Classic Lego TV Ad: Kipper

Simple, elegant and beautifully showing the product in action, this ad a flights of imagination into a tangible and delightful story.

I love the great, unstructured quality to the narration. It starts in the middle. “You see…” As if you, the watcher, had been there all along, sharing the context with the storyteller.

The narrator is Tommy Cooper, a British prop comic and magician famous for his red fez.

The ad uses the specifics of Cooper’s voice to root the story in a place and time. His accent, style and sentence structures create the character of the whole ad. His laughter at his own story just seems to amplify the delight factor.

I love how specificity remains and has not been stripped out. So many ads today feature an accent from nowhere to offend no one. This one isn’t afraid to have a position in geography, culture and class. It revels in the West Country accent that played a key role in Copper’s act.

As a bonus, Wikipedia tells an incredible story about Tommy Cooper’s live, on-stage death.

On 15 April 1984, Cooper collapsed from a heart attack in front of millions of television viewers, midway through his act on the London Weekend Television variety show Live From Her Majesty’s, transmitted live from Her Majesty’s Theatre — not, as is often reported, the London Palladium.

An assistant had helped him put on a cloak for his sketch, while another assistant was hiding behind the curtain waiting to pass him different props which he would then appear to pull from inside his gown. The assistant smiled at him as he collapsed, believing that it was a joke. Likewise, the audience laughed as he fell, until it became apparent he was seriously ill.

The whole Tommy Cooper Wikipedia entry is an incredible gem and worth reading.

Thanks to Todd for the orignal link to the ad that I saw just outside my mouse hole.

Tags:
comedian, death, imagination, Kipper, LEGO, magician, on-stage, oral tradition, orality, prop comedian, Storytelling, Tommy Cooper, tv ad, Video, wikipedia

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