I'm a big fan of Branson and how he thinks..Having said that I'm not pleased with the Ad Agency's reference to him or anyone, genius or not, being "Mental". As I take it from the spot it's clearly not a compliment and in an age of Mental Illness being the second biggest illness to have an affect on quality of life and business loss due to productivity I'm not sure the agency did their homework.. Although the creative is clearly linked to there is "No Box" to think outside of for Branson.. there was simply many ways to insinuate portray a "visionary thinker"
Frank Deluca, Board Member of the Schizophrenia Society on Ontario
The image of Richard Branson — inventor, entrepreneur, man of action — gets burnished even further with a new advertisement by the American arm of Virgin Mobile, his wireless company.
In it, a young Branson is depicted being the outsider, the rogue, the daydreamer who seeks to improve the world he lives in — despite everyone calling him, as they do in one scene of this ad, “mental.”
Here’s a look:
It’s a rather cheeky spot, and it certainly makes you like the guy. (Not bad for the richest man in Britain during tough economic times.) But the commercial also helps a great deal in ridding of the image of innovator-as-geeky-lab-rat and replacing it with a suave, cool, gets-the-girl fellow with long hair and access to zero gravity — the kind of character you usually only see in alcohol advertisements.
Smart and cool: not mutually exclusive. It’s a small step for STEM-kind. We dig it.
