What do dodgy daytime TV adverts and the worldwide debt disaster have in widespread? Greater than you’d suppose, based on Good and Severe, who’ve teamed up with Mission Everybody and CAFOD on a brand new marketing campaign movie that makes use of satire to skewer the world’s most unethical lenders.
Titled Meet The World’s Mortgage Sharks, the 90-second spoof advert stars Alex Macqueen – greatest recognized for his roles in The Thick of It, Rivals, and The Inbetweeners – as a slick, overzealous salesman peddling “unfair loans” to determined prospects. Solely this time, the victims aren’t people. They’re total low-income nations.
Created by Richard Curtis’ Mission Everybody in partnership with CAFOD, and produced by Good and Severe, the marketing campaign is launching forward of this month’s G20 summit. It goals to show how personal banks and hedge funds goal poorer nations with exploitative rates of interest, trapping hundreds of thousands in cycles of debt whereas richer nations look the opposite manner.
CAFOD Ambassador Macqueen leans into the acquainted tropes of early-2000s TV promoting: ill-fitting swimsuit, low cost graphics, compelled enthusiasm, and a barely menacing grin. The nostalgic absurdity makes the message all of the extra highly effective. Viewers are directed to unfairloans.com
to study extra and be a part of requires fairer debt aid.
“The comparability to payday mortgage sharks completely captures the shockingly unethical and exploitative nature of the debt disaster,” says Macqueen. “These on the sharp finish of poverty are compelled into debt with scandalous rates of interest simply to outlive, however the extra snug can entry affordable mortgage preparations. Clearly one thing has gone very mistaken.”
He provides: “With almost half the world’s inhabitants dwelling in nations that spend extra on curiosity repayments than they do on important providers like faculties and hospitals, it is bizarre people who find themselves most deeply impacted by this horrible unfairness.
“With the G20 imminent, now could be the time to carry consideration to a too-long-ignored outrage.”
The movie was written by Jim De Zoete and directed by Serafima Serfimova, whose tongue-in-cheek method helped stability comedy and critique. “I’ve at all times believed that humour is a strong technique to discuss critical issues. It disarms individuals and makes them hear otherwise,” says Serafima. “Taking one thing as heavy as international debt and framing it by the world of early-2000s daytime TV adverts simply felt proper. It is absurd – however then once more, so is the system.”
The director drew on the interval’s iconography – “miracle merchandise, dodgy mortgage provides, over-enthusiastic presenters” – to create a world that is each nostalgic and nauseating. “That daring, cheesy aesthetic grew to become the spine of the movie’s fashion and tone,” she explains. “At its core, Mortgage Sharks is in regards to the ridiculousness of a system that traps poorer nations in countless debt whereas richer ones faux to be serving to. As a result of typically laughter is not about making gentle of an issue – it is about shining a light-weight on it.”
The marketing campaign will run throughout social media, with help from NGOs and influencers, and also will be screened at a particular occasion for MPs on the Homes of Parliament.
Hannah Cameron, marketing campaign director at Mission Everybody, describes how the inventive method was about discovering a brand new manner into a fancy challenge. “We wished to discover a easy technique to inform the story of the worldwide debt disaster and its human impression. With the assistance of Alex Macqueen’s dodgy mortgage shark character, we did simply that,” she says. “I hope it results in elevated understanding and public help for brand new options.”
CAFOD’s lead economist Maria Finnerty provides a sobering reminder of what is at stake: “If predatory lending is unlawful within the UK, we should not enable it to proceed globally.
“The UK might change the legislation tomorrow at zero value to taxpayers, fixing 90% of the issue and benefiting hundreds of thousands of individuals in a single day. All that is lacking is the political will.”
Equal elements humorous and livid, Meet The World’s Mortgage Sharks proves that typically the easiest way to show injustice is to carry up a mirror, even when it appears like an inexpensive TV set from 2003.
