British Gas – A Subjective World View
Following up from the topic of space creation and individual world views in yesterdays post on Mental Maps, an example of an ad campaign that takes these aspects to an extreme trying to make it look funny but probably render it ridiculous.
British Gas runs this campaign visualizing British households as individual planets floating around independently in space only connected by the British Gas service van shuttling between them. What exactly the story is, I am not sure. It must be something that persuades you to switch to the British Gas service. I am really not sure about the abstraction, especially the isolation. Advertisement is usually largely about stereotypes, but this stereotype of space here is a rather sad example.
A major aspect of personal space perception is indeed that the corporal center is placed on the individuals location, as it is a subjective perspective. The crucial point is where these different world views overlap and interact. To create the personal story of the day the interaction with external realities is an essential part of he narrative. Boiling it down to the British Gas service man is a bit cheep, but obviously the ad designer (this i probably CHI & Partners) thought it to be enough for this project.
