In the World of Addison Lee

addisonlee.com

The ad campaign I presently love to hate the most is for business-class car service Addison Lee (i.e. the world's most pretentious mini-cab operator).

Targeted towards executives and premium leisure users, the six-figure campaign entitled 'Cool, Calm and Collected' is meant to embody the Addison Lee vision of an unrivaled and super-efficient service that enables customers to move smoothly and conveniently around the capital in comfort and style. That's certainly the line being peddled by chief commercial officer Peter Boucher.

For me, however, it suggests something very different. When I look at the above picture or one of the related images from the campaign, I see a couple in a virtual bubble of money, smugness and false security being transported through the chaotic yet strangely empty and sanitized streets of London. Such elitism and fascist utopianism is offensive enough, but one can also detect the whiff of casual sexism and racism.

The woman, for example, with dark curly hair and wearing a red dress that shows off her dusky skin colour, has obviously been chosen to add a little spice; a vague hint of exotic otherness and wild sensuality. She smiles, but she's clearly not entirely happy to be trapped in the bubble alongside her white, male, fully-covered companion. She sits a little uncomfortably and somewhat nervously with her bare legs pressed together and turned as far away from him as possible, her bare arms crossed. She might reluctantly give him a blow job, but she really doesn't want to fuck him.

He could, of course, be her colleague, but probably he's her good-looking young boss; she's obliged, therefore, not only to look across at him, but up to him with a mixture of love and respect. He, on the other hand, can look at her any way he chooses; or, indeed, as here, he can choose not to look at her at all - to keep his eyes on the road, on the future, and doubtless on his own reflection like the narcissist he is.

Suited and booted, he nevertheless keeps it casual; no tie, open-neck shirt, designer stubble ... Only the expensive haircut and neatly-folded pocket handkerchief tells us he's still very much in control and obsessed with order and detail; still holding on to the power and the privilege of his class, his race, and his sex.


Note: The Addison Lee ad campaign was created by Albion; written by George Morgan and shot by Doug Fisher. Unique Digital handled the media strategy and buying.