THE CHURCHILL DOG, THE MEERKATS AND MARMITE

In recent times television advertising has bombarded us with a wide variety of what may best be described as scuzzy irritating crap some of whose central characters have slowly irredeemably evolved into hate figures. One of the finest of these is the fat songster with the twirly moustache would exhorts us to go compare. People have now become so sick of his zany antics and one track suggestion that he has degenerated into a figure of contempt. They’ve simply got tired of being hectored. We’ve got the message. There’s no need to tell us anymore. If we want to go compare then we’ll go but in the meantime shut your gob and leave us alone to ponder. Indeed, there are already two other candidates for insurance already taking up our attention. One’s the simply horrid Churchill Dog. The other’s the ever insouciant ever lively Meerkat family who feature in a genuinely inventive, evolving series of family stories and tales of woe.

But first let’s look at the Churchill Dog; what it is, what it’s supposed to represent and how it affects our psyche. The company, called Churchill, clearly aims to associate the character of its prime point of sale, a bulldog called Churchill, with the character of the politician and former war leader now long deceased, Winston Churchill in a running series of colourful adverts showing the various antics of the beast. Key to all this of course is the public memory of the man himself and the most prominent event of his life, that of an indomitable, courageous and genuinely popular war leader of Britain in its struggle against Hitler and his odious Nazi tyranny from 1939-1945, throughout the Second World War. That is, even today, how he is best remembered. For his pugnacious never say die spirit that brought the people of this country out of the darkest of times out into the sunlight of victory. His popularity and determination were re-engineered for public consumption then and in the years that followed into a bulldog spirit. A notion that is still with us and now capitalized on by the Churchill bulldog adverts.

The association all seems pretty simple and straightforward. Public memory, such as it is, exploited for the purpose of television advertising to sell us a product. There doesn’t seem much harm in that, the advertiser would say, but let’s take a look at things more closely! The dog, often called Churchie is portrayed as being endearing. It has a kind of insouciant pugnacious charm with ridiculously twinkling piggy little eyes that invariably accompany an affable expression and winning smile. Trouble is the man was never like that at all. He rarely smiled, was more often angry and scheming than not, drank like a fish, got up just about everyone’s nose with his political and military bluster and bungling and more often than not got firmly put down for overweening ambition that at times made him look ridiculous. Indeed, it was only near the end of his long career that he found the right path but for the rest of the time he was deeply unpopular and a bit of a joke.

He was a descendant of the Duke of Marlborough maybe but his own immediate family was a mainline disaster with his father a blundering politician, an aristocrat in Government through family connection, poxed up to the eyeballs with syphilis who’d married a wealthy American for money much as anything else. Winston had a lot to live down and after public school became a main line chancer who used his historical background for self-promotion in journalism, the army then politics in a series of desperate adventures that eventually led him to political disaster for being responsible for the great military fiasco of the Gallipoli Campaign and the needless death of many British and Commonwealth soldiers. Desperate and a political outcast for a large part of the following decade he returned with a vengeance as a Tory trades union basher who took on and fought striking coal miners and the Labour Movement just about everywhere, only re-emerging with political respectability during the early thirties. Throughout the two post Gallipoli decades he was an unsmiling uncompromising bullying antagonist of organised labour who was universally detested by British working men and their families.  

There was nothing much twinkly-eyed about him then and no smiling insouciant photos either. The man, it was generally acknowledged, had about as much charm as a rattlesnake and only eventually found his true destiny in life as the uncompromising enemy of a man altogether more odious than himself. Notwithstanding his wartime leadership, the British public gave their own judgement on the man for after leading the country to victory the nation’s soldiers, sailors and airmen immediately booted him out of office to again leave him angry and festering in the political wilderness. He again, however, returned to office in 1951 after five desperately hard Labour post-war years.

All in all then, throughout his life Churchill was never an affable, twinkly-eyed, chortling charmer who’d get into zany adventures and let anyone address him as Churchie. And neither did he show much pugnacity or determination of spirit throughout his political or military career unless it was escaping from Boer captivity which at that time was easy, or leading Britain in the Second World War. It was at this latter time that he showed the pugnacity and determination of spirit on which this projected advertised memory rests. This is the memory capitalized on in the adverts. However, since the War ended almost seven decades back and history lessons at school not what they might be, the name is best known to those who may be said to come from the older generation and the advertising pitched at them. An affable bulldog with an affable bulldog spirit, fondly remembered.

Okay, fine. Now let’s look at bulldogs! Who says they’re really determined… really pugnacious… that they’ve really got any charm? Only their owners! Actually they’re fat, slobbering, squat, grossly even offensively ugly. In fact, compared to most dogs they look pretty vile and walk like they’re permanently crippled. They don’t look at anyone and they’re not interested in anyone. They are determinedly anti-social. You’ve got to own one, be the kind of person who’d want to own one in order to like one. You’ve got to be seriously idiosyncratic. Think of yourself as absolutely British, British with a vengeance to want one. Look at a bulldog’s arse and think of it having a shit, then think of Winston Churchill doing the same.

So the silly adverts keep coming. The twinkly-eyed dog with the silly expression on its face getting up to yet another ridiculous caper with a well-known actor calling it Churchie! And the advertising company playing on your sentimentality for things past with an entirely manufactured memory. It’s such a very British phenomenon… wartime images being manufactured for sales purposes and mainly older people being sold to in this manner.

The Churchill television bulldog is plain awful. There is something irredeemably vile about it’s silly expressions, silly shaking head and silly chatter. It really is simply vile. Nonetheless the adverts keep coming so what does it say? Well it says they have to be working. That the wretched dog is selling their product! If that’s the case then think about it! What does that say about people?

I can only think of one phrase. BLOODY PATHETIC!

I’d now like to talk about an altogether more interesting animal advert for in-sur-ance! The Meerkat family series! Ever since they began with Papa Meerkat from Russia most viewers were swept off their feet with a lively, intelligent, genuinely insouciant charm. The Russian accent was great, the story told of emigration to the West and hard work full of realism and fun. In fact, the realism was so strong that portraying a meerkat as central character with the brilliant cartoon animation involved made it even more so. It might have been selling insurance but the innocuous way this was sold, as being almost secondary to the antics of the meerkat and the story in which it was involved, made it altogether more subtle. People weren’t being ‘sold’, weren’t being invited or hectored to buy… they were primarily being entertained. People didn’t feel they were being ‘got at’. Indeed, they were being drawn in as part of a story, one that became a whole family tale. A fascinating new kind of animal success story with lively charming new characters, each with their own personality. This was altogether something unusual. A piece of highly realistic creative genius that so many of us could identify with without necessarily feeling we were under a sales cosh. This was seriously new psychological thinking. A soft sell combination of imaginative story-telling and complex animation to sell a product which as everyone now knows, has worked!

There’s something magical about the Meerkats and their tale of success. They’ve now turned into a lively very realistic almost human family of individual characters with problems, problems we can identify with because they’re actually so human. A family of animals has been strangely humanized, made undeniably charming, and yet they’re still a family of animals. Humanized animals we feel affection for and can identify with. It’s brilliant psychology in more ways than one and does the job, sells the product as intended.

The Meerkats, however, have now become more than an advert. Their status is almost iconic. They’ve become part of an ongoing story lodged in our culture. They’re creatures, and we almost don’t like to think of them as a ‘creation’. Indeed, those who thought them up have given us a hitherto unheard of achievement. Switch on the popular Coronation Street soap as many do and they’re there on the box. In our lives with their story just as much as the machinations within the soap opera itself. What we have then are two parallel stories! The Meerkat soap rivaling the Human! Just a few seconds at either end but the first often preferred to the second! Everything depends on the creative ingenuity of the writers but many now hope that the Meerkats might have a show of their own with more characters and more individual stories. It might cost the insurance advertisers a fortune but who knows? In purely economic terms it might be worth the expense!

Perhaps not, but for now let us hope that the family keep delivering the goods. Maintaining their charm and maintaining ours. The adverts are now more than adverts. More than a plain commercial success. With the commercial spin-off they’re becoming a franchise, something that happened to Star Trek with astonishing commercial results. Who knows, Meerkat Incorporated might find its way into the Footsie 100 with Papa Meerkat a real Russian Hero! A Russian success story in the capitalist West.

I don’t think the same could ever happen to ‘Churchie’. The charm of the Meerkats is genuine because it’s only too human while the charm of the silly-faced dog’s too full of shit for my liking.     

Finally, THE MARMITE ADVERT

I have now watched this advert for Marmite on YouTube. For some reason I am trying to understand there have been various complaints about it to the Advertising Standards Authority. My own opinion is this. Only rarely have I seen an advert for a product that is so creatively brilliant, so tongue in cheek, so entertaining and actually so compelling. I’ve always loved Marmite. It’s a unique and very British product and true, it takes us time to get through a jar but when it’s finished we’ll undoubtedly go out and buy more because actually it tastes quite delicious.

The tongue in cheek advert is also so very British. Part of our very best kind of humor. Extremely witty, clever, inventive and quite frankly ingenious. It’s kind of self-deprecating, deliberately low key which makes it all the more powerful. To those with a real sense of humor it’s fun. Something that those who deprecate our idiosyncratic Britishness detest. We might be a mighty peculiar lot but we know how to laugh when others can’t. We can be light when others are heavy. We have a peculiarly anarchic sense of fun. We’re getting to a time now when people are too deadly serious with just about anything. The this campaign and the that campaign. Disagree with anything they say and suddenly you’re a Nazi! They may say some good things but you’re not allowed to air or have your own point of view. Only theirs.

More horrifying than anything it’s only their point of view that counts. Have your own ideas or thoughts about gay rights, ethnic issues, animal rights or the feminist movement that disagrees with some ‘cause’ or other and you are likely, these days, to be labeled abusive. If you disagree with me then you’re abusive and I don’t want to talk to you! That’s where democracy seems to be at the moment. It’s like countless little Nazis have taken over running the show and determining what everyone’s morality should be. These are very serious people, their association with their new cause addictive. So very serious that they’re quite unable to see any funny side to their instant addiction. Quite unable to laugh anymore. They’ve got a mission in hand. To make people see the truth in what they believe. To convert others to their own point of view or else ridicule or condemn them. Ultimately destroy them. I’m not joking. It’s happened before. In recent times too. These very serious people, unable to tolerate anyone else’s point of view, are on their way to becoming the new Nazis.

Imagine the attitude of those people who complained about the Marmite advert. They’ve lost their ability to be humorous about anything, anymore. To see the light side of life. I mean, have you seen any extremist ever smile about anything? Ever seen any Nazi have a good laugh! They couldn’t, but we could… laugh at them. They couldn’t laugh at themselves, but we could. That’s why they lost. The Marmite Advert is something some people couldn’t laugh at. In fact, it made them so uptight that they had to complain. Either they couldn’t understand its humor or they have no sense of humor themselves. In which case what I suggest you do is begin a WE HATE THE MARMITE ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN and see how far it gets you with the British public when you tell them what they can eat and what they can’t.

Yes, instead of criticizing the Tory policies of Ed Miliband why don’t you put all your energies into that kind of thing. You do understand, don’t you, that all the many fanatical enemies of Marmite throughout the world as well as the many aliens on hitherto unknown planets will love you for it and definitely want to get in touch!
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