I’ve occasionally mentioned “Singapore Alex” here. I’ve known him for more than 12 years now, ever since he showed up in the UK. In the interim he’s graduated from UCL, gained UK citizenship (and renounced Singaporean citizenship), formed a civil partnership with Bob, his partner of umpteen years, and decided to take up acting. He’s been in a Christmas panto (at which I graced myself by being flip to the performers) and he often turns up in ads. He was in last Christmas’s ITV offering “Clash of the Santas” playing the Japanese Santa (as a Chinese man he always gets the Oriental parts, even though he doesn’t particularly look Japanese…).
A new Aviva ad (Aviva is the new name of Norwich Union Insurance) shows a long line of people “returning” to Aviva and being greeted on their return. Lo and behold, Alex is in the queue (he’s the one who steps up to the greeter just before the ad switches to the message) and gets a bit more face time because of that.
Every time I see this ad on TV, instead of thinking “Oh, I must go out and buy some Aviva insurance!” I think, “Gee, there’s Alex!” and forget all about insurance.
It’s lucky for advertising that people who do not know any of the actors outnumber those who do.
If I could find a YouTube of the ad, I’d place it here, but I think that Aviva hasn’t updated their website (on which they have ads) since the end of last year. About time you joined Web 2.0 and kept things up to the second, Aviva!