I Knew About All This

Here is another thing that has been picking away at my brain for the last while, well, since it started showing on television. It's an ad campaign that stars Benico Del Toro, this Angelina Jolie look a like and it's for the new Magnum Gold ice cream.

Now, I know where this idea came from, I have it all broken down in my head exactly how that whole thing started. So get ready because I am going to show exactly how basic the whole marketing business is. This is what happened.

Magnum are about to launch their new ice cream bar called Magnum Gold and with that they want to create this huge brand awareness thing around the whole thing so to do that they have decided to throw a couple of million at the campaign. We want an amazing ad that kind of looks like an action film and we want with actual film star in it too. We want the script to be vaguely similar to 1 or 2 very successful block busters over the last couple of years and in doing that people will go out in their droves and get stuck into some Magnums.

Do you want to know the 2 words that drifted through my head as I watched that ad for the first time, you will probably scratch your head in confusion when I utter them to you. But these 2 words, I would say, were used quite a bit in the early development of this ad. I can see the 2 girls that were in charge, they must have been in love with these 2 words and those 2 words are

'Brad Pitt'

'Brad Pitt?' I hear you say.

'Brad Pitt,' I say,

When those 2 dolly birds left that office where they were told about this huge campaign and that they were to be the one to put into fruition. They sat down after meeting with their 'creative' team and they bashed out a really dodgy mixture of Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Oceans 11. Instead of the couple being assassins they are bank robbers and instead of them being a group of 11 bank robbers, they are a married couple. What do those 2 films have in common? Brad Pitt.

Now, they obviously can't afford Brad Pitt but we need someone who is a regular in films, not too expensive and has weird kind of a Brad Pitty smell off him. I love Benico, I think he is a fucking amazing actor but what I am asking here is -

'Why Benico?'

Why, out of all of Hollywood, did you pick Benico Del Toro? Benico Del Toro has never been in a blockbuster in his life. His biggest film to date, I would say, has been Sin City or Wolfman or maybe, the film he won his Oscar for, Traffic. Other than he has made really small, independent films like Usual Suspect or Way of the Gun or 21 Grams or those Che Guevara movies. That’s what has been bugging me from the very start and then I remembered, a few years ago I listened to the directors commentary of Snatch with Guy Richie and Matthew Vaughan talking over the film, telling stories about shit that happened on set and I remember whenever Benico came on screen, they both called him Brad, messing. I remember wondering why they were calling him Brad until it got to the point where Brad Pitt came on screen and they started calling him Benny, obviously, short for Benico. Later they basically explain that on set, people were constantly mixing the two of them up.

Now, either one of the girls worked on snatch or they were in the same situation as me, they listen to the audio director commentary and realised that people might confuse Benico with Brad and they will get him nice and cheap. I would say that this gig was the best paid gig Benico has ever had, as I said everything he has ever made has been very independant.

Okay, we have our Oscar winning movie star that looks vaguely like Brad Pitt, we have our script that is a mesh of Ocean 11 and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, we have to get a really tasty Angelina Jolie look-a-like and we are fucking laughing. No worries, I'm sure there are plenty out there.

Now there shooting of the ad, they even take things from the films. Remember when you first met Don Cheadle's character in Oceans 11. He is using this elaborate explosive devise where it is a series of explosions that blow around the safe door. They do the exact thing in the ad, they also use that green computer blue print affect that they use quite regularly in both films.

Anyway if you were like me and were wondering what is the crack with that ad is, well, there you go. Anyway, my point is, actually, I don't know what my point is . . . . . . . shit! I thought I had a point. . . . . . . . . . . . No, it's gone from me. Anyway, see ya!