Selling marriage

Statistics show that marriage is at an all-time low in the UK, so SHE magazine challenged four top ad agencies to “sell” marriage. Here’s the pitch each agency came up with:

Agency: BBH
“The concept came from the idea that it’s the small things that make a marriage. The ad shows a couple looking back on a marriage – at 20, 30, 40 years – and all the little moments that they always remember.”

Agency: KK Outlet
“To illustrate the benefits of marriage, they created ads spelling out the words ‘Better sex’ and ‘Live longer’ in lingerie and funeral wreaths respectively.”

Agency: Publicis Dialog and Publicis Blueprint
“Our idea was to turn that tired cliché [that marriage is an act of conformity and conventionality] on its head and present marriage as the ultimate act of rebellion. When you get married, there’s a real sense of two people against the world. It’s the moment you create a nation of two, completely self-sufficient and not reliant on anyone else. So we wanted to make married couples and those intending to marry ‘the defiant ones’. The thing about being married, which is different from just living together, is that you stand up in front of friends and family and say, ‘I want to do this... We’re doing this because we’re that proud of our commitment and we’re telling the world about it’.”

Agency: Ogilvy
“There’s really no reason to get married. There’s nothing you can do when you’re married that you can’t do when you’re not married. There’s no good reason... There’s no good time; it’s just to do with love and sentiment.”

Hmm... if marriage is a picture of a Christian's relationship with God, I'm not sure any of these hit the mark...