Barclaycard's new Friend

AD BREAKDOWN
Magazine's review of advertising

Desperately seeking Proust

THE PRODUCT: Barclaycard

THE BRIEF: Show the credit card being used for fun things that women like to buy, like books and power tools, not just for boring emergencies.

THE SCRIPT: Jennifer Aniston tries to buy things on her Barclaycard, but keeps running into guys who cannot help themselves for lusting after her. She is weary of this unwanted attention and so goes to the beach where she lusts after a surfer dude.

WHAT'S GOING ON: Everyone loves Jennifer, but this advert has the potential to irritate, not least for the way that the ordinary men she meets are incapable of selling her a book or advising her about an electric drill without declarations of love.

Jennifer tries sweetly, and a touch patronisingly, to avoid their attention. She then climbs through a random door to the next scene, with the camera following her closely enough that you would see the outline of what she had in her jeans back pocket. Thoughtfully this gives any men watching another chance to check her out.

Women have suffered more than their fair share of stereotypes in adverts down the years. But men have all too often been shown as shallow, incompetent, clowns, or idiots. In this advert they are all four.

"Are ya, Lip Guy?"

So this is apparently how ordinary blokes would behave if they were somehow to meet Jennifer Aniston. They would cast aside all reservations to tell her how beautiful she was. Who knows, she might just reciprocate - maybe no-one's ever told her before?

But we learn that being Jennifer must be difficult. "Sometimes guys are just too much," she says. "My guess is guys just can't help themselves."

The bookshop incident is particularly difficult for her. Jennifer crawls out of a cupboard (Barclaycard is the key from one scene to another, you see) and bowls up to the assistant to ask, rather deliberately, if he has a copy of Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.

She then pushes her hair behind her ear, rests her chin on her hand, and gives what a large proportion of the male book-selling population might reasonably interpret as a flirty smile. The bookseller then gushes about how her French accent (which is quite bad) has in fact made her sound "so hot".

Friends moment

So she climbs into a DIY shop, where she is told that she has got "juicy lips" and how the assistant (who looks and speaks like Scooby Doo's Shaggy) is "totally a Lip Guy". The funniest moment of the advert - Jennifer saying "Are ya? Lip Guy? Great! Here you go, thanks" as she hands the drill back - could have come straight from Friends.

Surfer Guy

If anyone's been offended, though, it's all OK in the end. Because while the barmen fall over each other to serve her, she eyes up a bloke carrying a surfboard. "Maybe us girls aren't so different," she says (Surfer Guy is much better-looking than Lip Guy, you see, but not better-looking than Brad Pitt, so don't suspend your disbelief that much.)

So will this advert end up irritating audiences?

Francesca Newland, from Campaign magazine, doubts men will be put off. "It's definitely designed to appeal to women, but I'm sure Barclaycard hope that men will be willing passengers in it. I don't think they would want to exclude men."

The device used at the end, where Jennifer is "in a way asserting her right to pull", is currently a common trick in adverts she says. "There's a period of grace when women are regarded as being as independent and strong as men, and we're seeing a lot of ads like this," she says.

Sexual politics aside, the message of the advert is about feeling good about debt - and is an approach also followed by American Express's "Long live dreams" campaign.

All the credit cards seem to be using freedom as their positioning - it's because they don't want you to worry about the interest rates you'll be paying on the card Francesca Newland, Campaign Magazine

"I think the Barclaycard ad has a happiness, a security and safety about it, there's a Hollywood level of warmth, it's very cosy and comfortable, and I think that has a lot to do with persuading people to enjoy debt," she says.

"All the credit cards seem to be using freedom as their positioning. It's because they don't want you to worry about the interest rates you'll be paying on the card."

With the total amount of borrowing by UK citizens on the brink of one trillion pounds for the first time in history, some might say that borrowing scarcely needs advertising. But with the Bank of England gradually increasing interest rates, maybe imagining you might run into Jennifer Aniston isn't such a bad option.

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Last month, Ad Breakdown looked at McDonalds' New Salads New People adverts. Most of you didn't like it - and the company has now pensioned off its "ladies who lunch".

Impatient, Sensible and Late

Out of all the commercials Ad Breakdown has reviewed, none have quite raised the ire of Magazine readers. Except Linda Barker and Curry's, of course.

The advert in question introduced the chain's new range of salads, and also introduced "impatient Sophie, sensible Charlotte, and... Joanna, who's always late!".

Reader Chris Wild summed up the mood of many, writing: "Who on earth is going to say 'So Charlotte is sensible? And she is in McDonalds? Well, I am quite sensible, I'll pop in at lunchtime'?"

But the ladies who lunch have been shown the door. While McDonalds bosses are delighted with how many people noticed the adverts, one accepted that "you can't produce an ad that's universally liked".

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Ad Breakdown is compiled by Giles Wilson

Add your comments on this story, using the form below.

I work in advertising, and at our agency the current Barclaycard advert is extremely irritating to all the men and quite a few women too!! OK, it's not as bad as the Dorito's advert with Vernon Kaye, but surely it has be up there as a contender as the most annoying advert of 2004.
Mark, London , UK

Hey, sex sells and Jennifer could sell me anything. I bet she didn't object to the cheque. And how many women were shocked and outraged by the '11.30' advert?
Neil, UK

Actually the Jennifer Aniston advert is extremely irritating. To portray her as beautiful and have her lap it up is just plain silly. She may be very attractive to guys but a beauty she is not and most women will just find it irksome.
Kim Jones, England

I'm repulsed by the new Jennifer Aniston advert. As well as offensive to men, it does not show an independent woman. Why can't women feature in adverts that have nothing to do with sexuality. Sexual elements are not required to show character. All the personalities in the Barclaycard advertising past had nothing to do with sexual politics, incidently they were male. The advert did not sell any aspect of Barclaycard to me, but just aggrivated me as a woman.
Sarah Woolley, UK

The ad that currently divides the sexes in our home is the Renault Megane "derriere" ad. The women love it, the men loath it.
Daniel, UK

Is this just a connection I've made, or does the blue shape on the new Barclaycard represent Jennifer's blue-jeaned bum? I suppose we'll have to wait for more adverts in the series.
Neil Madden, UK

Sigh. I'm really tired of "Women are clever, men are idiots" adverts and TV programmes. OK, so for many years the balance was tilted totally the other way, but I think that us men have paid back now.
Alan Trevennor, UK

Are many men going to get upset by their portrayal in this ad? I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, that's for sure. I'd rather see the stereotype portrayed in the Barclaycard Ad then the kind of guy who regular appears in ads for Calvin Klein, Gillette et al. At least we can probably identify more closely with the kind of gibbering idiot in this ad!
Redtreble, England

Ohh you crazy boys have only one thing on your mind... but here's a great shot of my bum as I crawl through a hole just to keep you going.
Anthony, Manchester, UK

I am glad you are discussing this advert as I think it's the worst one I've seen in ages. I am at a complete loss as to what the point of the ad is and particularly the relevance of a credit card. The conclusion they appear to be getting you to make is that having a Barclaycard will make you staggeringly attractive to men (a line most women will not be prepared to fall for).
Susan Hindle Barone, UK

I agree that many adverts these days show men as the idiots and women as the clever ones. If this were the other way round there would be an outcry that women are being insulted.
Danny Kreft, UK

If you guys think that a few adverts with women as the boss have made up for years and years of constant steroetypes and objectification then get real. Just wait till we run the advertising companies.
Emily, UK

The Barclaycard ad is just OK - the music in it is excellent!
Matt, US

I work for Barclays & I really dislike the new Barclaycard ad. Aniston hams it up as 'I'm not just a pretty face who can have any man she wants' with the intellectual book request,in a dire French accent & I'd be v surprised if she didn't qualify for a Platinum card rather than the bog standard one! I felt patronised & irritated in equal amounts.
Claire, UK

It's not that deep. It's just amusing
Andy, England

I like the ad: it makes me smile. I could feel patronised by it, but quite frankly, life's too short. I don't find it particularly diminishing to women and while it's not big or clever to turn the tables on men, what is funny is the minority's reaction: a few year's worth of 30-second ads doesn't even scratch the surface.
Michdy, UK

I quite like the add actually! I guess because I think it's funny how all the guys try to help Jennifer!! Te same kind of theme appears in other adds as well, so I don't really see what is so bad about this one. At least it's a different idea to the old adds from Barclaycard. The old ones were just plain boring, like many other ads!
Clarissa, UK

The negative stereotype of the bumbling male domestic fool is heavily reinforced wherever you look in TV advertisements. We can't cook, we spill things on the floor and don't know how to clean them up, we can't change nappies. Mummy just shakes her head and says, "Isn't Daddy silly." Unfortunately this will lead to men wanting to spend less time at home strengthening the family unit (in case he blows up the washing machine by mistake) and more time away from the kids doing the only thing he is fit for - bringing home the bacon.
Andy Knight, Hounslow, Middlesex

Actually, on the contrary to most comments here - I think this advert is one of the best of the year. I think it's really comical and it's different too because it's not like Jennifer Aniston had to do the advert or that she was going to get much material-wise out of it, so I have more respect for her now for doing this advert. "Do ya, lip guy?"
Joe McDermott, UK

Lighten up! Its an advert. The fact it irritates so men men and women in equal measure shows that the joke of gender stereotypes is a bit tired really. Oh, and Andy. My experience is that men like being thought bumbling and hopeless at the tasks they don't like hoping someone else will do them.
Claire, UK