(Agency: VCCP; Air date: 4/7/13; Length: 60 seconds)
O2’s latest TV advert implores
us all to ‘be more dog’. We are shown that cats, with their aloofness and cold
indifference to life, live a humdrum, boring existence, most of which is spent comfortably
sprawled out on something (sounds quite appealing to me). Dogs, on the other
hand, have an irrepressible lust for life and are bursting with excitement and
exuberance, whether they are digging a hole, chasing a car or grabbing a frisbee.
Now, this may
well all be true, although cats appear quite content with their job in my
opinion. And O2 probably don’t want their customers to be more like those dogs
that maul a toddler and are promptly destroyed afterwards. But what the hell has any of this got to do with
mobile phones? This is one of the most bizarre ads I’ve seen in a while. It’s
essentially a 60-second video lolcat. But the cat they’ve got looks really
sinister, not helped by the Exorcist-like
head twist it does a quarter of the way through.[1] Then, as the cat decides
to be more dog, the first gentle notes of Erik Satie’s beautiful ‘Gymnopédie
No. 1’ give way to Queen’s ultra-camp theme tune from Flash Gordon, two tunes I never thought I’d hear back-to-back. Finally,
did anyone at VCCP (the agency behind the ad) consider the fact that, on the
whole, cats and dogs aren’t usually the best of friends in real life? A cat
deciding to be more dog is like a Crip one day deciding to ‘be more Blood’.
Being more
dog, it turns out, means playing with and exploring the new technology and
software that O2 has to offer. I learned this from visiting their website. Had
I not done, I think I’d still be as bemused as I was when I first saw the ad.
It really is an odd strapline for a telecommunications company, particularly
when read in isolation and out of context, like the other day when I saw it on
a banner ad on YouTube. The ad announced details of Plan B’s promotional concert
at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Academy, followed by ‘be more dog’. Is Plan B more
dog than cat, I wondered. Considering the amount of endorsements he’s doing
lately – Hewlett-Packard, Bulmer’s and now O2 – I think he’d be a monkey if you
threw enough money at him.
Finally, there’s
also a simple problem with this slogan. Yes, dogs do seem to fizz with delight
each time they go out to play, but they get the same delirious pleasure from
playing the same handful of games – like fetching a stick or chasing their tail
– day-in, day-out for the rest of their lives. Contrary to what O2 want us to
do – i.e. keep upgrading our phones to new and better models, and keep buying
new games and apps to play with on those phones – ‘being more dog’ would more
accurately mean bounding with joy every morning at the prospect of pulling out
the old Nokia 3310, having yet another
game of Snake and never getting bored of it. My prediction for this campaign?
It won’t be long before this puppy is put to sleep.
[1] Even more bizarre is the CGI
rendering of the cat on the campaign website, this time with its tongue hanging
out, panting expectantly like a dog.
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