The Common Touch

Has anyone else noticed the disproportionately large head atop the diminutive shoulders of the little chap (‘Thomas from Leeds’) in the new Halifax ads? My lovely wife pointed this out the other day, and since then, his unsteady cranium seems to get bigger with each screening.

Halifax’s policy of using employees to advertise their wares in order to show they’re in touch with the needs of the clichéd ‘man-on-the-street’ is an oft-used marketing ploy. Steve Punt once said that in order for companies to show normal people in their adverts, they have to make them a little bit ugly. In other words, in order to make them more believable, they can’t look like actors. For instance, you wouldn’t find Tom Cruise in an ad for B&Q (though they probably wouldn’t be able to find a uniform small enough anyway).

I’m not sure I’d go as far as to call them ugly, from the geeky bespectacled Howard, to the bargain-bin Aretha to the new smiling wobbly-headed individual, but they’ve all got something not-quite-right about them which presumably just proves how ordinary they are and how well-placed they are to flog you a mortgage or a fixed-rate savings bond, or something…

It’s a paradox for any budding actors hoping for advert work in order to further their career: the only way their physiognomy can be presented to the nation is if they are essentially nondescript, and are therefore destined to a life of “It’s him, you know, whatsisname off thingy…”