At Your Convenience

This advert for Channel 4's On Demand service really impresses me. The way that they have turned all of their main programmes into supermarket products makes the advert humorous, and really easy for everybody to relate to. For example, Gok Wan is represented by bright red fizzy pop, Skins is a cheap and dirty Pot Noodle, Come Dine With Me is a bag of flour, and quite obviously, How Clean Is Your House is a box of detergent.

Every time I see it on the television I find myself looking intently for new products or details that I might have missed before. I think my favourite is Cutting Edge, which is a roll of Cling-film, or possibly Brookside, which comes out of the freezer section and has to have the ice scraped off it.

From a design point of view, somebody must have had to design the packaging for each and every one of these fictional products, even though they're only on screen for a second or two. And every detail has been thought of, the colours and the typography used make each and every product seem so appropriate for the programme that it represents. Personally I think the advert would be just as good without the 'celebrities' thrown in as staff, but then you can't blame Channel 4 for wanting to include some of their 'talent'. Overall I think that the art direction and the production is spot on, not to mention the choice of music, which I think gives the advert exactly the right tone of voice.

It's interesting to compare this to the BBC's recent adverts for their iPlayer. I think the BBC have the best slogan, "Making the unmissable, unmissable", but their adverts simply show a generic, clichéd montage of clips from their biggest programmes, which isn't going to get people talking. Whereas Channel 4's attempt is the kind of thing that will get mentioned over a pint in the pub.