I have to make a confession. I haven’t actually seen this ad on the TV. I can’t remember seeing many Irn Bru ads down south for a while actually, and I guess the sugary pop market tends to advertise when they can hit the kiddies rather than me. It is quite probably a Scotland only advert. However it did pop up on an inspiration finding YouTube search and, well, it is rather good. Irn Bru take on the Snowman.
Parody ad’s are difficult to pull off, though here it seems they have the permission of Raymond Briggs, as this copy of the Snowman seems spot on. From that it is just a hop-skip and a jump away from an Aled Jones alike* singing some slightly off words and away you go. But what is nice is that the animation is nicely expressive, and whilst the joke is obvious, the craft in the whole thing does give you a genuinely good feeling. A better feeling certainly than having to sit through the whole bloody Snowman at Christmas. One assumes that Briggs allowed the ad because he took is sick to the back teeth with “we’re walking in the air” and its annual sap-fest. Its easy to forget that the majority of the Snowman is a silent movie after all, with this song rattling round constantly. What is nice about this ad is that it feels more like a beer commercial, a Carling ad from the late 80’s rather than a soft drink. And that is exactly the attitude Irn Bru want. (It misses a trick by not including a parodic Coca-Cola truck somewhere jacknifing on icy roads though.)
*Indeed, just like in the original, as Aled doesn’t sing on the original either. He just cashed in on it.