The CMM News Advertising Awards 2006

Let the big bananas of the advertising world dream up their own awards for the greatest, most effective, best art-directed and best tiddlyompompom watsit ad thingies. This is my own ill-considered list of 2006’s ad achievements, in no particular order.

1. The Crispy Tummy-Wipe Award
For the most gratuitous use of sex in advertising. Made for no other reason than to prop up the sales figures of paper tissue manufacturers.
These exercise vids had a certain charm about them, and at least the girls built up a decent sweat. So an honourable mention goes to Stuff4Dudes. But the prize must go to Independence Cigars whose first viral featured a naked woman playing with her boobs, and whose latest has progressed to a naked lesbian romp. There’s something about cigars which encourages advertisers to treat them as a phallic object, more so than cigarettes (which are a bit effeminate, after all).

2. The Limp Dick Award
We should have expected better from Virgin, whose reputation for making reasonably good virals is let down by this mank. I had intended to rail against Lutwyche, whose original 2003 viral was dark, sinister and brilliant. The sequel was so crap that it's url has been withdrawn, so I can't feature it here. Don't worry, you're not missing anything. St. Luke's is evidently trying to deal with the trauma.

3. Happy Slappy Award
I reckon that there's an ad trend that sees the camera moving away from the upper part of the body to the much more accommodating lower regions. Bums are funnier than tits, and you can smack them too. Hence Old Khaki’s fish spank, and this odd chap being accosted for Doc Martens. The prize must go to the utterly pointless slap happy girls from Bennetts insurance in a post that generated the largest number of hits for this blog. You perverts.

4. Le Grand Fromage Award
For big brands trying something risky. A special mention to Marmite, for a quite disgusting viral which generated the second-highest number of posts in CMM News. But Marmite has been making hay with its love it or hate it campaign for a long time, and the progression to baby vomit was still in keeping with the slightly irreverent style of its recent TV work.
What was surprising was the sight of the previously viral-shy Procter & Gamble stick its neck out with this piece of work for Charmin which, although relatively safe, was bold for being the first toilet paper ad that properly refers to poo. Toilet paper may be nice for drying naughty puppies, but that's not what the stuff is made for.
In 2007 I’d like to see a toilet paper brand use the tagline “great for wiping the shit from your arse”
Yes, it has a certain ring to it.

5. Provincial Potty Mouth Award
Internationally accepted swear words are sometimes OK, but they lack a certain something. Hollywood has a lot to answer for. The word Fuck, for instance, has been McDonald-ised, and is almost safe. Yeah, Fuck is now the Big Mac of the world of the potty mouth. You wouldn’t bat an eyelid if grandma uttered it.
I therefore hope that the lighter Wanker (Greenpeace) and Tosser (Tories) retain their British flavour. Both words popped up in virals this year, but didn’t hit the same high as Bollocks (VW) did a few years back.
The mean-spirited Greenpeace viral wins it by default because a win for the Tories would undermine my credibility.

6. Swimming in the Gutter Award
Whereas Charmin tackled the poo issue whilst keeping its hands clean, a distinctly yucky viral for a very small retailer was responsible for the biggest gross-out of 2006. I suppose extreme toilet humour is fine when targeting spotty adolescents, but it runs the risk of alienating older consumers who might have been interested in the product.
Dog poo is slightly less revolting.

7. Best Surprise Appearance of a Knob
The Oatso Simple plasticine uncle of Windy Miller provided the newspapers with hours of fun in their hunt for the man-made willy. This Computer sign is a bit random (but amused me enough to post it), but neither comes close to the cheeky priapic charm of the mutt whose todger became an embarrassment for Ikea.

8. The Snurge Award
Snurge was the term we used at school for the teacher who used to hang around the bike sheds sniffing the girls' bicycle seats. The gold-painted saddle is earned by this Scampi snack in memory of those dodgy teenage years.

9. The Glass Cock (GC) Zombie Award
For an ad-related story that is continuously resurrected. I have nicked the GC concept from b3ta.
My vanity will not allow me to contemplate the possibility that I wasn’t the first blogger to add Bentley to this sequence of car ads. Either way, it keeps popping up again and again in a variety of blogs. Other bloggers: stop!

10. Best appearance by a chimp in an ad
Never mind Careerbuilder and the Trunk Monkey, the star turn of the year was the cheeky fella in the Sure ad with a finger up his bottom (46 seconds in).

Give that monkey a banana, but don’t shake his hand.