to learn how wide a range of products or services a bear is able to recommend : mineral water, airlines, drugs, vitamins, windows, cars, urban transport, printing paper, etc. Copy-writers seem to love them probably for the same reason why penguins are so popular. Bears have an expressive face, often stand on two feet and they touch a string because they act so human. And unlike penguins bears do facilitate some agreed upon thoughts in our minds. A bear is strength, or power, or Russia, or hibernation, or the environ­ment. In a word a bear is a better than average actor in an advertising campaign.

was some more material in the image banks. There clearly is a shortage on the market. It is the first time that we notice the same shots coming back for different brands. That is a lucky coïncidence because it learns us a bit about how a picture works.

be worth a thousand words, but this lot indicates that the message emitted is not unequivocal unless you specify it in words. Look f.e. at the first two adverts (1, 2). The image s.s. in my opinion radiates care, trust, and love where one animal is comforted by the other. Look at the text (1) and you know that it is wrong (even naïve, you cannot outsmart a copy writer) to read the image that way. Gone are the bears. Here comes Russia. Gone is the protection. We are at the same level, we talk partnership. And without anybody noticing a huge problem arises. So we are talking partnership between a Russian and another player. The Russian player is represented by a bear. Then, where is the partner from abroad ? There is none left; the image is blown up by the text. The text of advert № 2 – United we stand – stays much closer to what we see and is therefore much more solid.

look at the №s 3 and 6. In both I see a mother with children initiating all the usual sweet feelings. The advert for the mineral water (6) does not add any caption. The image is rightly used as is and acts as a catalyst. (note: the design of the advert may be fine, but I have still some words to say about the campaign [Illustration 3]) The designer of № 3 uses the same image — still radiating caring motherhood — to transfer strength. He clearly thinks that the accompa­nying text defines which message an image transmits. That is often true, but not in this case.

at the trio (7), (8) and (9) before we fold back to our subject. It seems like back then there was only one picture in the world showing a bear lying on his back. So three brands took it to impersonate to relax. № 7 was used several times for heating systems with different captions like: Can you keep your peace of mind with the winter closing in ?, and Was winter also this "cool" for you?. Thus more in a figurative way than the picture itself, but the link with a polar freeze strengthens the message.

Why № 8 needed the brown bear brushed in is beyond me. Also the link with the polar environ­ment seems less than optimal. Is not precisely the cold air of the north the least seeded with infectuous material? This bear could do without his pills.

of all commercials and in most cases it is not clear why a brown bear was chosen. Take, for example, the mineral water adverts, №s 6, 10, and 12, 13. Three different brands have chosen a bear.

(6), and advert for a French brand of mineral water, any iconic species from the Pyrenees could have been chosen. The bear isn't really important, and no specific characteristic is mentioned.

water from Belgium (10). The text goes Somewhere in Belgium, ther''s still a hidden area, preserved by time and cherished by nature. In that pristine spot … fresh and pure. Nowhere is there anything that refers to bears, which, by the way, do not occur in the wild in Belgium.

is also for a belgian mineral water and it comes in a Dutch (12) and French version (13). At the same time, the brand ran also an advertisement featuring a cattle egret on the back of a hippopotamus (see this advert). The caption was the same and I could, if possible, follow the train of thought even less.

Besides №s 12 and 13, we have two other brands that call upon the services of a bear catching fish. In The automatic attraction (4) a fish seems to be attracted to a bear, which is certainly not the case in real life †. A very similar image is used for № 5 which is about sleeping pills that that would cause one to wake up alert, and which would not cause dependence. I have no idea what role that bear and that fish are playing there.

In the advert for Irish whiskey (11) a bear is shown walking in a city environment. Two men are sitting at a table. On the table, we see a telephone and a bowl of snacks. No drinks. A bear walks up to them on the street. The man on the left says Do you think bears drink whiskey? and the reply is Yes, and they love snacks too, I'm afraid.

The brand reportedly doesn't take itself too seriously and tries to cultivate a friendly and humorous atmosphere that fosters kinship. This explains the setting. The bear was probably chosen because the brand is popular in Russia and the advertisement was intended for that country. Besides this, any other animal species could be put in a similarly funny situation.

In Tame your datacomm problems easily (14) a bear is shown in the role of the problems that can occur in a network. There's no reference to the bear anywhere in the text. So, any other species with a high chance of an unpleasant encounter could just as easily have been used. Unpleasant surprises are sometimes illustrated with Sharks, Hippopotamuses, or Crocodiles and more.

We conclude the list of examples where a bear is just one of many possible species with № 15 where the animal does not radiate danger, but (maternal) care. In the long text about how much care is taken to maintain your car, and how excellent the service and skills of the dealer network, there is not a single reference to a bear. Only the title and the closing lines make the connection to the image: It is your car, but it remains our darling. So № 15 could do with any mother and child picture. Our Elephant page, f.e., shows an example radiating the same feeling to accomodate medical insurance. You could simply swop the pictures without anybody noticing.

on some advertisements where the brown bear, or mainly its strength, is relevant.

Beresterk is a Dutch word meaning strong as a bear. The word is often used to indicate very good, or best in its kind and also performing exceptionally well.

or power, or endurance, in nearly all cases a white Polar bear is shown. Polar bears live largely on ice and in water, which doesn't suit a product that moves primarily on solid ground, albeit muddy and bumpy, all terrain vehicles. Therefore brown bears have been able to build their own niche in that world.

The car advert № 19 shows a situation where we would highly appreciate a strong and power­ful vehicle. The text follows the Universal Standard for Car Adverts (USCA) — don't rush to your local library. I just made it up. The USCA green book says that :

• the writer should find some facts about the chosen animal
• it should be possible to relate the chosen knowledge bits to features of the car
• it is best to choose impressive figures related to velocity, acceleration or power.
• the animal should be better than the naked human, but only second to the car (or in other words: the car should bring an improvement against Mother Nature.)
• it is good practice to spice the text with a mild beastly (macho) choice of words.
• the advert should contain some mild humour and a touch of adventure.

to № 19 and see how it performs against the best practices.
The text goes as follows (translated from Dutch): An adult Grizzly measures more than 2m70 and weighs sometimes more than 400 kgs. (rules a and c) ● They are good swimmers, excellent climbers and catch up easily with humans. (rules b, c, d) ● Except when he is sitting behind the steering wheel of course (rule d, f) ● The … has engines with muscle … growls awfully when needed and speeds ahead with a satisfied purr. (rule e) ● … one final suggestion  stay in your car for the pic-nic. (together with the setting: rule f)

Notice that this is one of the very few (if any) advertisements where we can actually learn some­thing about bears! We have an advert with a Polar bear that also gives some information but it is clear that nobody took the effort to check the facts. We have more examples of car advertising: with Elephants (with minimal use of text, but still quite close to the book) and also several with Penguins, Horses.

of № 20 features a brown bear but skips directly to the last rule of the USCA-manual: add a pinch of humor and a touch of adventure. You choose this car for its adventurous spirit, its design, its high clearance, its robustness says the text, but without any reference to a bear.

The advert is part of a series featuring species like a bear or a squirrel. The story is that the bear (or the squirrel) is only really the wild animal during the weekends when citydwellers go out to enjoy nature. If you show up on a whim in the middle of the week, you might find the animal in its sweatpants and doing everyday activities such as hanging out the laundry. It makes sense that a real bear wouldn't want to be seen like this.

for the self-adhesive labels (16, 17), it is not immediately clear what the bear stands for. № 17 states When two strong partners come to work together then the result is unmatched experience and service. It therefore looks like a clear example of the bear ≡ strength approach. But when we take a closer look at an older advert of one of the partners (16 from 1993) we cannot be entirely sure.

№ 16 says (translated from French) For him, the environment is important. When you are about to order selfadhesive labels, do you take the environment into consideration? … don't use any chlorine. … less environmental risks using sulfate instead of sulfite. …

Thus on this earlier advert (16) for Raflatac® the bear symbolizes the natural environment and not strength. If we look closely at the commercial announcing the partnership (17), we find a reference to environmentally friendly manufacturing processes deep in the text, but nothing else. So at first the bear stands for the environment (16) and later on becomes strength (17).

A few years later, the same brand is back with A completely new concept for self-adhesive paper is born (22). This new paper is perfectly recyclable and can be safely mixed with other paper to be recycled. No trace of strength or environmentally friendly manufacturing left. The loose connection I can think of with the images is: ● recycling is good for the environment and the bear represents the environment ● the deeper green concept is born, therefore we show young bears. But any other mother with young would perform equally well.

Also note the similarity between the photos in №s 22, 18, 6, and 3 (a period of 20 years). There really doesn't seem to be much choice in brown bears.

I can only conclude that brown bears in advertisements are (almost) never a good choice. Writers simply fail to get a bear to demonstrate features of product or service.

Polar bear