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A large digital billboard stands beside a road, showing a bottle of beer against a black background. The text reads “The sun is up for 7 hours. You are at work for 10”.

Effective if brutally pessimistic campaign from Ogilvy for bitters brand

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Date
11 April 2012

When you watch Mad Men you are struck not just by the suits and the sexism but also by the happy-go-lucky approach to the actual ads they produce. It’s relentlessly shiny and upbeat full of promises about how your life WILL improve if you drive/smoke/drink what they tell you. Fast forward half a century and Don Draper would be aghast at this new campaign for Fernet-Branca bitters by Ogilvy. Rather than gloss over the life’s frustrations it revels in them and it’s massively effective in highlighting that contrary to what ad-land might have you believe, things are not always brilliant. A very good example of this kind of thing.

A bottle of Fernet-Branca amaro stands against a black background. White text above reads, “Your somewhat younger girlfriend loved men with no hair and potbelly. Then came the financial crisis,” while the phrase “Life is bitter” sits to the left of the bottle.
Above

Ogilvy Dk for Fernet-Branca

A bottle of Fernet-Branca amaro stands centred against a black background. Above it, white text reads “You could have looked like the models in this magazine had your mother had a better taste in men”, with the phrase “Life is bitter” positioned to the left of the bottle.
Above

Ogilvy Dk for Fernet-Branca

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About the Author

Rob Alderson

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Rob Alderson is a freelance writer, editor and strategist. He was previously editor-in-chief of It’s Nice That and WePresent, and editor of Design Week. He publishes the newsletter Undo, which tries to make sense of how AI is changing design work, the design process and the design industry.

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