Fly the flag and carry on in the EU: Euro 2016 ads sound a timely reminder
Advertising is by nature a perky business but every four years our glass becomes three quarters full rather than the usual half. These are the years, like this one, when the Olympics and European Football championship collide and send clients into spending mode. According to ZenithOptimedia UK ad spend is projected to increase by near to 10% in 2016.
But it’s not just about the money, for the general atmosphere of optimism and celebration spills over into the advertising activity for their brands. In short they start making work that people find fun, watchable, interesting and sharable rather than rather simply waxing lyrical about than the number of blades in their razor or the APR on their credit card. These are good days in the ad business.
And so, a few days out from the first national anthems at the Stade de France and work is emerging from advertisers seeking to capitalise on the Euros, whether official sponsors or not.
Mars has delivered an epic cross channel invasion as part of their believe campaign. Carlsberg have thrown the kitchen sink and Marcel Desailly into a French Revolution themed romp. And over in the home of England’s eternal sporting adversaries, Lufthansa has created a spot that plays with English perceptions of Germany complete with Lederhosen and Sauerkraut. And this is just the start, the opening salvo of football themed advertising we will have to endure right up to the moment when the last of the home nations are dumped out of the tournament.
However, for all the exuberance of an ad industry in full cry, it’s hard not to despair at the bottom of the barrel national stereotypes and cliches on show. It’s hard not to wonder why, on these occasions, the combined genius of the ad business can’t muster anything more original than a parade of crass in-jokes at the expense of our European neighbours. This isn’t creativity at its best in the service of our clients’ brands and businesses; this is Carry On Advertising.
And yet, for all the cracker joke originality of the work, there is something rather constructive and even powerful about the benign nationalism on our screens. On the eve of a referendum that will tear this country apart if we vote to remain and tear Europe apart if we vote to leave, the xenophobia of Euro 2016 advertising may well be a force for good.
For all that the cliches and stereotypes may grate, the sentiment is resolutely good natured and warm hearted. The fact that the jokes are tired and familiar renders them affectionate rather than sharply barbed. This is not an appeal to the deeper recesses of nationalism lurking in the British psyche but a reminder that we actually respect, admire and yes, on occasions, even love our European neighbours.
Far happier, 60 years after the Treaty of Rome, to meet them on the football pitch rather than on the battlefield. And the truth is that this work is far more powerful at making the emotional case for staying closely bonded to our European neighbours than anything so far created by the remain campaign. Precisely because it represents our relationship with Europe as one of friendly rivalry and affection with a big dollop of self-deprecation that serves to remind us that if our European partners aren’t perfect, neither are we.
For anyone that cares about Britain’s future in Europe the Euros and advertising’s exuberant and rather crass promotion of partisanship and patriotism may just have come at the right time.
Richard Huntington is the chief strategy officer at Saatchi & Saatchi London
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