Tags: Advertising, Silly
Tango Swansea
June 7th, 2006, by Rich.
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The Sony Bravia Advert with the thousands of bouncy balls is certainly one of the most visually striking pieces of advertising art from the last few years, so it was only a matter of time before it was copied.
When I saw the Swansea Tango Advert I laughed long and loud; the shots from the original are carefully copied and you don’t initially realise that it’s not the bravia advert. It’s perfect tango stuff, and follows the “metaphor” advert brilliantly.
Bravia Advert
In case you missed it, or just fancy seeing it again, here’s the original Bravia advert, featuring a 170,000 bouncy balls; filmed in San Francisco.
Tango Advert
The Tango advert, featuring several hundred pieces of fruit, filmed in Uplands, Swansea.
Residents Anger
The link that led us to the advert was from the website of the outraged residents association who were not happy about the damage to their property that all the free-falling fruit had caused.
The road on which it’s filmed (Cambridge Street, Swansea) is just down the road from where a school friend used to live, so I know the area, and the residents association being in “Swansea North” didn’t seem right. A little digging around quickly confirmed that the residents association website is owned by the advertising company.
Viral Marketing
It’s a beautfully done piece of viral marketing. The site is resplendent with dodgy background, low frame rate animated gifs, broken and irrelevant links, missing pictures, poor formatting, a broken feedback form and some truly dull copy.
It’s the attention to the small details that’s makes it so enjoyable, and probably very convincing.
They’ve even gone so far as to create two satellite spoof news sites (Brecon Beacons Herald and Swansea Press) with what look like real stories.
Marketing of this kind can only get more elaborate from here. Almost full marks go to CHI Advertising for their work.
June 8th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
Hey that’s near me! I haven’t heard anything about this, great video though!
BTW - the Brecon Beacons Herald and Swansea Press have the links the wrong way round ;)
June 9th, 2006 at 8:34 am
Thanks ~J~, links switched.
June 9th, 2006 at 10:25 am
Ah, brilliant! LOL!
Great detective work too Rich! Cheers.
June 9th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
The BBC’s very lovely “Doctor Who” website has some fun “spinoff” sites, too. My favourites so far are:
Leamington Spa Lifeboat Museum: http://www.leamingtonspalifeboatmuseum.co.uk/
Torchwood House visitor site: http://www.visittorchwood.co.uk/
Cybus Industries: http://www.cybusindustries.net/
July 16th, 2006 at 8:15 am
I was there! (Well….. nearly!) We were visiting a friend in Pinewood Road and took the dog for a walk, as you do. When I tried to go along one road, I was stopped by a spotty youth and told I couldn’t go there.
This made me somewhat shirty and I made a detour…. “It’s Ok you can go there now”, he shouted after me, as we headed for an alternative route to a bit of grass. “I just didn’t want you to be flattened by tons of falling fruit”.
I thought maybe harvest time had come early!
We’ve been away in France for a while so have not seen the advert. We heard no mention of it in the local press before we went, either, despite subscribing to the South Wales Evening Post. So thanks for posting it so I could see what it was all about!
July 25th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
According to today’s SWEP this ad has been named the ‘Best soft drinks ad of the year’ at the Cannes Lions 2006 awards, part of the 53rd International Advertising Festival.
However, it seems there might actually be a genuine local ‘Mr Disgusted’ who is quoted as saying: “To say I am unhappy is the understatement of the year. They made the street a secure zone. You couldn’t get in or out. I think they had been watching too much Hollywood and they made a mess”
I wonder if they collected all the fallen fruit and composted it?
August 26th, 2006 at 9:10 am
who sings that song?! I MUST KNOW!pls? :)
October 4th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
I hope you don’t mind but I have tagged this page in Stumble Upon.
The Tango advert was new to me. The page made me laugh loud and long in delight. This is well worth sharing with others.
October 13th, 2006 at 11:15 pm
Does anyone have the advert of the car driving through mount pleasant with the afro. I can’t remeber what it was for now, I think nescafe?
The song is a cover by José González called Heartbeats.
December 11th, 2006 at 9:12 pm
Mostly filmed in Port Talbot (opening scene is the street next to the multistorey car park)