Claire Beale on advertising

British Airways ad crashes to earth – and takes BBH's reputation with it

Advertising can be a brutal place. Not only does Joe Public think he's got a right to make comments about your ad, but, worse, these days all of your adland peers can knock two pieces of crap out of your work in full view of the rest of the industry.

The arrival of the digital forum, the blog, the chat room has meant that ad agencies face instant and often coruscating critiques of their efforts. Funnily enough, when it's ordinary consumers having a dig it's not nearly as painful as when fellow ad execs get their claws out. Consumer: whadatheyknow about the pressures, politics and frustrations that lie behind those glossy 30-seconds? But adland knows.

Anyone who works in advertising knows full well that making advertising is a game of high ideals too often brought low by insecure clients, internal politics, pre-testing and a whole heap of corporate bullshit. If, knowing all this, your peers still feel inclined to damn your ad, well... perhaps it really is bad.

Bartle Bogle Hegarty is not generally the ad industry's whipping boy, but boy have these guys had a whipping over their new ad for British Airways. Adland is positively gleeful in its criticism. "Has BBH started its descent with the new BA ad?" asks one thread. The answer in the forums seems to be a unanimous "yes". "BBH RIP" says one post. Ouch.

You might have seen the ad by now. Maybe you won't remember it, or that it's for BA, so here's a reminder: Sydney, sunshine, crisp BA staff, trays, cups of water, newspapers, cushions, smiles, happiness, wouldn't it be great if life was like this, aeroplane, upgrade to BA.

There's a back story to tell, of course. For 20 years, BA's advertising had been handled by the Saatchi brothers' agency – first Saatchi & Saatchi, then M&C Saatchi. Then, in 2005, amid BA's catering fiasco, the account was put up for pitch. BBH, then as now one of London's best creative agencies, won.

So expectations were high. But so were BA's woes – fuel surcharge, anyone? It is a company with a bad reputation to address. A company for whom advertising must play a vital role in improving customer perceptions.

Perhaps that's why it's taken two years to get BBH's first proper branding work for BA out. After 24 months, you expect a whopper: eureka moment, insight honed, script polished. Or you expect a stinker: strategies knocked back, creative work rejected, poor pre-testing, so that all that's left is inoffensive mediocrity. Adland's chattering classes reckon this one's a stinker.

The fact that the ad's by BBH doesn't help. It's one of those agencies you expect the best from. And the fact that BA so desperately needs some great marketing (backed, of course, by great service and great delivery) raises the stakes.

What BBH has delivered is a very saccharine, rather old-fashioned ad that harks back to the days when BA could rightfully claim to be the " world's favourite airline." It cheerfully ignores all of the things that have frustrated BA customers (missed baggage, grounded planes, fixed prices) and implies, with a smile, that a plastic cup of water and a pillow will make everything all right. From some agencies, this would have been a good ad; from BBH it's a real let-down.

So is this a classic case of good agency makes bad ad for bad client? Or has BBH lost its touch? It's not either/or. In pursuit of growth, BBH has been forced to make compromises, accepting difficult clients and, by its standards, second-rate work. In business terms, BBH is thriving. But the key question here is what this ad will do for BA's business. My money's on FA.

Like BA, Stella Artois is known for its big-budget TV ads. Unlike BA, Stella's wonderful ads have a cinematic scope that gives the beer brand a grandeur it increasingly does not deserve. Think of the ice-skating priests, or the fugitive soldier: the scale and ambition is distilled art house movie. Beautiful.

But like a lot of brands, Stella Artois has increasingly struggled to justify such lavish advertising production budgets and the media money needed to ensure that punters actually see the ads. So last week it launched what it describes as a "cinematic website" that will be the main thrust of its global marketing.

It doesn't feel like a cheap alternative to big-screen advertising. Essentially, the site is a repository for classic Stella ads and new campaigns, with an entertainment value that means that viewers will spend time on the site and return for more. The commercials are lovingly wrapped in more than an hour of new film that's been cleverly designed to provide both an interactive mechanism for accessing the ads and a narrative in its own right.

It's cunning stuff, with extra layers of richness for Stella fans who care to find them, and it's very true to Stella's long-term association – in both its ads and its movie sponsorships – with film. But this is about more than just creating an online destination for beer fans. It's also about extracting fresh value from some brilliant old advertising and slashing media spend. Stella has clearly invested heavily in the site and the new footage, but there's no media owner that also needs paying here. Instead, the company is spending money on PR to raise awareness of the new site. Compared to the millions of pounds needed for a decent TV campaign, that's peanuts.

Advertisers are increasingly looking for ways of reducing their media spend without compromising the quality and effectiveness of their advertising activity. Stella's is an extremely elegant solution.

Advertising appropriates icons at its peril. Have you seen the new Marmite ad from DDB? It stars Paddington Bear, lovingly recreated like the TV show we grew up with. Except that this Paddington rejects his marmalade in favour of the malty stuff.

It's a rather sweet ad, full of happy memories. But Paddington's creator, Michael Bond, begs to differ. It simply doesn't ring true, he insists: Paddington would never prefer Marmite. "It would require a good deal more than the combined current withdrawal of Northern Rock to wean him off marmalade, if then," Bond says.

So how come Bond sanctioned the ad deal in the first place if he felt so precious about his creation? Well, it seems he was not consulted (which can surely only be the case if everyone knew he'd say "no"). Instead, the deal was sealed by his daughter, who runs Paddington and Company.

But perhaps Mr Bond can take comfort from the fact that the ad, and now his complaints about it, have resuscitated the Paddington brand nicely ahead of his debut as a big-screen movie star: Harry Potter producer David Heyman is now laying plans to make Paddington the Movie. No doubt today's youngsters will be queuing up to see "that bear off the TV ad".

Beale's best in show harvey nichols (DDB)

With the detritus of London Fashion Week still on the wind, it seems entirely appropriate to call attention to the wicked new film for Harvey Nichols from DDB. It seems to have offended rabid animal lovers and precious fashionistas in equal measure, so I highly recommend that you check it out on YouTube, at www.youtube.com/hnbackstage.

In fact, you'll have to go to YouTube, because you won't see this ad on TV. Coked-out chickens don't get past the censors. Fortunately, it's silly enough and bizarre enough and offensive enough that it's gone viral.

It's a stereotypical behind-the-scenes-at-the-catwalk film. Except that these models walk on four legs and are slightly less articulate. We see a sheep in curlers, a goat throwing up in a urinal, a cow in make-up, a coke-snorting fowl.

It's to promote HN's autumn/winter 2007 food collection (this season's must have: Sicilian spiral pork sausages). Great fun. And if you'd never thought of food as a fashion accessory, you're not quite HN, are you, sweedie?

Claire Beale is editor of Campaign magazine