Related reading:
Anthropomorphism, or making inanimate/nonhuman objects talk, emote, or behave like humans is a fairly popular creative device in advertising.
There are various degrees of this trope… like giving human features to inanimate objects, not giving them any human features but simply making them talk, making the audience imagine that the inanimate objects are going through some emotion, making inanimate (stationary) objects move like humans, among many others.
Given the fact that making inanimate objects talk may potentially end up making the ad seem kiddish, brands need to use this creative device consciously and cautiously. The same kiddishness could make the ads more enjoyable too, but the brand’s overall personality should be in sync with this creative device.
I recently came across a long-running ad campaign by a real estate brand that uses this creative device so very beautifully. But before I present that, and my thoughts on that campaign, I’d like to set the context for the larger creative device itself using some ad campaigns by other brands that have handled it well.
1. Kraft Parkay Margarine (Agency: Unknown), Early-mid 1970s
This is the most basic demonstration of the creative device. The can/pack of Parkay always says that it is ‘butter’ (even when children point out that ‘you are margarine, you say so here’, pointing to the pack). This was a recurring creative device the brand used for a long time to seed the perception that Parkay Margarine tastes just like butter using the product itself to offer that perception!
2. Mike’s Hard Frozen Lemonade (Agency: McCann Erickson), 2005
This is the next version of the simple demonstration of the creative device. The product (bottle) moves around like humans and talks with an attitude (unlike the stationary can of margarine), but again, without a visible orifice (mouth). People don’t wonder why a bottle is talking like a man and simply accept it as is 🙂 The product also showcases human emotions, to good comic effect.
3. IKEA (Agency: Buzzman, Paris), 2020
IKEA’s 2020 campaign uses the same creative device but unlike a plain bottle with voice, here, almost every household product in the ad seems to be having a human-style organ but without making it explicit – eyes that open and shut, mouth that opens and shuts, and so on. And they are all singing together!
4. Kerasal (Agency: Fresh Branding Group), 2016
Kerasal, a fungal nail renewal product has been using the creative device of making inanimate objects for a long time. Let me add their work in 2 parts – part 1 here: Shoes and footwear of all shapes and sizes (and gender) talk in this ad! While the sandals don’t have any visible mouth-like organs, the shoes do!
Part 2, in point 10.
5. Tide (Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi), 2008
Tide’s popular 2008 Super Bowl ad involved using the creative device of making inanimate objects talk with a superb context – when you have a stain on your white shirt, it talks (figuratively; attracts attention is framed as ‘talks’). The stain itself is rather simple, but the ad uses basic graphics to make it talk. This is a very solid example of using an advertising trope with complete meaning and logic!
6. Just Eat (Agency: Karmarama), 2016 + Florida Orange (Agency: Unknown), Early-2010s
Just Eat’s 2016 campaign anthropomorphizes an egg, but just a little 🙂 It uses the natural shape of a broken egg to make it seem like its mouth to allow it to talk to the bewildered woman who opens the fridge. There are nice touches like the way the closing the fridge door shuts the egg’s talking abruptly!
Florida Orange’s ad anthropomorphizes a sandwich, again, inside a fridge! It’s an animated sandwich that uses the 2 bread stack to create a mouth and eyes!
7. TV Licensing, UK (Agency: Not entirely sure – between Red Bee Media and AMV BBDO), 2005-2008) + Totino’s Pizza Rolls (Agency: Bromley), mid-2010s
In the UK, any household watching any of the public broadcast channels on television is required by law to hold a television license (as an instrument used to raise revenue to fund the BBC!). This campaign goes a step ahead of the Just Eat or Kerasal’s style since it adds visible human elements to the sofa, particularly a big mouth! Unlike Just Eat’s technique of using graphics to bring the talking egg to life, this campaign involved removing the innards of the sofa and squeezing in human puppeteers inside the sofa to make it work! 🙂
Totino’s Pizza Rolls ad not only animates the sofa (and not just using puppeteers; actual animation and movement) but also many other household items!
8. Jet Dry (Agency: Unknown), Late-1990s + Dr.Pepper (Agency, time: Unknown)
Unlike the TV Licensing ads where a human puppeteer created a ‘mouth’, a series of ads have used graphics (more evocative than Just Eat’s ad) to create a ‘mouth’ on assorted items related to the product/category.
Jet Dry’s ad is a good example:
Dr. Pepper’s singing soda can is another example:
9. IKEA (2002 and 2018) – Directed by Spike Jonze, Agency: Crispin Porter + Bogusky (2002) and Rethink (2018)
The IKEA “Lamp” ad offers an elegant twist to the trope of giving feelings to inanimate objects! In the original 2012 ad, we, the audience, are tuned to have feelings for the poor lamp (with a drooping posture and left alone outside the house). Then, Swedish actor Jonas Fornander enters the frame to call us crazy for thinking lamps have feelings 🙂
In the 2018 sequel from IKEA Canada, the scene picks up from the 2002 ad’s ending and we see a happy lamp when it is recycled and fitted with a new IKEA bulb. Jonas appears again to tell us we were not crazy after all!
This ad uses the trope in a subversive way without doing all that the trope usually demands!
10. Talking body parts!
A subset of this creative device is to make body parts talk!!
10a. Kerasal’s ‘Talking Feet’ (Agency: Fresh Branding Group), 2019
10b. Bond (Underwear brand) ‘Talking Testicles’! (Agency: Clemenger BBDO Melbourne), 2016
10c. Nike ‘Talking Breasts’!! (Agency: Unknown)
11. The utterly bizarre Japanese vacuum cleaner ad!
Even more subversive than the IKEA ad! Not only does it make us think that a vacuum cleaner is a person, but a character in the ad falls in love with it!
That brings me to Savills’ long-running ad series. Savills is a UK-based global real estate brand.
Savills brought on board Isobel as its creative agency for the residential estate division in 2015. The next year, Savills launched a new campaign featuring a brand new trope – talking houses!
September 2016: Unlike the other ads above, the creative device of making an inanimate object talk to humans has been done with the least fuss and maximum impact! The house is simply a character that has feelings (it catches the current inhabitants cheating!) and talks about it to human occupants! No animation – they just hear a voice. And it works perfectly for a real estate brand!
Remember this: in this first installment, the house is where it is – grounded/rooted 🙂
February 2017: The house is still grounded, but offers its perspective about teenagers to a visiting couple when the man visits what was a ‘man cave’ but will become one of the teens’ rooms soon. It even ends with the house going, ‘Oh, I’m going to get trashed’ 🙂
September 2017 (1): This is the first in the series where the house almost stalks the potential buyers (who have seen it and rejected it) 🙂 The house makes itself appear where the couple is walking (a completely unlikely place) and they continue to have a conversation with it as if talking to a human! This house has feelings too, and a passerby comments on it as if commenting on another person!
September 2017 (2): The 2nd ad during this period places the house on a beach!! Another couple talks to it and it is pleasantly surprised about their decision! The conversation is delightful!
December 2021: And finally, the latest one in the series – this is a love story! Again, the house is situated in a bizarre place – a railway station! And it woos a woman in style, and she says ‘yes’!
Given how people get attached to their homes, Savills’ and Isobel’s strategy of making them talk works as a very charming creative device in total context to the category.
PS: On a related note, anthropomorphism is often interchangeably used with personification and the difference between them is subtle. Both are literary/creative devices, though. The former is about adding human traits to nonhuman things while the latter is to create a human out of abstract things (like ‘wind’ as a person, made popular by the Epuron advertisement). The lines blur when they are used in literature. For instance, a sentence like, ‘The car groaned loudly as he turned the key roughly in the ignition’ seems like personification in written form, but when an ad shows a car’s front grille complaining literally, it seems more like anthropomorphism. I will address 🙂