were always the ones who would sit and discuss the scripts over a coffee.
Once we understood each other’s position, we usually got something better as a result.
Reasonable people are nearly always capable of compromise once they understand each other’s concerns.