Advertising Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, London Client: Guinness Creative Director: Patrick Collister Copywriter: Jerry Gallaher Art Director : Clive Yaxley Production Company: Tony Kaye Films, London Director: Tony Kaye Production Company Producer: Amy Appleton Music: 'I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair' (From South Pacific) Release: March 1996

The commercial can be downloaded from here (access is solely for students on this module).

The ad was part of Ogilvy & Mather's 'Black and White' campaign, which was originally conceived for posters and magazine ads by the art director Clive Yaxley and the copywriter Jerry Gallagher. Jim Davies comments that the Bicycle ad 'neatly subverted the viewer's expectations and sparked off the desired level of debate' (Davies 1998, 227).

Tony Kaye is an award-winning director and this ad won an Epica d'Or award in 1996...

The central theme of the new campaign is summed up in the baseline, "Not Everything in Black and White Makes Sense". Each commercial presents a scenario which is not necessarily as it seems, and which is related to a quotation that appears on the screen during the ad. At the end of the commercial the viewer is forced to think again, both about the situations presented and about the product, thereby making the point that life, like Guinness, isn't just black and white... The winning "Bicycle" commercial features a series of situations in which women relax together and perform tasks that are normally considered to be exclusively reserved for men. We see them playing darts, shooting pool and laughing together in a pub while a couple engage in arm-wrestling. Women are seen emptying a dustbin, driving a truck, operating a pneumatic drill and emerging from a mine shaft while the song "I'm Gonna Wash that Man Right Outta my Hair" explains the total absence of men in the spot. Halfway through the black and white film the following quote appears on the screen: "A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle", followed by shots of a completely empty maternity ward. This apparent contradiction is resolved in the final scene showing a fish riding a bicycle, underlining the point that not everything in black and white makes sense... Much of the spot's credibility stems from the recognition that many women actually do traditionally male work. This is reflected in the casting that presents real women in real-life situations without attempting to glamourise them, but at the same time avoiding stereotypes and any kind of sexual ambiguity... (from the Epica d'Or Award citation)