‘It’s all in the best possible taste” was the catchphrase of the late Kenny Everett’s most popular character, Cupid Stunt.
She was a flirtatious American chat show host with a past, who with just one outrageous kick of her legs, made us laugh in the ’80s. The gag worked because the bearded Everett, dressed as a bad Dolly Parton look-alike, was quite obviously a man. The joke was on him and it was terribly vulgar.
These days, old clips of old comics look dated – the jokes are of their time – but things that are vulgar, in bad taste or just plain outrageous have never gone out of fashion.
Just ask Knightsbridge stalwart Harvey Nichols. It’s the department store patronised by the thin and the rich, and the rest of us only in our dreams. Edgier than Harrods, more exclusive than Selfridges, Harvey Nicks has brought glamour to cities, including Edinburgh, in a nationwide high-fashion outreach programme.
It is a compact jewel of a shop, an Aladdin’s cave of Stella McCartney, Prada and Mulberry. It is loved and adored by women – they are its best and most loyal customers, even if it means breaking the bank to shop there.
So why has it suddenly turned on the very women who keep the tills ringing? It’s sales, stupid! And it’s working. The company’s latest advertising campaign is the talk of the steamie.
If it has passed you by, allow me to explain. The new ad, alerting us to the summer sale, uses a model with an unsightly damp patch on her tangerine silk trousers.
She boldly stares out from the page accompanied by the line: “Try To Contain Your Excitement.” To misquote Kenny, it’s not all in the best possible taste. It’s challenging, disturbing and more than a little shocking. Job done.
It’s not the first time an ad has pulled off this particular trick. Remember the Benetton billboards? What a stooshie they caused. Once upon a time Benetton was just the shop where you unfolded the jumpers, but the Italian clothing company had other ideas. Benetton had a message and it’s continued to produce a series of stop and gawp ads over the years.
Remember the bloodied baby fresh from the womb, umbilical cord still attached? The ads had nothing to do with the clothes, but they were thought-provoking and clever. A pink crew-neck with orange jeans suddenly looked cool and European. Now we know why they call it the power of advertising.
But last year, Benetton went too far and it was forced to pull one of its images. Its “Unhate” campaign used a series of digitally altered pictures of world leaders kissing, but one showing Pope Benedict giving an Egyptian imam a smacker didn’t go down well with the Vatican. The ad may have vanished, but the image lives on.
A couple of weeks ago the Advertising Standards Authority marked its 50th birthday by publishing a list of the adverts it’s received the most complaints about. It revealed that a 2005 Kentucky Fried Chicken ad featuring call-centre workers singing with their mouths full was the most complained-about British campaign in history.
Almost 1,700 people contacted the watchdog, fearing their children might copy the unforgivable act. Never mind the gut-busting fat content – what about their manners? I suppose there’s no accounting for taste.
Some years back I was filming a feature, and looking for some colour, found myself at an ad shoot in east London. They were making a commercial for a well-known whisky brand that involved a stunt man diving off a very high building. It was for the Japanese market, and no-one on set was allowed to reveal any more than that.
The daring leap, onto a relatively small trampoline, was repeated again and again until it was just right. All we needed to know was that it would look good and somehow make us yearn for a dram. And it did indeed look good when it was finished but if you miss your target, if the timing is out, you risk falling flat on your face.
Harvey Nicks take note.