Set The Video: New Cadbury’s gorilla advert, sometime during Big Brother, Friday 5 September, Channel 4

By Paul Hirons on September 5th, 2008 4 comments

Everybody loved the Cadbury’s gorilla advert, but were never able to figure out why. A gorilla playing drums to Phil Collins’ 80s power ballad, In The Air Tonight, didn’t have an awful lot to do with chocolate, let’s be honest. Perhaps that was the point - it was one of those adverts that didn’t have to mean anything. Whatever the reasons, it became iconic and arguably 2007′s most talked about commercial break. Now the gorilla is back. I read that in The Sun this morning. It also said that the new advert, to be played out sometime during he Big Brother finale this evening, will feature the gorilla playing along to Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse Of The Heart. Does that have as decent a beat as In The Air Tonight? We’ll soon find out. Remind yourself of the original Dairy Milk ad after the jumper…

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Category: Set the Vid
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michael

Something like this, then?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdgI0j1odkY

Which, incidentally, Cadbury do link to from their own web site.
Paul Hirons

Yeah, something like that Michael. But isn’t that YouTube thing just a remix? Someone has done the same thing with Nirvana, Deep Purple. I think we’ll have to watch tonight to see the official, proper version (or on The Sun’s site from 3pm).
Michael

Sorry, yes, I was not meaning to imply that was the new ad. Just offered it as an example of what we might expect.

I also thought it interesting that it was one of the few spoofs and remixes directly linked by Cadbury as it must mean they were aware of it being out there.

In fact, on reflection, for that reason it will presumably be nothing like the above. Otherwise they will face criticism for just copying a YouTube effort.

Incidentally, on the issue of new ads, in the US Microsoft began their new campaign last night. It features Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates.

Like Cadbury’s campaign it is more about viral advertising and grabbing people’s interest rather than focussing on the products. But it is just very odd and, to me at least, does not seem to work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz6amk3P-hY

I do not think there are any plans for it to air here, and Seinfeld was not a big enough hit on the BBC for it to work that well anyway.
Michael

Okay, having seen it on The Suns’ site, I take the above back. It is exactly like the YouTube one.

According to Laurence Green of Fallon, the agency behind the campaign, in Media Guardian:

“We always had half an eye on doing something with it around the anniversary. We have taken inspiration from the way people have played with it online.

“We were always going to run the ads again. We could have been lazy and run the same versions, as a lot of old-fashioned advertisers would have, or we could live in the modern world.”

And copying something verbatim is not lazy? At least find a song that had not been used on YouTube, maybe even recut the video as some of the YouTube posters did.

It seems to fulfill all the clichés about the advertising industry that they claim this was ‘inspired’ by the what was happening online. Inspiration is when something makes you think in new directions. There was nothing new here, nor I doubt any thinking. They redid what someone else had already done to give the exact same result.

If they are going in this direction they should have been honest about it: admit liking what they saw so much they wanted to use it themselves. Claiming it was their own idea but inspired by others is at best devoid of any creativity and at worst plagiarism.