Bad TV Adverts, Bad Ads » I don’t understand

Adverts from Art

Terry Vision — Wed, 25 May 2011 01:34:29 +0000

Art can be a wonderful thing. It is genuinely one of the fast diminishing list of things that separate us from the animals. It can make you think or it can just be a joy. So when advertisers see something that was particularly clever or just plain cool what do they do? That’s right, they exploit the hell out of it and in doing so they ruin it forever, turning it into a big turd to hawk their wares. No longer can you just appreciate the original work on its own terms because it is tainted with the base cynicism of flogging some piece of old crap or shit service that you didn’t want to hear about in the first place.

The most common way of doing this is to take a song that you really love and associate it with a product. Almost every well known piece of classical music has its advert counterpart but it doesn’t stop there. Popular music is also fair game. Confused with their epic “Can any body help me?” advert with its increasingly annoying lot of cartoon figures. As an aside, notice how, the original confused character was really badly drawn, probably designed by child from nursery school and so it looks like someone having an epileptic fit. It now looks completely out of place with the more polished rendered cartoon figures in the crowd.

The art world is not safe either. There have been various Rube Goldburg Heath Robinson machines in which a simple task is eventually triggered by a chain of unfeasible mechanical, thermodynamic, kinetic and magnetic processes. I remember that Honda did this in an advert using parts of the car. To be fair, the advert was mesmeric and intriguing but such good adverts are few and far between. The Ford advert where an orchestra had instruments made from parts of the car is closer to the norm.

There is an art film, although I cannot remember who it is by, in which the action seemingly repeats and each time some new repeating event or action is added and it gradually builds up into a scene in which their is an impossible amount of stuff happening. That was cool. Matalan are using a similar sort of idea in their latest spinning panoramic adverts. One is set in a park. People are enjoying themselves in their spiffy Matalan clothes. The scene is turning around with people coming in and out of shot; having a picnic, throwing Frisbees, cycling near the camera, dogs walking, etc. If I was the cameraman, you would see a panoramic shot of my projectile vomit because all that spinning around just makes me feel dizzy when I watch it.

Some adverts try to make out that they are art. This is usually where advert isn’t connected with the product in any way that you would ever figure out unless you were a contestant on the never-popular game show 3,2,1. It is supposed to be a little island of pleasure in the sea of stress and torment, a break, something to watch with a warm fuzzy feeling in your heart but most likely it left you thinking WTF was that about? I am of course referring to the Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate adverts. So far we have had a Gorilla drumming to Phil Collins, children with body-popping eyebrows, airport trucks racing and now the dancing charity shop clothes. The ad department at Cadbury’s are obviously eating too much cheese before bedtime. I just hope they don’t start messing about with Oskar Fischinger’s work.Random Posts:

Coco Pops Dancing Milkmen

Terry Vision — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 17:16:32 +0000

Let me just say that I hated the previous chippy Coco Pops monkey. I just wanted to snap his neck but the newer adverts with the formation dancing, lanky milkmen are just as annoying. If this is what children are thinking goes on when they eat Coco Pops it is no wonder they are all stupid.

It also seems to bear a similarity to the Becks larger advert in which a group similar lanky characters was dancing after quaffing a few pints.

It strikes me that they might even involve the same thought process. After a few too many beers, you might imagine various animated characters and with Coco Pops you are supposed to imagine there are dancing milkmen in your cereal. I don’t know, but it is a crappy annoying advert all the same. Random Posts:

Trebor Gum Advert

Terry Vision — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:07:15 +0000

In this advert, the managing director of Trebor mints is announcing a new packaging and he says that he is looking for new ideas to a worker. While about to announce their new packing, the work grabs the microphone and exclaims, “We’re going to make a gum.”
Okay so their making a gum but I don’t understand this advert at all. When I first saw it, I thought he said we’re going to make a gun and I burst out laughing because I thought he was a mental and then they were trying to cover up for the outburst.
Now I know it is a gum, I just don’t get it.
You can see the advert at the Trebor site.Random Posts:

Ford Focus

Terry Vision — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:40:23 +0000

I don’t know about you but when I am buying a car one of the things that I look for is how well it can be cut up and turned into the musical instruments for the Dagenham Philharmonic.
In this advert, pieces of a Ford focus have been cunningly fashioned into musical instruments. It might be unusual and pseudo high-brow way but it doesn’t say anything about cars. What are they trying to say? That their cars make better musical instruments than they do cars?
I can make a rudimentary guitar with a Tupperware lunch-box and some elastic bands. It doesn’t mean I want to drive around in it.

The tag line is ‘beautifully arranged’. Okay Ford, if you can just arrange it so that there is a wheel bolted in each corner to ensure maximum mobility that would be great. What next? Steinway building a car from a grand piano.Random Posts: