OPINION: Cowen on ... Egg.(Mother's work for Egg)(Brief Article)

Back in 1998, when Mother was first disturbing would-be Super Noodles munchers, the agency hardly seemed the choice for a brand looking for a safe pair of hands to take it mainstream.

Yet, in the case of Egg, that's exactly the role the agency has taken on.

For all its wacky style and subject matter, Mother's debut work for the original internet bank is an inherently conservative project. It's traditional in style, structure and, if you bend your ear carefully enough, in its tone.

The cumbersome product details, traditionally enough, are sifted out from the main body of the spot and flashed up at the end. Within the main structure of the ads, Mother's creatives can roam fairly freely, yet the result is far from a tearing-up of the rulebook. Instead, Mother's debut steps away from the edgy quirkiness that characterised HHCL & Partners' work and toward a sunnier, more inclusive tone of voice. The American accent that dominates these ads is no coincidence. Running through them is the same easily presented, non-threatening irony that makes such a success of US sitcoms such as Friends and Frasier. It's a style designed to appeal not only to the UK mainstream but to the French and German markets that Egg has earmarked for its international expansion.

Not that this makes the Egg spots bad. Good advertising, like good comedy, hangs on a well-observed truth and this campaign is no exception. In this case it's the root fear of financial organisation that makes it almost physically impossible for some of us to look at our account balance when we withdraw money. All of this is identified, isolated and dispatched with the aplomb you'd expect of a hotshop on top of its game.

Now the obvious irony in all this is that there used to be an agency famous for touching a previously neglected nerve in this way - and it's the agency that Mother hustled off the Egg account ...