I absolutely love this campaign. I'm an adchick by profession, and this one just looks so smart to me.If you were to look at the Pimms brand a certain way, I'm sure it would appear at first to have a problem. Pimms itself may be seen as old, stuffy, the afternoon drink of little old ladies on the lawn. And their agency, Mother, could have reacted to this by going the "let's rebrand!" route, like Southern Comfort, who opted to get down with the kids by re-christening themselves 'SoCo' and stuffed their ads with swirly clubby imagery and the sounds of young voices casually ordering SoCo cocktails. None of which changes the fact that it's a shit drink favored by bikers and leathery barflies in t-shirts adorned with puff-painted wolves or unicorns .
Mother, on the other hand, got both hands on what Pimms reminds us of - posh, clueless Britishness - and rather than attempting to disown it, embodied it in a figure of fun. Tweed and a T-shirt. Awesome. (If you know any British cavalry officers, you've got the idea.) The situations are absurd, the optimism of Harry boundless, and the drink - at the end of the day - delicious.
A Google search for "Pimms O'Clock" reveals lots of user-generated content, which demonstrates the accessibility and liking of the concept. Harry even shows up on a few MySpace pages as profile photos. So I'm clearly not the only one that likes it.
The "tent" ad is my current favorite, but this one is just as cute. Now I'm going to bugger off to the market and grab some fruit and lemonade, as it's 2:35 on a Friday afternoon and it's clearly - you get the idea.
