One series of adverts that is rapidly starting to get on my nerves are the Halifax adverts. It seems I am not alone. Congratulations on pushing back the boundaries of advertising tyranny. First we had Howard, bottle lensed bespecticled bank manager, singing about their latest banking products to popular show tunes or something like that. I cannot remember exactly as my mind has repressed those memories.
Now we have a load of retarded, obese bankers packed into radio studio presenting a show with the inane stupidity that only Radio One can muster. You will get £5 a month if you pay in a thousand pounds every month. Sound like a good deal? Not so fast. I don’t think this is anything for customers to be raving about as this is an interest rate of 0.5% only on the first £1000.
Anyway I digress. We instinctively know the product is crap. This blog is about venting my spline against the advert. In fact there are a number of adverts now. One has them high-fiving each other. Like Jerry Seinfeld, I believe high-fiving is such a low form of primate communication. As he says, even some apes can do sign language now but it seems like a suitable method of communication for the unctuous, knuckle-dragging Halifax staff.
Another advert has them hosting a phone-in show for some inexplicable reason, as a reward, we can choose a bang of a large gong or the ‘reward horn.’ The hapless Halifax customer chooses the reward horn and there is a large Parp from the horn. I think this is a strange sound and that subliminally, it represents the booby prize as in ‘wah wah-wah, wahhhh.’
All the adverts are odious and hide the fact that while they are very vocal about the money that we get by putting money in I don’t hear so many tubas and gongs about their share of the £37 billion pounds of government money used to bail them out.
I have to say this one went under my radar for some time. However, it is a particularly annoying advert because it is so stupid and pointless. Whoever came up with the concept failed on every single level. Picture a domestic scene where an urban woman, geeky husband and some other random fellow that has just popped in for a cup of coffee, are preparing a meal.
They have a large, modern designer kitchen so it stands to reason they choose to make packet rice in the microwave. The geeky husband goes to take the rice out of the microwave (even though it hasn’t pinged). The microwave door is stuck. The women says in a matter-of-fact voice, “Oh, It won’t come out unless you tell it it has no artificial colours or preservatives.”
There are so many things wrong about the reasoning behind this statement, both philosophical and causal that make it clear that her grasp of reality is very tenuous. Are you fucking crazy? It is rice. It is inanimate. Leaving aside the point that it is the microwave door that is stuck and how rice can summon the power to keep it shut. What the fuck has this got to do with rice anyway? If it has no artificial colours or preservatives, then just fucking say so. What sort of a moron would you have to be not to be able to cook ordinary rice anyway?
Nothing epitimises the cynical attitude of the advertising toward children more than the Mega GoGos. For those that have not seen the advert it is a basically a collecting scam aimed at children. It has no purpose other than to be a money maker for the company that invented it. It follow the lines of a magazine and a toy. The advert exclaims in a truly unjustifiably excited voice:
“Every week collect & build an all-new mega metropolis with head swapping mega GoGos, mystery mini GoGos & cool pods to display. ”
Which translates as:
“Every week collect a cheap plastic toy, that would make the plastic crap in Christmas crackers look as though they had bought and giftwraped in Hamleys, for a very long time and we’ll sell you some other crappy piece of plastic shit to keep them in but you won’t be able to stop buying them because your children will be left out and possibly bullied if this takes off.”
It is just so lazy. Right down to the name. Mega–this, mega-that. It must have taken about five minutes to come up with this. It is not useful, it isn’t even fun and it is not educational. This product has zero value. I hope that even children are too savvy to fall for this. It is mega-shit.
Filed under: Advertising Idiots — Terry Vision @ 10:02 pm January 4, 2010
Sometimes I feel as though certain ads are just taunting me to write a post slagging them off. This time it’s the Go Compare Advert. I have just had enough. Just because the Compare the Market advert was so successful with its adorable Russian oligarch Meerkat, the Go Compare people had to try and come up with a comic character which everyone is going to talk about.
You’ve used Windows 7, right? It’s Microsoft’s new operating system that is going to replace Windows XP. The previous operating system, Windows Vista was so terrible that users were willing to pay extra to have Windows XP installed on their computer rather than have the bloated, nanny operating system. (more…)
In the aftermath of the banking crisis it is interesting to see how banks are using advertising to make us believe that they are fluffy, caring and not greedy, grasping, ruthless businesses run for their shareholders. (more…)
Filed under: Pretentious? Moi — Terry Vision @ 12:23 am November 12, 2009
A lot of advertising is about creating a brand. I just saw a really pretentious advert. Can you guess what it is for? Men were moving the landscape, pulling the grass like a rug, pinging back fir trees, etc. It was about strength. Whenever you see an advert with remote, monumental epic landscapes, untouched by the modern world, austere with extremely expensive award winning photography and cinematic production values you know it has to be for that gloopy black alcoholic drink beloved by the Irish. That’s right Guinness. I didn’t know, but I just thought, this advert is a load of pseudo, arty wank. It must be for Guinness and I was right. Gustave Flaubert wrote, ‘Language is a cracked kettle on which we bang our tunes to make bears dance, when what we long for is to move the stars to pity. The advertisers at Guinness will the stars to pity when they have a cracked kettle. It is another triumph of style over substance. I guess advertising works.
Oh no! It has just dawned on me that the Christmas adverts are starting. Only a few more days and every advert will be for a crappy compilation CD or Argos advert with bloody Noddy Holder shouting “It’s Chrrristmmassss!”
It is definitely the worst time of year for television advertising.
A few year’s ago I was fortunate enough to escape the commercial hell by going to Goa over the Christmas period.
Although they have meld of religious beliefs, there is a strong Catholic community and so they also follow Christmas but all was quite (except for the barking dogs) until the actual day.
Filed under: Advertising Idiots — Terry Vision @ 10:15 pm October 31, 2009
We are exposed to a tremendous amount of advertising and we think that it just washes over us but there are times when it astounds me how powerful it can be. (more…)
The story behind this advert is a typical scene of advertising stereotypes. A mother and her teenage son are out on a shopping trip to buy the weekly groceries. The son is an advert-safe teenager, who thinks that he is really cool, a bit of a rebel. But let’s face it, comes across as a bit of a curly haired, annoying twat. (more…)
