The ING firm specialized in online banking, uses in its latest TV advertising campaign, the image of the squirrel jumping to the sound of very particular music. But what can we find behind that harmonic jump of the squirrel?
The scene of a squirrel jumping across the Iberian Peninsula takes us back to the collective unconscious of this country, from the 1970s. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, in his series "Man and Earth", stated with his characteristic style, that the squirrel could cross all of Iberia, from Gibraltar to the Pyrenees, from tree to tree without having to go down to the ground.
Although this anecdote is more the result of the imagination of a genius, than the historical fidelity of the sources. Since neither Strabo (Geographia), nor Pliny the Elder (History), to quote the two main authorities, do not refer to this anecdote, but rather to the contrary seems to indicate the opposite: “the mountains of Hispanias, arid and sterile and in which nothing else grows… »(Pliny, Historia Naturalis, XXXIII, 67). However, it is true that Italo Calvino illustrates a landscape in "The Rampant Baron" (Chapter IV) with the similar image, of a "monkey that in former times would have left Rome, jumping from one tree to another could reach Spain without touching the ground ».
About this myth, the ING campaign shows the anecdote of the squirrel that could cross from Cádiz to San Sebastián, from tree to tree, or that of a monkey that could go from Gibraltar to the Pyrenees. And it refers us to this mythical symbolic image, to make us show, through the simile, the high density of clients that the company has in Spain.
The marketing of ING is based on this campaign, not so much about this idyllic image of a happy arcadia Iberian, but in a less poetic concept as that of viral marketing. The idea that the customer network is so dense is also due to the phenomenon of word of mouth or mouth-to-ear that occurs among its customers throughout the Iberian Peninsula. This passing of the squirrel is also a passing of information by verbal means in an informal way, as a rumor or virus, while weaving a social network that is also a Customer Network.
In this case, the "circulating-object" that gives meaning to a "network" instead of a "structure" is not the "displacement" between two parallel series (of that word-bag) but "traceability" within a network (of the password).
We can say, then, that any semiotic and advertising network, since marketing networks are semiotic networks, is defined by two main factors:
- its 'traceability potential'
- your "speed of passage"
It is these jumps of the squirrel that draw and act as tracers or traceability markers and show us the connection relationships in any network made up of individuals. Skips that seem to be heard through the background melody that the advertisement incorporates. This ad song is a classic from the 30's called: "Boum!" by Charles Trenet, which almost miraculously seems to have been the soundtrack of the 1938 film “La route enchantée”. Well, doesn't it seem like an enchanted route, that of the squirrel as a way word?
Saltos de la ardilla, which are connections, expressed and phonedmatized in the same song: La pendule fait tic tac tic tac, Les oiseaux du lac font pic pic pic pic, Glou glou glou font tous les dindons, Et la jolie cloche ding din don…. These onomatopoeias (pic-pic, glou-glou, ding-don, boum-boum,…) reproduced in the melody, represent exactly the metaphorical sense of the squirrel's jumps through the arboreal network that they draw at the same time the path of the password through the semiotic network of viral marketing.
The scene of a squirrel jumping across the Iberian Peninsula takes us back to the collective unconscious of this country, from the 1970s. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, in his series "Man and Earth", stated with his characteristic style, that the squirrel could cross all of Iberia, from Gibraltar to the Pyrenees, from tree to tree without having to go down to the ground.
Although this anecdote is more the result of the imagination of a genius, than the historical fidelity of the sources. Since neither Strabo (Geographia), nor Pliny the Elder (History), to quote the two main authorities, do not refer to this anecdote, but rather to the contrary seems to indicate the opposite: “the mountains of Hispanias, arid and sterile and in which nothing else grows… »(Pliny, Historia Naturalis, XXXIII, 67). However, it is true that Italo Calvino illustrates a landscape in "The Rampant Baron" (Chapter IV) with the similar image, of a "monkey that in former times would have left Rome, jumping from one tree to another could reach Spain without touching the ground ».
About this myth, the ING campaign shows the anecdote of the squirrel that could cross from Cádiz to San Sebastián, from tree to tree, or that of a monkey that could go from Gibraltar to the Pyrenees. And it refers us to this mythical symbolic image, to make us show, through the simile, the high density of clients that the company has in Spain.
ING marketing is based on this campaign, not so much on this idyllic image of an Iberian happy arcadia, but on a less poetic concept such as viral marketing. The idea that the customer network is so dense is also due to the phenomenon of word of mouth or mouth-to-ear that occurs among its customers throughout the Iberian Peninsula. This passing of the squirrel is also a passing of information by verbal means in an informal way, as a rumor or virus, while weaving a social network that is also a Customer Network.
It is necessary to indicate that this circular of the squirrel from top to bottom among the trees, we must take it not as a structure but as a network, if we take the squirrel as "semiotic object". Well, there is no structural homology between two series (supplier and customers), due to the circulation of a sema-object as it would be interpreted from functional structuralism. Rather, the "sema-object" (the squirrel) circulates through disconnected positions or places (the clients) that are connected precisely at the moment of circulation (password or password or its virus-word).
In this case, the "circulating-object" that gives meaning to a "network" instead of a "structure" is not the "displacement" between two parallel series (of that word-bag) but "traceability" within a network (of the password).
We can say, then, that any semiotic and advertising network, since marketing networks are semiotic networks, is defined by two main factors:
- its 'traceability potential'
- your "speed of passage"
The squirrel acts as a "password" that traces the path of a network through the territory. The squirrel draws the semiotic diagram by tracing a rhizome. The squirrel no longer performs a "tracing" of the map but describes pathways between the nodes of a network. Thus describing the new maps or geomaps of network marketing based not on points or places but on lines and routes.
It is these jumps of the squirrel that draw and act as tracers or traceability markers and show us the connection relationships in any network made up of individuals. Skips that seem to be heard through the background melody that the advertisement incorporates. This ad song is a classic from the 30's called: "Boum!" by Charles Trenet, which almost miraculously seems to have been the soundtrack of the 1938 film “La route enchantée”. Well, doesn't it seem like an enchanted route, that of the squirrel as a way word?
Saltos de la ardilla, which are connections, expressed and phonedmatized in the same song: La pendule fait tic tac tic tac, Les oiseaux du lac font pic pic pic pic, Glou glou glou font tous les dindons, Et la jolie cloche ding din don…. These onomatopoeias (pic-pic, glou-glou, ding-don, boum-boum,…) reproduced in the melody, represent exactly the metaphorical sense of the squirrel's jumps through the arboreal network that they draw at the same time the path of the password through the semiotic network of viral marketing.
