Mmm: Yum! Bread that looks like peanuty poop always makes me
want to fly! And you know why I say this, don’t you? Well, in case you’re
wondering, it’s because of this current print ad British Airways is running in New
York magazine and other such publications.
Just wait until you see it: It will have you wanting to sit on their airplane
throne and pass the movement away like, um… Well, anyway; it will make you want
to fly with British Airways, if perhaps not make you want to eat their bread.
I showed this to my mother, and she said the following:
“What’s that? It looks like poop.” I explained that it was supposed to look
like clouds, but she said it was not very well executed. My thoughts precisely.
It’s a great idea, but it’s very poorly executed! When you’re trying to make
people’s mouths water with an image of food, and it ends up making them think
it looks like excrement instead, you’ve somehow missed the mark you were
endeavoring to attain, I should think. (Oopsie daisy!)
To fix this would have been really easy, though! All they
would have to do is make the background sky blue, and for the “clouds” of
bread, simply slice a loaf in half, and show us the fluffy center part (that
generally looks like clouds well enough). They could even leave the outline of
the crust just to make sure we all recognize it as bread. And to make the bread
look more like cloud shapes, cheat a bit with PhotoShop! See? Simple. And as
easy as this one is to fix so that it looks appetizing, rather than repulsive
and disgusting, it’s amazing nobody appears to have mentioned it or done
anything about it! Simply amazing. (Maybe there’s a culture of groupthink or a
discouragement of criticism at ad agencies these days? That’s the only
explanation I can come up with for this ad making it into a magazine without
someone begging them to reconsider the picture and redo it so it didn’t look
like poop. But the idea is fine, if foody appeal is where they really think the
air travel market is. But still, they really ought to re-shoot this picture and rework the ad so that it doesn't end up looking like poop. I mean, if they want to attract people's business.)
Here’s the clumpy clouds commercial/appalling altocumulus
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