Beautiful Anti-Gun Ad Makes Ya Want To Shoot Stuff!
94 years ago, liar H.K. McCann launched his NYC ad agency with the slogan "Truth Well Told." That was a big fat lie. Advertising copywriter Copyranter brings you instances of advertising lies and the lying liars who sell them.
UK ad conglomerate Abbott Mead Vickers/BBDO has produced one of the coolest PSAs you'll ever see. They got a former Navy SEAL to shoot eggs and apples and stuff and filmed it at 10,000 frames per second. Will the commercial help stop gun violence? Probably not. But it really sexes up the agency's TV reel. After the jump, watch stuff go ka-BLAMMO!
The commercial, tagged "Stop The Bullets. Kill The Gun," is part of London hip hop station Choice FM's "Peace On The Streets" campaign.
That water bottle explosion was wicked sweet, huh? Watching the video took me back to my grandparents' dilapidated Appalachian Trail cabin, shooting coffee cans and jugs of water from the back porch with a .22 semi-automatic rifle, the cans flipping in the air almost before you heard the report. Damn that was fun.
Anyway, back to the issue of whether or not the spot works as a deterrent against gun shooting. Jeff Beer of AdAge site Creativity thinks it's "effective," but he doesn't say why or for what. Gun possession is already illegal in England and first time offenders face a minimum of five years in prison. So who, exactly, is the spot supposed to be targeting? The criminal gun-runners/sellers? Teen gangsters? If I was a teen gangster, after seeing this fetishizing of gunplay, I'd grab my piece and head to a deserted area and start blasting away at watermelons. In fact, the first 50 seconds of this video would make a perfect opening for an NRA PowerPoint recruitment presentation.
The release of this commercial coincides with the shooting death of eleven-year-old Rhys Jones last Thursday, the latest in a string of inner city gun crimes in the UK. Maybe, as a result, British TV stations will pick up and run the spot for free and air the fuck out of it. Maybe, that'll do something.
But really? This beautiful piece of film was shot so that a couple creative directors and associate creative directors, and a bunch of copywriters and art directors who had nothing to do with its creation could all put it on their reels. Heck, after writing this piece, I think I'll put it on my reel.
