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Charles Goldsmith
He once lampooned Britain for its ``18th-century class system and 17th-century plumbing,'' but US satirist PJ O'Rourke is now singing the praises of British Airways in the most-talked-about advertisements on UK television.
The ads play on the inability of Britons to brag, particularly about business success. In the UK, boasting is horribly tacky. But because he is from the US, the cantankerous author of ``Holidays in Hell'' and other sardonic tomes, gets away with it in spades.
Poking fun at British foibles like shoddy cricket (``you invent a sport that no one understands, and the whole world still whips you at it'') and tea with milk (``you take a delicious Oriental infusion, and dump cow juice into it''), O'Rourke then tells Britons that ``you must be doing something right because 17 million of us Johnny Foreigners would rather fly your airline rather than any of our own. I guess you should be proud of that, but that wouldn't be very British, would it?''
Launched on July 2, the campaign engineered byad agency M&C Saatchi is drawing praise and awe.
``I think the ads are great, the best ones BA has done in a long time,'' says Tim Mellors, chief creative officer of rival agency Grey Advertising Ltd. in London. Adds Mac Cato, chairman of the Cato Consulting marketing firm in London: ``The buzz associated with this campaign has spread very fast. Everybody seems to like it: the Americans and other Johnny Foreigners love it, and the British people seem to like the fact that they're being made fun of in a lighthearted way.''
The 60-second and 90-second ads will run until the end of this month, and a second phase will most likely begin in a few months. Though they are aimed only at the British market, the ads are seen elsewhere by millions of people because they appear on British Sky Broadcasting PLC's satellite network. The campaign's initial budget is 5 million ($7.8 million), including television time; the carrier declines to say how much was spent for production alone, or on O'Rourke's fee.
For BritishAirways, the ads are part of a back-to-British campaign. The carrier seeks to woo back UK customers turned off by the airline's controversial 1997 decision to change its tail-fin logo from a design based on the Union Jack -- the British flag -- to colourful ethnic designs from around the world. Fiercely criticised by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the new tail fins proved particularly unpopular among older Britons, including military veterans.
Bowing to the brickbats, the carrier announced last month that its tail fins would gradually revert to the Union Jack. In the ads featuring O'Rourke - making his first-ever advertising appearance -- the background music is a patriotic hymn, ``I Vow To Thee My Country.''
``Our advertising in the past has focused on product and service, but we wanted to appeal to people's emotions a bit more by portraying BA as a successful world airline,'' says Jill Manaton, a senior advertising manager at the airline. In addition, she says, the ads seek to ``show that wedo have a sense of humour, that we're not just big, bad BA.''
The image of BA as an uncaring behemoth has been the one that rival Richard Branson has sought -- often successfully -- to instill in the public consciousness. By portraying his own Virgin Atlantic Airways as hip and irreverent, and by cultivating a roguish image, Branson has been able to avoid being ``cut down to size'' by the popular press in the way most British successes are -- especially wealthy business tycoons.
``BA has been on the back foot''-the defensive-since the tail-fin brouhaha, says Mellors of Grey, who notes that Branson has ``tried to claim Britishness'' through some Union Jack designs of his own. ``But there's a new confidence in these ads that we haven't seen from BA for a long time.''Why wouldn't BA be self-assured after landing a pitchman like O'Rourke?
``He's never, ever done any type of advertising, and he's been approached 30 or 40 times in the past 15 years'' to tout everything from cars to alcoholic drinks, says theauthor's agent, Don Epstein of Greater Talent Network in New York. Approached by M&C Saatchi, Epstein was initially doubtful that his client would accept the ad. ``But he happens to believe in British Airways-he flies it-and he thought that this campaign was an interesting concept,'' says the agent. O'Rourke declined through his agent to be interviewed.
``He carries credibility because he's never said anything he didn't want to say,'' says Richard Alford, group account director at M&C Saatchi. ``He's not your typical corporate spokesman.'' O'Rourke is never identified in the ad, although many viewers know him from his books, some of which have been popular in Britain.
Asian Wall Street Journal
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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