Real appeal helps Dublin Bus and VHI to reach consumer

Who would you believe, a celebrity endorsing a product or a "real person"? On the strength of two major TV campaigns currently on screen for VHI and Dublin Bus, the answer would appear to be real people. Dublin Bus's campaign features six of the company's employees while VHI's major repositioning campaign began with an ad featuring an amateur mountain climber. "People tend to see Dublin Bus as a faceless organisation," says Mr Pearse McCaughey, creative director of Cawley Nea Advertising.

"When we talked to the people who actually work there we discovered how passionate they are about their jobs and we wanted to show that." The company held open auditions for the ads and 200 employees turned up. The agency whittled it down to six who represented several aspects of the organisation.

"It's totally unscripted," says Mr McCaughey.

"There was no point putting a copywriter on the job because the people themselves were so naturally expressive." The resulting ads have the ring of authenticity which would be virtually impossible to achieve in a celebrity ad.

For example, somehow it is hard to believe that David Ginola really washes his hair every day with L'Oreal.

VHI's new campaign aims to reposition the company as an organisation that promotes everyday well-being as against its previous message which focused on hospital treatments.

"Real people, such as Jim Leonard, the mountain climber in the first ad, carry immense credibility," says Mr Mark Cohen, marketing director for VHI.

"And our communication is aimed at everybody so the people featured had to be believable."

The campaign is being extended this week from television to outdoor sites. Another current high profile ad campaign is the celebrity ad for the Euro Board. It features the apparently odd celebrity/product fit of former Irish soccer international Paul McGrath and the euro.

"We wanted well-known people that the public would know and trust," says Mr Denis Goodbody of Adept.

This is the first phase of the campaign to explain the nitty-gritty of the euro changeover. A 1999 survey by Wirthlin Worldwide asked adults in the US to rate different sources in terms of how believable they were. Only 3 per cent considered celebrity endorsements very believable, 49 per cent said they were somewhat believable and 47 per cent said they were not believable.

In the Republic, however, some celebrities are more believable than others. Mary McEvoy (a.k.a. Glenroe's Biddy) upped brand recognition for Surf in a crowded market and established Unilever's money-back message. But it is notable that the star of the new Surf ad is not Ms McEvoy - even though she's prominent - but the checkout guy whose mam still does his washing for him.