Thursday 13 January 2011

God, I've not posted in ages

Er, Happy New Year.

Sorry for not being here, but I've been doing wanky creative stuff you probably wouldn't be interested in.

Seems quite a bit going on generally, but ad-wise everyone's still trying to get their heads around Morethan Freeman, right?

Sigh.

Obviously there's a lot of confusion about this (I genuinely heard someone say "And he's not even black!" yesterday) so I thought I'd write a brief Wikipedia entry to help clear things up a little. Don't know how long it'll last up there, but I figured if we all muck in on it we might finally come to some kind of consensus on what is bloody obviously the first great ad of 2011.

Or maybe just the first great ad of January?

UPDATE: Within about 9 seconds of posting the Wiki aritcle I got a moderator notice telling me the content of the post was obviously a hoax and would be deleted if I didn't explain myself. My instinctive response was "Come one, you couldn't make this shit up!" Erm, but VCCP *did* make it up. Which I guess proves how unlikely an idea it is. So even if you hate Morethan Freeman, you've got to take your hats (and clothes, I'd say) off to the suits who sold it.

UPDATE UPDATE: Here's the now deleted Wikipedia entry I wrote:

The “Red Army returning to Moscow” is a quote from a British advertising campaign for the insurance company, More Than.

The campaign first appeared on television around Christmas 2010. The advertising campaign takes the form of a series of monologues delivered by a character called Morethan Freeman, a pun on the American film actor Morgan Freeman.

In 1994, Morgan Freeman played Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding in The Shawshank Redemption, a character whose wistful narration is marked by a sort of cute, homespun wisdom. This performance subsequently became synonymous with the actor.

Morethan Freeman’s monologues pay homage to this, both in their style and their execution (they are delivered by a Morgan Freeman impersonator).

The line “Red Army returning to Moscow” is one of a number similes coined by Morethan Freeman during the campaign, but which has no actual meaning.

The purpose of this line (and others like it) is to simply appear more profound than it actually is for the benefit of entertainment, and to poke fun at Morgan Freeman’s original dialogue.

Reception to the campaign so far has been mixed. Partly because of its somewhat esoteric nature, and partly because of lines, such as these, being misunderstood even by those who work in the advertising industry.

However, the fact that this entry now exists may be an early indicator of the impact this campaign is having.