The Advertisements
In 1990 Nick Park worked with Phil Rylance and Paul Cardwell to develop a series of British television advertisements for the Electricity Board's "Heat Electric" campaign. The creative team of advertising agency GGK had seen the original Creature Comforts film and were hugely impressed by it. They were convinced that a series of short films modelled on the original film would be ideally suited to television advertising – as long as the advertising was handled with sufficient sensitivity to preserve the integrity and charm of Park's work. The initial result of their collaboration was three 30-second Creature Comforts advertisements, made in the same style as the original film. This led to a series.
Although there had been a tradition of vox pop advertisements going back to the soap powder adverts of the 1960s, the Creature Comforts series was distinctive in its juxtaposition of real-life dialogue and animated creatures. The series featured a variety of endearing plasticine animals, including a tortoise, a cat, a family of penguins and a Brazilian parrot. The characters were seen in their own domestic settings, chatting to an unseen interviewer behind a large microphone.
The characters' dialogue was obtained by taking tape recordings of everyday people talking about the comfort and benefits of the electrical appliances in their homes and then using extracts of these – complete with pauses, false starts, repetitions, hesitations and unscripted use of language (such as "easily turn-off-and-on-able"). The selected interviewees spoke in a range of down-to-earth regional accents, and the overall effect was of natural conversation. The adverts' warm and cosy tone reflected the warmth and homeliness of central heating.
There was a charm about the animations, with their quirky humour and sharpness of observation - such as in the antics of the non-speaking characters and in the odd little things happening in the background. The animations had an unusual expressiveness, with the wit often coming from tiny nuances - such as a dog scratching his ear at a particular moment. The characterisation was strengthened by having each voice carefully matched to a suitable animal in a combination that would produce a memorable impact. These features were rounded off by a gentle closing voice-over spoken by Johnny Morris. Morris appealed especially to older audiences, who would remember him and his animal conversations on the television programme Animal Magic.
The campaign was a great success and its run was extended over three years. The advertisements received critical acclaim within the advertising industry – with Park, Rylance and Cardwell picking up many top creative awards in Europe and America, including "Best Commercial of the Year" in the 1991 British Television Advertising Awards and "Most Outstanding European Campaign" in the 1991 D&AD Europe Awards. In fact Creature Comforts was subsequently voted by media professionals (in leading trade outlets Marketing and Brand Republic) as one of the top television advertisements of the last 50 years.
As well as attaining a very high level of viewer recall, the advertisements were much loved – particularly the ones involving Frank (the tortoise), Carol (the cat) and Pablo (the parrot). In awarding them a place in The 100 best British ads of the century, the UK's leading advertising journal Campaign commented "The power of a campaign which can make consumers feel warm towards a utility cannot be underestimated". The many popular awards won by the Creature Comforts advertisements included being voted fourth in the alltime 100 Greatest TV Ads by readers of The Sunday Times and viewers of Channel 4 in 2000. Their position among the classic advertisements of British television was confirmed when Creature Comforts was voted fourth in ITV’s Best Ever Adverts by viewers of ITV in 2005. Finally, in a YouGov survey during 2006, Creature Comforts topped the list of the UK's alltime favourite animated or puppet characters used in adverts.
The Creature Comforts advertisements have now attained a place in popular culture, and are probably better remembered than the original film that spawned them. However, it is claimed that many members of the public mistakenly remember the commercials as advertising gas heating, the main competitor to electricity.
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