It’s perfect internet material: short, smart, witty, self-ironic, a bit oddball, loaded with wow! effects and, yes, a fair hormonal charge. Here it is:

“Look at your man, now back to me, now back to your man, now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me.”

Actually, I’m a little worried. I showed this to my wife yesterday and I’m convinced she’s watched it 146 times since then – and she’s still laughing! She may actually have watched the other one I showed her more often. This is the previous commercial from March, featuring “the man your man could smell like”, this one approaching 12 million views on YouTube. (Maybe I’m getting Old Spice for Christmas.)

You know you want to watch it. Here it is:

Now, I’m not Tayebot, and I’m not sure I can theorise satisfactorily about how this works in advertising terms. But I can spend a harmless few minutes wondering whether we have anything to learn from this.

Well, yes. Be short, smart, witty, self-ironic, a bit oddball, loaded with wow! effects and, yes, pack a fair hormonal charge.

Be short, smart, witty, self-ironic, a bit oddball, loaded with wow! effects and pack a fair hormonal charge

Not on a horse

And then get a budget to do something like this… I can’t track down a figure for the single videos, the best I can find is a media blog reporting that Old Spice advertising to June in 2010 cost 20 million dollars, the equivalent of 2/3 of its whole 2009 advertising budget. Sigh! We can only dream.

However, there is one interesting thing we can relate to in these advertisements: they (the first at least) are NOT loaded with computer-generated effects. Take my word for it, or watch this “making of” programme. It was done in one shot, with just a little photoshop-style tidying-up afterwards. Just like our lipdub. Yeah, right…

"French Favorite" on EUTube

This is pretty up-front in the no. 1 all-time hit, with nearly eight million views, officially  entitled “Film lovers will love this!“, but better known, thanks to a UK tabloid press storm, as the Commission’s “porno” film. So much so that YouTube requires the viewer to confirm he/she is over 18 before allowing it to be seen.  However, sex appears in several other EUTube hits. The no. 2 video features a more romantic view of love, often drawing on the same films we see in the “porno” video. (The same video, with its concluding slogan in French, reappears at no. 6, retitled “French Favourite”. It’s probably vey British-tabloid of me to see the new title, combined with the couple a-bed thumbnail, as innuendo, but there you have it…).

The excellent “Chemical Party” video (no. 3) also has its dose of sexual chemistry, though here jokily and geekily, but after that we have to go down to no. 15 to find “Make love, not CO2“, which conclusively demonstrates that guys who ride bikes and buy sustainable flowers for their girlfriends are stand a better chance of a satisfactory conclusion to the evening than their less ecological brethren. This video does not go where the porno film goes, but it does, I note, feature attractive young bodies in baths and showers.

I note this because I see a common factor here – bathroom fittings. This post was in fact prompted by watching the video at no. 17 in the hit parade, “Imagine what you could do“, a video which had done the rounds in the office, but to which my attention was again drawn by an acquaintance working in the Commission department concerned, DG Enterprise.

This video, which does not hold back on the innuendo, features a sophisticated, sexy lady entering the men’s showers, where, accompanied by a sultry soundtrack and after shedding some clothes, she makes a beeline for the hunkiest of the hunks and… well, watch the video – I’d hate to spoil it for you. There is a twist, and it involves a small, foil-wrapped plastic item.

Somehow, the Commission brand doesn’t say “sex” to me

So why, apart from a desperate impulse to boost traffic to the blog by using the internet’s favourite search terms, do I bring all of this to your attention?

It’s really to ask a question: how well do sex and the Commission mix? In communications terms, I mean…

Somehow, the Commission brand doesn’t say “sex” to me. I would be amazed if there were anyone in the world who would spontaneously make that association. Nevertheless, as we have seen, the Commission has a propensity for using sex to sell its policies. Actually, it probably doesn’t do so very much, but it has done so quite successfully on occasion. The mechanism, beyond the simple fact that sex has always worked in advertising, is probably the surprise/shock factor: “what? the Commission did THAT?” For an organisation which still apparently has cold feet about venturing onto Facebook, it seems a surprisingly bold strategy, probably illustrating (if I read the runes correctly) the fact that someone inside the Commission has taken to heart the adage “better to ask forgiveness than ask permission”.

But the nagging question still remains – is this the right way to go? Is it appropriate for an EU institution to sell its wares this way. Without wishing to sound prudish, I would have some hesitation in considering either the “porno” video or “Imagine what you could do” as suitable viewing for my pre-teenage offspring. And should a public institution be purveying adult-only ads?

I have to note in passing that the Commission is careful not to cross certain lines of political correctness. Different sexual orientations are represented, and there is a post-feminist aura about the women – these are not the girls gratuitously draped over the bonnets of fast cars beloved of seventies advertisers, but empowered twenty-first century women. Indeed, it transpires that the shower woman is no model, but the real thing, the young entrepreneur behind the foil-wrapped plastic thing. (A thing which, one notes, also serves an eminently politically correct purpose.)

Is the Commission onto something good, or is it’s brand-defying dabbling in steamy advertising techniques bound to end in tears?

All of which said, the shower-lady advert indisputably relies for its effect on one’s very adult imaginings of the reasons for which she gets close and low-down with a guy in a shower. I can’t imagine this being done by governmental communicators in many (at least non-Nordic) Member States, and I don’t see the European Parliament, for example decidedly less hung-up about Facebook, going that way either.

So it’s an open question, is the Commission onto something good here, or is it’s brand-defying dabbling in steamy advertising techniques somehow bound to end in tears?

Really, I’d be most interested to hear what people think.

At the Polling Staion #1

As part of it, I was asked to select a sample of EU online videos to show the seminar. They were supposed to be illustrative of the best the EU had to offer in terms of online video. Come up with two or three from the Commission and two or three from Parliament, they said.

So here are the five I showed:

1. The all-time no.1 Youtube hit from the Commission, its famous “porno” video promoting the MEDIA programme. Classic example of general amazement at a body such as the Commission producing something like this… Watch out, you may have to assert your 18+ age to watch this…

2. The wonderfully retro-geeky “Chemical Party“, which proves slick isn’t everything. This is great. So un-institutional.

3. The contrasting high-production-values, loved-in-the-West, questioned-in-the-East tear-jerker, snappily-entitled “20 years of democratic change“. Nearly fell totally victim to politically correct editing by committee, nevertheless still emotionally powerful, lump-in-the-throat stuff (how often do you hear that about a Commission video?) but maybe leaves you feeling a little manipulated and propagandised? (And was Europe really “reunited” in 2004?) Still, whatever, you can’t ignore it: the Spielberg movie of EUTube…

4. From Parliament, it just had to be the screaming girl election viral video (picture), Parliament’s best seller so far.

5. Couldn’t resist bringing in at no.5 WebCom’s very own 2007 “Friday I’m in Love Lipdub“. We can’t really call this a “Parliament” video, as this was our own, unofficial, after hours thing, but it taught us a lot when it caused a local YouTube sensation and, yes, I just have to smile every time I see it for the joie de vivre it somehow exudes. I hear some of our colleagues have shown this at careers fairs since to show that we’re not all grey bureaucrats in Brussels!

As a bonus, I showed this tiny clip which the Obama team put out just before election day, just to prove that you really don’t have to be fancy to make a cracking online video. (By the way, is this clip from Belgium?)

So there you have it, my “top five” Euro-vids. Yours?

Joe Biden addresses the European Parliament

Parliament is undoubtedly just a bit star-struck on these occasions. When the American show rolls into town, you can’t exactly fail to notice… You can bet that there’ll be hot competition for seats in whatever room the prime attraction will occupy (not fair, MEPs have reserved seats…), an insatiable demand to get up close and personal which is inevitably difficult to reconcile with the heavy security needs of all those smartly dressed gentlemen with wires in their ears who precede and accompany the VIP guest…

So there was the usual excitement this week when US Vice-President Joe Biden came to the European Parliament. Two things on his agenda: first he would address the House in a formal sitting, whereafter he would go into a private meeting with the leaders of Parliament’s seven political groups, the so-called Conference of Presidents. There are some great photos of it all by Pietro on Flickr, here.

Joe Biden is a experienced, respected and big-hitting politician. You could pretty much say he’s seen in all. Including recently, that classic pitfall of the contemporary politician, the off-the-cuff remark picked up by an open microphone, an event now amplified by the speed of the internet and social media (ask Gordon Brown). Thus, his heartfelt remark, as he introduced his boss to an audience eager to hear about the passage of Obama’s historic health care legislation, that this was a “big f*#king deal”, duly did the rounds on Youtube (you have to listen hard!). I have to say, this episode did much to endear him to me, anyway. First, the remark is accurate – the passage of health care was no small matter – and second, it showed him for the real human being he undoubtedly is. Thus the odd social media accident can actually play into your hands.

“The  administration strongly supports, a vibrant European Union.”

I refer to this incident for a particular reason, as a pretext to say, Mr Vice-President, your visit to us was a big f*#king deal.

I don’t mean, this time, that it was the usual American star turn. It was, but that’s not the point. This was politically highly significant. Watch the speech. Read the speech. Read about the speech. For one thing, it was a damn good speech. As a statement of the Obama administration’s attitude to the EU, it is unequivocal: “The Obama/Biden administration has no doubt about the need for, and strongly supports, a vibrant European Union. We believe it is absolutely essential to American prosperity and long-term security.” (I couldn’t help feeling it was a shame most UK members were absent, May 6 being election day back home. They should have heard this.)

But, more than that, from the perspective of the European Parliament, this speech marks a real coming of age. The Vice-President’s speech is a recognition of the European Parliament as a crucial partner, a recognition of the need for the US Congress and the European Parliament to deal with other as equals: ”The new powers granted this Parliament in the Lisbon Treaty gave you a greater role in that struggle [against terror and extremism] and a greater imperative to govern responsibly.”

“I think we got your attention”. Right, Mr Vice-President?

This was not the grand, but ultimately abstract idealistic stuff ladled out by Reagan in 1985, but hard-nosed politics about mutual interests, a senior politician bringing a practical political message to his transatlantic partners.

The case of SWIFT (Parliament’s rejection of an agreement whereby banking data is supplied to the American authorities) was not mentioned explicitly in this speech, but it was there as a subtext throughout the parts dealing with the responsibility of US and European lawmakers to protect their citizens. You know what Americans say: “I think we got your attention”. Right, Mr Vice-President? But this is not a game of transatlantic oneupmanship, it’s about a practical demonstration of the fact that two partner institutions are finding that their activities overlap, their interests both coincide and diverge and that their decisions affect each other directly. So Mr Biden’s words in Brussels to the European Parliament confirm the new reality spotted by many in the famous call made by Hillary Clinton to Jerzy Buzek to try to persuade him to try to swing the Parliament away from its impending rejection of the SWIFT agreement. This video rightly puts the emphasis on this aspect of the speech. (You can also see SWIFT rapporteur, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert’s, reaction here.)

Said Mr Biden: “President Obama and I reject the false choice between safety and our ideals.” He pointed to the US constitutional attachment to privacy, aka the “right to be let alone”, and then made his basic point: “The United States needs Europe, and I respectfully submit that Europe needs the United States. We need each other more now than we ever have.”

“God bless you all and may God protect all of our troops. Thank you very, very much.”

In a speech so focused on emphasising the common interests of Europe and the US, without shying away from the areas of disagreement, it is perhaps a little ironic that Mr Biden’s concluding sentence acted as a reminder of a way in which US and European politicians have come to differ. In the States, it would have sounded natural and uncontroversial, a rhetorical evocation which can be guaranteed to generate consensus in any audience: “We wish you God-speed, and may God bless you all and may God protect all of our troops. Thank you very, very much.”

Yes, we are a little different, but if we’re listening to each other that’s the main thing.