- Product/Brand - Nivea Men
- Spot - Stress Protect Deodorant, feat LFC Henderson, Sterling and Mingolet
- Music Title - Slow Down
- Composer - Williams
- Publisher - Sony/ATV
- Artist - Gerry & The Pacemakers
- Master Rights - Warner Music
- Music Supervisor - Felt Music
- Ad Agency - FCB Inferno
- Creatives - Gary Robinson, Ian Brassett, Dave Anderson
- Film Company - Independent
- Film Director - The Hoffman Brothers
- Post Production - Big Buoy
- Air Date - 13/2/15
Plotwise this is one spot which defies logic – but what the heck, it’s a hoot!
Nivea Men’s latest screen campaign invites us into the Liverpool dressing room as three of the football club’s top stars - Jordan Henderson, Simon Mingolet and England schemer Raheem Sterling – are showering after a big match.
A sudden text message alerts them to the fact that they are late for a very important date. So they rush out to the car park where the only available transport is a beaten up Reliant Robin three wheeler (remember them?) driven by an elderly football fan with a long face straight out of the ugly model agency books.
They cram inside but, wouldn’t you just know it, the old banger refuses to start! Which means they must resort to pushing it up and down the ramps of the multi storey before it finally splutters into life and delivers them, flash bulbs popping and with barely a second to spare, at the red carpet media event.
Pull it apart for plausibility all you like. But it’s clear that everybody involved – from the creatives at FCB Inferno to Independent directors The Hoffman Brothers and Big Buoy editor Sam Bould – had a lot of fun working on this ad. Not least the players themselves who doubtless pocketed fat cheques for making fools of themselves on film.
Supervisors Felt Music are also to be commended for sorting out the soundtrack, which is a version of Slow Down by rock’n’roller Larry ‘Bonie Maronie’ Williams.
Originally released as a B side in 1958, the Sony/ATV published song has been covered by The Beatles, Led Zeppelin (on a live bootleg, it must be said) and The Jam among many others.
Fittingly the recording here is from the second album by those Merseybeat pioneers Gerry & The Pacemakers, who put Liverpool on the musical map – and paved the way for The Beatles – with three consecutive Parlophone chart toppers in 1963, as well as transforming Rodgers and Hammerstein’s You’ll Never Walk Alone into the official Anfield anthem it still is today.
Fifty odd years later Gerry Marsden and his merry men are still revered by the crowd on The Kop - and it would be nice to think this Nivea Men clip could also stand the test of time.
But that's probably too much to ask.
