Sitcom in Advertising

Three Sitcom Staples – Family, Character and… the Sofa

Three sitcom staples have made their appearance recently in adverts for McCain, Go Compare and DFS.

While two of these are aren’t varying from their usual territory, one of them is, and that reinforces the importance of strong, recognisable characters.

McCain have made a name for themselves for nailing their colours firmly to the mast of the Modern Family – giving visibility and inclusion to gay dads, blended families, BAME and Muslim families, twins, trans offspring and separated families. After the different relationships are introduced, everyone comes together around the dinner table to munch on chips and discuss their differences and similarities.

The dinner table is a place of planning and consolidation in sitcoms – think of the Boswells in Bread, the boys in Butterflies dreading whatever Ria was about to serve up, Mrs Brown discussing her sad life with next-door-neighbour Winnie McGoogan. It’s a place of coming together to reflect on what’s just happened and to plan the next course of action.

DFS sofas, meanwhile, have emphasised that comfort is at the heart of everything they do. And the sofa is at the heart of the domestic sitcom – Friends, The Royle Family, Men Behaving Badly, The Simpsons, Frasier. Why? Well, the comfort of home is where everything is safe and calm before the ‘inciting incident’ that threatens the family and must be defeated before the end of the episode. How many times have we seen five of the gang on the sofa in Central Perk before someone comes in and says, “Guys, you’ll never guess what just happened…” As DFS say, “it’s the place where home life happens.” And a home life of ‘bouncing… cuddling’ is safe, unchallenging, comfortable.

Also, studio sitcoms are presented in proscenium theatre arch style, so it makes sense to have the cast sitting next to each other facing the audience, rather than sitting opposite each other because we’d only see them in profile.

Gio Compario no longer breaks into song but claims Mr Bean-like qualities in the latest Go Compare ad. This is a shift in emphasis for the comparison website, and, like Virgin Media a couple of months ago, emphasises the fact that their product offers more than their competitors, rather than the add-ons from the meerkats or the ability to dance like Action Man.

The fact that Gio Compario is still with the brand, having been killed off and resurrected, and is now taking on a new, less shouty but still big and bold, persona, is tantamount to how much of a part of popular culture he is, as this article explains. A tie-in with Blind Date can’t be too far away.

Mad Men Behaving Badly

Why the Philadelphia Advert Should Have Been Banned –
And It’s Not Why You Think

Mondelez UK, the makers of Philadelphia cheese, have been hauled across the ASA’s coals today because they’ve breached the new gender stereotyping code, which, according to Jess Tye, the ASA’s investigations officer, can cause “real world harm.”

The advert itself shows two new dads looking after the newborns in a sushi-style restaurant and being so mesmerised by the Philly-based tuck on display they put the baby on the conveyor belt… and then realise they’ve put the baby on the conveyor belt… and then pick the baby up. No harm done.

There are so many problems with this Men Behaving Badly/Joey & Chandler rip-off that the gender representation issue kinda gets lost. First off, suspend my disbelief that anybody would be in a Philly-based sushi restaurant in the first place. Second, the men are actually awake. Third, nothing bad happens. At. All. But the fourth reason is the biggest one and why, IMHO, the ad should have been banned in the first place.

It’s one of those uber-shite continentally produced ones with the micro-dialogue that’s so badly dubbed that we don’t see the men speak and just cut away before their lips move so we can’t see that they’re originally saying, “Mein Gott, wo ist der Kind? Nicht ein Wort zu Mama, klar?”

I hate them with all my nerve endings and I’m glad it got banned. Don’t get me started on Calgon.

Chabuddy G Pepsi Max

The latest sitcom character to step over into advert land is People Just Do Nothing’s ultrapreneur Chabuddy G, played by Asim Chaudhry, who fronts Pepsi Max’s Taste Challenge for 2019.

The Advert

This is a three-minute piece for social media, and the intro starts with some jump cuts of Chabuddy G introducing himself as ‘the mayor of Hounslow’ and ‘Alan brown Sugar’ in voice over. He’s standing next to a black van covered with Pepsi Max posters, and the VO announces that he’s becoming a social media influencer.

This latest YouTube sensation then addresses the camera, claiming that he doesn’t pay for anything and that the latest brand to sponsor him is Pepsi Max. Then it’s into the episode, with him giving unwitting punters the chance to compare Pepsi Max to “another brand of cola we don’t really talk about too much.” Cue shots of Chabuddy sampling both colas in a wine glass with pretentious commentary.

Half way through the ad, the focus shifts to show that he’s not on official business but has set up stall near the real Pepsi Max challenge, and he goes to ingratiate himself with the completely professional set up around the corner before the truth catches up with him and he does a runner before things get worse.

The narrative ends with the so-called ‘mayor of Hounslow’ sitting in the back of his van telling us that he did conduct the official taste test and we should ‘comment, like, subscribe’ as all good YouTubers do. Cut to some faux blank tape and an outtake of the fallen hero lamenting that nobody has actually sent him anything for free and that ‘influencing is hard’.

The Sitcom Bit

The useful thing about People Just Do Nothing is that it’s a mockumentary, so it’s the norm for characters to break the fourth wall and address the camera. The pieces of story in both are intercut with comic explanations to camera, in this case such as, “I am the influencer. Influential influencer, influenza. Not influenza, that’s a disease.”

Chabuddy G is in character throughout, mainly in his upbeat, high status, optimistic persona while he’s pushing the product and then, when the curtain has been pulled back to show him in his true state, as a tired, defeated, pathetic loser. As with the lies about how much gear he receives for free and how official his taste test is, the comedy is in the space between what he is showing to the world and how we really see him. There’s plenty of Asian Del Boy at work here, with the pretentious chat around the different colas as though he knows what he’s talking about.

Similarities and Differences

Most sitcom episodes are based around a lie of some sort to show the difference between the objective truth and the self-delusion which is keeping the characters where they are. The gap is where we find the comedy. And this one’s no exception – Chabuds tells us at the beginning of the piece that he’s receiving free gear and this is revealed at the end to be a lie and that he’s brassic because he’s had to spend out for everything we see in his van. The next big lie is that he’s portraying himself as being on official Pepsi business when he’s merely set up a gazebo and added a few banners and posters.

The TV sitcom carries an 18 certificate on Netflix, while there’s only a slight swear at the end of this piece for social media.

With the pasting that an opinion piece gave the AA Red Dwarf ad recently for being lazy, it’s inviting for a headline writer somewhere to go with Pepsi Just Do Nothing. But this piece benefits from the fact that the mockumentary style allows the central character to be more naturalistic and for the dialogue to be less ‘copywritten’. There’s a big absence of any drug taking or illegal behaviour apart from the lies, and Chabuds does a runner from the Pepsi tent before anything really bad can kick off.

It’ll be interesting to see how this one goes down in advert land and with fans of the show, and, if badly received, it could add weight to the idea that sitcom tropes are best used to create characters and situations (such as the meerkats or Martin Freeman’s Vodafone character) and not to have established sitcom characters enter from outside.

Red Dwarf AA – July 2019

Fans of the galactic gallivanters – Lister, Rimmer, Kryten and Cat – will have been delighted to see their lovable zeroes taking centre stage in the latest AA advert, Stellar Rescue. See what they did there…

The Advert

We open with an external establishing shot of the crew’s vehicle, Starbug, which coughs, splutters and won’t move.

Then go to an interior of the cockpit, as cheeky chap Dave Lister (Craig Charles) asks, “What’s wrong with it, it sounds like me first thing in the morning.”

For script writers that say it’s impossible to get a joke in in the first line, there’s your answer.

Smooth-talking cool Cat (Danny John-Jules) tells everyone to chill out and then has a hissy fit freak out when something explodes; Robert Llewellyn’s Kryten offers to sacrifice himself in the hope that his exploding head will attract help from anyone in the vicinity. Rimmer (Chris Barrie) is the closest to attempting a real-life solution when he phones an inferior breakdown service but suffers with voice recognition software or an English-as-second-language call centre, it’s not clear which.

Lister takes control of the situation, mirroring Cat’s earlier advice to chill by telling everyone to relax. But this time he has good reason – he uses the AA app to call for help and even tracks the arrival of the Roadside Assistance Officer (the actress is bizarrely only referred to as Simone in the behind-the scenes YouTube video, I’m sure she has a surname). Lister even speaks in jingle-rhyme, “Guys, relax, I’m with the AA; You just tap the app, and help’s on the way.”

Rimmer poo-poos Dave’s actions, and continues to try to get through to his ill-communicating call centre, even though the AA have arrived, giving the viewer even more reason to side with Lister and the AA. Roadside Assistance Officer lifts up a computer panel as though it’s a car bonnet and, with a passage of time signified by another external shot of the Starbug and AA shuttle together, the bonnet comes back down and Roadside Assistance is all beaming smiles and “anything else I can help you with?”

It returns to the familiar territory of the original show with Cat ejecting Rimmer from Starbug before going back into advert-mode to end on the tagline of ‘The future of breakdown, today’.

The Sitcom Element

The advert’s been described by Shots as the oxymoronic ‘nostalgic new’, by Campaign as ‘apocalyptic’ and ‘out of this world’ and The Drum states that it ‘mimics the look and feel of a genuine instalment of the long-running show’. Ads of the World has the production details.

Written by Jon Farley and Alex Lucas at Adam & Eve alongside the original creators of Red Dwarf, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, it’s directed by Declan Lowney at Another Film Company.

The 60-second ad follows stages 2, 3 and 6 of classic seven-stage sitcom episode structure.

Stage 2 is ‘We have a problem’ – the vehicle won’t start and we don’t know how to fix it.

Stage 3 (‘Try to fix the problem’) instantly follows with each of the characters coming up with flawed examples of how to solve this dilemma. All three characters are behaving true to their established type and come with ready-made, inbuilt uselessness.

Stage 6 (‘Do the right thing and fix the problem’) is down to cheeky chap Dave using the AA app and the Roadside Assistance Officer making everything hunky dory. Problem solved.

Similarities and Differences

Many of the aspects of a Red Dwarf episode are present, and in 60 seconds there’s only time to concentrate on the central characters, so no time for Holly the on-board computer or Dave Lister’s erstwhile love interest Chrissy Kochanski, but there are noticeable differences with the imposition of the advertising format.

The advert goes straight into ‘problem’ mode with no establishing set-up apart from the external shot of Starbug. We have similarities with a full-length episode when Cat, Kryten and Rimmer offer ways to solve the problem, with Rimmer calling a lesser breakdown service rather than ask Holly the computer how to fix the problem.

But the main difference is when Dave uses the AA app to call for help. Because we go straight to the strategy that actually solves the problem, we miss out on the escalation of the problem and the raising of tension (and release through laughter) which would be the central bulk of a sitcom episode. Or, if this were the initial attempt to solve the problem, it would lead to something worse – Dave trying it on with the Roadside Assistance Officer who turns out to be an energy-zapping alien that wanted to marry him and eat his brains, for example.

Lister’s use of jingle-rhyme would be met with astonishment in a full-length episode that had no affiliations to a product, with Lister the most likely to take the mick out of it or refer to it sarcastically. Or he’d realise that he’d spoken that way and that they’d all been infected by a space virus that made them speak in rhyme.

This advert is a classic example of using elements of sitcom structure, but with the difference that it uses established and well-loved sitcom characters to sell a service, rather than creating new characters from scratch.