Barclaycard Rollercoaster



Entertaining new telly ad for Alton Towers, sorry Barclaycard.
They've clearly spent shedloads of cash making this pretty piece. It's really well shot, well cast, tightly edited with a great soundtrack, sexy post etc, etc.
And sitting in a rollercoaster is obviously a much better way to get about the place with a credit card in your hand than, say, on crutches like that bloke from last year's Visa ad did.

However, whilst I'm sure most people who see it will enjoy this feelgood visual spectacular, I've got a nagging feeling that the message and focus of the "contactless payment card" [i.e. the thing that's supposed to be being advertised] won't really register with viewers.
I must have seen this ad's separated-at-birth predecessor, "Waterslide", at least a dozen times and not realised that there was anything special or different about the credit card that was in the hand of the bloke in the flume.
Same with this execution - I think there's so much going on that you don't really pay attention to the voiceover and if you blink you'll miss beardy bloke swiping for his brekky in a nanosecond.

Interesting [and ever so slightly naughty] that there are no smallprint legals flagging interest rates on this ad. Does this mean that, for some poor buggers, the rollercoaster will end being a metaphor for a spiralling into deep and uncontrollable debt rather than as "a great metaphor for how Barclaycard makes payment so simple for our customers" as the company paying for this commercial would like us to believe?

2 comments:

  1. I know what you mean about the message not coming out. And the 'making payments simpler' message is a bit disconnected from taking a rollercoaster to work. He seems to make his entire journey to the office easy and fun. What's that got to do with making one simpler payment at a snack kiosk? It's like showing someone getting a blowjob as they read the Sun then saying 'The Sun. A really enjoyable read'. Actually, that makes more sense than this does.

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  2. Preferred the first one. This one is trying too hard to be cool.

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