The ads also carry a spoof website address “luxurytodiefor.com”, which takes the curious surfer through to a support site featuring programme details and character biographies…
Advertising | Marketing & PR | Special report: Channel 4 | Television
8.30am
Ad campaign lands C4 in trouble
Jason Deans
Tuesday May 13, 2003
Six Feet Under: one of the controversial ads
Channel 4 is no stranger to controversy, as the outrage provoked by shows including the Brass Eye paedophile special, The Autopsy and Beijing Swings bear witness.
Mark Thompson, the Channel 4 chief executive, recently vowed that the broadcaster would continue to cause trouble at the launch of the outfit’s annual report for 2002.
But even Channel 4 may be about to score a first on the controversy front, with its advertising campaign for the second series of US drama Six Feet Under.
The first series of the show, which revolves around a Los Angeles funeral home, garnered critical plaudits last year for the jet black humour in its skewed take on death, life, love, family and relationships.
Channel 4’s promotional campaign, which is due to break on Thursday, draws its inspiration from the spoof TV ads for funeral service products such as embalming fluid and wound filler that feature in Six Feet Under.
The upcoming ad campaign is shot in the same style as these spoof ads from the show, which are a pastiche of conventional campaigns for upmarket beauty and fashion brands.
One of the ads features a naked head and shoulders shot of a male model, made up to look like a corpse, with an image of a bottle of spoof brand “In Eternum embalming fluid” beside him.
It has the strapline “Skin to die for”, with more copy in the corner of the ad saying In Eternum is “available from Fisher & Sons funeral home”.
There is no overt branding for Channel 4 or Six Feet Under on the print or poster ads, but Fisher & Sons is the name of the fictional funeral home featured in the show.
The ads also carry a spoof website address “luxurytodiefor.com”, which takes the curious surfer through to a support site featuring programme details and character biographies.
“Six Feet Under embodies the attitudes and values of Channel 4 - innovative, provocative and intelligent,” said the Channel 4 marketing manager, Katie Hayes.
“By marketing the Fisher’s funeral business instead of directly marketing the show, we aim to create intrigue and anticipation. Although the campaign focuses on death, the parallels that we draw with the fashion and beauty industry give it a sardonic but tasteful feel,” she added.
Channel 4 will be launching the campaign on Thursday May 15 across the national press, magazines, poster sites and on its own network.
Several media owners are understood to have shown their opposition to the ad campaign by offering Channel 4 such disadvantageous advertising space that the broadcaster decided not to book the ads.
But the campaign is expected to feature in Time Out, the Independent on Sunday Review, the Observer magazine and the Times magazine.
The broadcaster was approached by the copy advisory team of the body that sets advertising guidelines, the committee of advertising practice.
Guy Parker, CAP secretary, said Channel 4 had been advised not to run the ads in “untargeted” media such as posters, or certain magazines, because of the potential to cause offence.
But a Channel 4 spokesman said the Six Feet Under campaign would be going ahead as planned.
“We will be continuing with the campaign. We have not heard of any poster site owners not taking it,” he added.
Channel 4’s Six Feet Under campaign was developed by the broadcaster’s own in-house ad agency, 4Creative.
