John Lewis' Frankenstein

John Lewis has released this year's Christmas advert, far too early, and again it reminds me of a horror story. 2012's 'The Journey' advert reminded me of Jo Nesbo's 'The Snowman' about a serial killer who leaves snowmen outside the houses of women he's murdered. Read the book and you will never look at a snowman the same way again.

This year's advert features a boy with a penguin. The narrative is that the penguin longs for a partner to love. Now it just so happens that last week while travelling we listened to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. What many people forget is that the reason the monster destroys everything that Frankenstein holds dear is because his creator has refused to make a partner for him to love. I wonder what the John Lewis penguin would have done if he hadn't got his Christmas wish?

Little Britain comes to Woodham Ferrers

This is one of the most imaginative approaches to advertising for a vicar I've come across. Normally a church will produce a parish profile; a large document full of facts and figures, job description and person specification. To be honest many parish profiles should be filed under the fiction section of the local library. The only way to get a feel for a parish, the church and its people is to go there. Woodham Ferrers and Bickenacre is a parish in the same deanery where I serve. Here the church has taken a different approach and I think it will pay dividends. Initial reaction to the video has been very favourable and I hope and pray they find the right person to come and share with them in ministry and mission. This is a great example of what can be done using the resources of social media and some enthusiastic participants.

Not so cute

You know Tian Tian and Yang Guang, those two cute and cuddly Pandas that have just shipped in from China. Turns out they aren’t so cute and cuddly.



h/t Chris Tilling

Snowman redux

For those of you who find the Christmas adverts a bit too much Charlie Brooker has written an interesting piece in The Guardian. And here’s an excellent take on The Snowman for all the Scrooges out there.



h/t Paul Trathen

waiting

The Christmas adverts are in full swing and I think this one has a lot of mileage as a talk or sermon illustration.



h/t Nigel Coke-Woods

Countdown

The Christmas countdown is well under way and the prize for most bizarre Advent calendar so far goes to Lego who have produced a Star Wars calendar.



Lego tell us:

With 24 unique gifts, including iconic minifigures, vehicles and accessories from the Star Wars universe, the all-new LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar is the perfect way to set the festive holidays into hyperspeed!

Do they refer to the baby Jesus as a youngling and does it warn children that the figures aren’t edible?

Sorry Lego but I think I will stick to a more traditional approach and this year will be going for the TradeCraft Advent calendar. You know, the one that reminds us what Christmas is about.

Update 201801: The TradeCraft calendar link no longer works but you can find out more about TradeCraft here.

Is this what church feels like?

An excellent advert which prompts the question:

‘Is this what church feels like to many visitors?’

h/t Paul Trathen.

Close to the Edge at Tesco’s

Kate picked up a local free magazine called The Edge this morning at the checkout in Tesco’s. At first glance it looked like the usual fare of news, features and pages of adverts for businesses in Chelmsford and then you reach the page called Only Joking. The first joke was innocuous, unless you are a roadie, but from then on it was offensive. The second joke was about an African baby covered in flies, followed by a sexist joke, a joke about blow jobs and a racist joke about Pakistan. At the bottom of the page it says that all jokes have been provided by Edge readers and there is an invitation to email someone called Shaun at the magazine with your jokes.

I’m tempted to publish Shaun’s email address at the magazine to unleash the horrors of bots, spam, trolls and all the other plagues of the web on the magazine. It would be about as funny as the nauseating drivel the magazine has published. Instead I think I’ll drop a line to Tesco’s and some of the local business who have adverts in the mag and see how happy they are to be associated with this material. After all, they have paid to identify with sexism, racism, obscenity and cruelty.

Cooked - a culturally revealing advert meme

Thought this was an interesting meme set up by Clayboy: If you were a media or cultural studies teacher, which current TV advert would you pick for a challenging reflection on our cultural values?

I’ve picked the Thomas Cook advert featuring Jamie and Louise Redknapp. The advert ran last year but I’m sure I’ve seen it quite recently. Here are some of the issues and questions raised by the campaign.

• The use of young, attractive celebrities from the worlds of sport and entertainment to promote a product. Interesting that Jamie’s football skills are referenced but not Louise’s singing!
• You would never know that the Redknapps have a young family because they tell us ‘we are at our best when we are on it (the holiday)’. They are on holiday without their children.
• The location could be anywhere with sun, sand and surf with no sense of a specific place.
• There are no cultural reference points nor is there any encounter with the local population. Enjoy the climate and location without having to engage with the local community. 
• ‘We fantasise about it’, ‘we shop for it’, ‘we lose weight for it’. Consumerism, body image and escapism.
• The advert suggests leisure is a serious matter involving important choices; it needs research, careful planning and preparation.

Here's the advert.

Now watch the mashup



As Clayboy said, if you want to have a go consider yourself tagged.

Changing attitudes

Some people may have already seen this but I thought it was worth posting. A group of engineers in Stockholm got together to see if they could change people’s behaviour. They wanted to reverse the percentage of people choosing the escalator rather than the stairs and the result was 66% chose the stairs. Of course the whole thing is really an advert for a certain car manufacturer. One wag commented that an easier way to do it would be to simply switch off the escalator but where’s the fun in that?



The video reminded me of my favourite scene from the film Big.



Now what can we learn from this about encouraging people to explore the Good News we have to share?

h/t Chris Newlands and Sandra Sykes

He’s on His way

I’m impressed by the latest poster from ChurchAds.Net for Christmas 2010: Baby Scan Jesus. The agency describes the idea behind the poster campaign as follows:

In the 21st century, proud parents-to-be announce the coming birth by showing friends and family the scan of the baby. Our new Baby-Scan Jesus poster (pictured right) uses this convention to place the birth of Christ in an ultra-contemporary context.
It is highly impactful. It has a sense of immediacy. It creates anticipation. And theologically it speaks of both the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ.

Needless to say the usual suspects have already begun to moan, led by Terry Sanderson and the National Secular Society. Nick Baines has posted an excellent rebuttal of the complaints on his blog Christmas is coming.

This is the latest in ChurchAds.Net’s Christmas starts with Christ campaign series; I blogged about last year’s Bus Stop Nativity poster here. What I like most about the campaign, and what I suspect most worries its critics, is that it reminds us that the Good News of Jesus Christ is grounded in the real world and everyday life and is for ordinary people.

sign of the times (7) – cafe nero

Something about this sign wound me up when I saw it in Chelmsford yesterday. Just another advert for one of the many coffee shops in the high street, yet what stood out were the words at the bottom: ‘Fill yourself with joy’. Perhaps it is the appeal to self indulgence, not giving joy to someone else but giving yourself joy that seems to me to be the negation of the Christmas message. It’s part of a particular trend in advertising, what I call the ‘because you're worth it’ approach.

Christmas is an invitation to be filled with joy; joy at receiving the gift of God freely given in his son Jesus Christ.

are the Christmas stamps Christian?

There has been much rejoicing in the Christian press in the last couple of weeks with the news that this year’s Royal Mail Christmas stamps will feature the Nativity story. The stamps take images from stained glass windows by artists associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Dr Christian Baxter greeted the news with the following: ‘a wonderful narration of the Christmas story, through some of the country’s best examples of stained glass’. Well, they may be great examples of stained glass window art, but are they Christian? Do they really reflect the story which is part of the foundation of the Christian faith?

I fear these images contribute to the maintenance of a fantasy which is very far from the reality of the story of the birth of Christ and therefore will never really challenge people to engage with what that story is about. The stain glass images reinforce a Christmas sentimentality that makes the story seem like a romantic fairytale. Take for example the portrayal of Mary; Revd Neil Spencer, the vicar of the church from which the image of Mary is taken, comments: ‘What I love about it is that she’s surrounded by angels and cherubim, but she looks like a real person. She reminds everyone that this isn’t just some imaginary, mythical figure, but actually a real woman.’ No she doesn’t. Mary in this image is an idealised Pre-Raphaelite depiction of a white, western European woman not a Semitic young girl from the ancient Near East who has just endured the trauma of a pregnancy outside marriage and child birth. A better image would have been of a young Palestinian mother struggling with a baby in the Bethlehem of today. A Bethlehem surrounded by a wall and barbed wire, patrolled by soldiers and with a population experiencing the tensions and turmoil of occupation. A Bethlehem in which the shepherds would never have got near Mary from their fields because of the barriers that prevent movement between workplace and home. The Bethlehem I experienced when I visited the Holy Land this time last year and wrote about in my blog.

Until we are prepared to depict the Christmas story in ways that connect with the real world and the pain, suffering and mess in the world, we deny the incarnation and reduce the greatest story ever told to a Christmas pantomime. That is why I welcome the bus stop advertising campaign Christmas Starts With Christ organised by ChurchAds.Net. The holy family is portrayed in a traditional nativity scene, but that image is then located in a bus stop surrounded by ordinary people. A thought provoking representation placing the birth of Christ in the everyday world.