The Battle of the Christmas Adverts 2015

It's now the 29th of December and another Christmas has been and gone. Everyone is looking ahead to the New Year and their plans for parties, new year's resolutions and heading back to wherever they call home during term time. With yuletide festivities now just a hazy memory it seems the perfect time to review this year's Spanish and English Christmas advert offering.

1. John Lewis - This was the big one; the one we were all waiting for. John Lewis has a brilliant track record for making emotive, heartwarming Christmas adverts that make us smile or even bring us to tears. Who could forget last year's penguin story or 2012's snowman romance?

I'm sorry to say then that for me this year's advert was a bit of a flop. John Lewis's partnership with the charity Age UK led them to create an ad centred around the idea of including elderly people at Christmas. While stargazing, a young girl spies a man on the moon, old, lonely and forgotten. The end of the advert sees her managing to send him a telescope via balloon so that he can see all the Christmas fun on earth...going on without him.

Instead of the rescue and joyful meeting I was holding out for, the poor old man is still left up there in the cold - a strangely weak and unsatisfactory ending. 6/10

2. Sainsbury's - This year Sainsbury's gave us "Mog's Christmas Calamity". Mog is the fictional feline creation of the author Judith Kerr whose other books including "The Tiger Who Came to Tea" were some of my favourites as a kid.

The ad shows the cartoon cat Mog sleeping in her basket on Christmas eve. She wakes to find the kitchen full of smoke as the turkey is incinerated in the oven; cue a spot of cat slap stick as she panics wreaking havoc through the house. Accidentally calling 999 Mog "saves the day" and the family escape unscathed.

I was a bit confused by this advert; the parents sob on each others' shoulders in their soot blackened kitchen and then are all smiles again as the local families arrive bearing bags of satsumas... It would take more than a satsuma to sort me out if my house ever burnt down I can tell you! 6/10

3. Marks and Spencer - Who doesn't remember the "this isn't just Christmas food...this is M&S Christmas food" of years gone by? In my opinion M&S make the best food adverts I've ever seen; everything just looks so delicious! In the world of fashion and homeware though they seem to lag behind a bit... This year's offering was a short, sharp burst of sparkling confetti, prowling catwalk models, backflipping children and a fiery christmas pudding. I like it. It may not be the best advert in the world but their "Art of Christmas" makes a change from all the other nostalgic, traditional ads on offer. Colourful, fun and slick M&S stood out for me this year. 8/10

4. Tesco - There's not much to say about Tesco's 2015 Christmas ads. They follow a family doing their Christmas shopping; mother, father and their cretinous teenage son. The humour is simple and somewhat grating. The characters are stereotypical and the script wooden. I'm not sure what Tesco were going for with this; how can they expect to compete with other retailers if their advertising is at this level? 4/10

5. Harvey Nichols - From bad to worse. Harvey Nichols hasn't exactly filled me with Christmassy joy for the last couple of years with their "Sorry, I spent it on myself" and "Could I be any clearer?" adverts. They reduce the entirety of Christmas down to gift giving, not in a warm fuzzy way but rather a cold hearted, miserly way. "A little something for them means a bigger something for you" was their strapline in 2013...you get the picture.

This year they've treated us to "Avoid #GiftFace". A young woman struggles to keep a smile on her face while her family and boyfriend present her with their carefully chosen gifts at Christmas. The hashtag is irritating enough but the lack of gratitude, utter selfishness and sheer spoilt brattery of this advert is difficult to swallow. Perhaps an attempt to connect with a younger audience, this advert is a definite failure for me. 2/10

6. La Lotería de Navidad - The Spanish look out for the release of the Christmas Lotería advert in the same way we wait to see what John Lewis will bring us each year. The lottery in Spain is extremely popular with almost everyone buying a ticket for the Christmas draw when I was in Madrid last year. In my opinion this advert beats John Lewis' "man on the moon" hands down.

Justino is a nightime security guard in a factory that makes mannequins. Made in the same animated style as the pixar movie UP the ad shows how Justino lives a fairly lonely life sleeping all day but leaving lovely surprises for his daytime colleagues during his night shift. Like all offices in Spain at Christmas the workers have put their names down and entered the "Lotería de Navidad". They win and the office is full of excitement. Justino arrives at work that evening downcast but finds that they've signed him up too and he can take part in the celebrations with them. The look on his square, mustachioed face is what Christmas is all about. I'm not ashamed to say I was welling up by the end; this ad was most definitely my favourite out of all of 2015's offerings. 9/10

Well that's it for my roundup of the 2015 Christmas adverts; I wonder what next year will bring. Which was your favourite? Comment below!

Reggaeton - Authentic "latinidad" or a lazy marketing ploy?

If you're on your year abroad in a Spanish speaking country, whether it be Spain, Colombia, Mexico or elsewhere, you are sure to come across reggaeton. This blend of Hip Hop, Dancehall Reggae and Spanish rap is often blared out in nightclubs over a sea of gyrating, twerking and slut-dropping revellers. To put it bluntly reggaeton is rude.

Stars like Daddy Yankee (see below) and Pitbull have helped this style of music cross to the UK and beyond with huge hits like "Gasolina" and "El Taxi".

 

Reggaeton has been called the first "transnational" music as it's impossible to specify where it first originated. Puerto Ricans will often claim it as their own seeing as many of the first reggaeton artists were Puerto Rican living in the US in the 1990s and early 2000s. Panama is also often touted as its birthplace with a precursor to reggaeton, reggae-en-español, taking hold there during the 1970s and 80s.

The diagram below shows how reggaeton developed over the years from two separate musical styles, hip hop and reggae, became translated into Spanish, Spanish rap and reggae-en-español, and eventually culminated in reggaeton in the 1990s in the US. Along the way a certain "Latino" flavour was added with elements of Puerto Rican Bomba, the mish mash that is salsa and other South American traditional dances being incorporated.

 

The music itself is characterised by its use of the "Dem Bow Riddim" a beat made popular by Jamaican Dancehall artists like Shabba Ranks (see below) in the early 1990s.

The artists creating those first reggaeton songs had grown up surrounded by the same cultural issues that affected African Americans in the US. Racism, poverty, the problems of urban living and the feeling of being ostracised by society in general are all synonymous with hip hop and would come to dominate reggaeton as well. In fact many Latino artists had been there at the birth of hip hop in the 1970s and would continue on the scene for the rest of their careers.

Listen to any more modern reggaeton song, however, and ideas of a deeper subtext geared towards social commentary or rebellion evaporate... Sex, money, partying and more sex is all that reggaeton seems to endorse now. The lyrics are overtly sexual, at times homophobic and generally misogynistic; in reggaeton the man most definitely wears the trousers.

Its similarities and links with hip hop have allowed this form of latino music to establish itself in the mainstream much more firmly than other past latino dance "crazes". In Madrid it's everywhere. Teatro Kapital has its own reggaeton floor and there are clubs that exclusively pump out its steady beat.

This ubiquity has become something of an issue though - in the mainstream US media it seems that reggaeton as a musical style has now come to represent the Latino community as a whole. Its stars are being used to advertise products to the Spanish speaking market and it seems that all US hispanics are presumed to identify with the ideas of Latinos it presents. Below are images of Daddy Yankee advertising Pepsi and his own brand of perfume for women:

In the first image the star is playing the "big boss" role. He sits dripping in bling, muscled arms rippling and covered in tattoos. The ad also includes the word "cartel" implying that he's somehow involved with drugs. The second image sees him reclining on a beach while a scantily clad woman drapes herself over him. Here he looks sharp and wealthy portraying the pseudo-aristocrat, billionaire playboy character. Both images are endorsing traditional latino stereotypes.

Rivera states that:

"Reggaeton artists have been used by the culture industry to promote and sell Latin urban authenticity as a tenable media representation of latinidad (or Latin identity)".

 

In other words the mass media is making use of these reggaeton artists in adverts as they see them as a quick fix solution to appeal to a Latino market. The star is used as the icon or epitome of modern Latino identity, hopefully ingratiating their product or service with Latinos and non-Latino consumers who are attracted by the "latin flavour" the artists provide. The Pepsi advert is written in Spanish implying it's meant for a Spanish speaking audience but how much do US Latinos truly like or identify with reggaeton and the messages it sends?

The stereotypes promoted by reggaeton and its artists are tired and outdated. Since the 1990s and early 2000s the Latino community in the US has changed significantly leaving the music lagging behind. The overly macho lyrics and music videos full of men in over-sized t-shirts or too tight vests surrounded by a harem of near naked women are just not in-keeping with what it is to be "Latino" today in the US.

Rivera also notes the recent appearance of "anti-fans"; Latinos who actively speak out on the internet bemoaning this over-generalisation and cliched stereotyping of their community.

It seems that marketers hoping to appeal to a Latino audience by lazily plastering their promotions with images of artists such as Daddy Yankee do so at the risk of alienating a large proportion of the community they aim to target.


References

- Flores, J (2000) 'Puerto rocks: rap, roots and amnesia'. in Flores, J. (2000) 'From bomba to hip hop: Puerto Rican culture and Latino identity'. New York: Colombia University Press, pp. 115-139.

- Nieves, Moreno. A (2009) 'A Man Lives Here' - Reggaeton's Hypermasculine Resident' in Rivera, R., Marshall, W. and Pacini Hernandez, D. (eds). 'Reggaeton'. London: Duke University Press, pp. 252-279

- Noriega, D. A (2014) 'Música, imagen y sexualidad: el reggaetón y las asimetrías de género'. El Cotidiano, 186. pp. 63-67 

- Rivera, M (2011) 'The Online Anti-reggaeton Movement: A Visual Exploration' in Prout, R. (ed). 'Seeing in Spanish: From Don Quijote to Daddy Yankee - 22 Essays on Hispanic Visual Cultures', Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing