Skip to main content

Advertisers get happier . . . . and I get grumpier

What is it with current advertisements on television? Is it that the advertisers themselves are selling such absolute rubbish, or is it simply they don't realise they have saddled themselves with completely uncreative and useless advertising agencies?

Meanwhile, Sir Martin Sorrell is waltzing to the bank with $53million for his past year's troubles. I wonder how many awful campaigns his company WPP has come up with recently? Or have they been responsible for originating or copying any of those I'm about to mention?

I can't imagine the viewing rooms being full of company directors all wetting themselves with delight at the unveiling of new campaigns like these below that are of such monumental piss-poor proportions.

The malaise set in with mobile phone operator O2 and their positively appalling "Be more dog" campaign. Totally meaningless, not to mention grammatically incorrect.

Then moneysupermarket.com, already accused along with other comparison sites of encouraging sign-ups to deals providing the best commission .... to themselves, have come up with possibly the worst of the lot,"X, you're so moneysupermarket". The latest incarnation sees an offensive chap with an offensive rear strutting offensively in a pair of women's orthopaedic fashion shoes.

How can anyone or anything be "so money supermarket"?  It's like saying to an HSBC director "you're so slush fund", or to a pharmacist "you're so prescription". Utter, puerile, childish hogwash.

The ones that really rattles my cage are the number of brands that are now "happy", mostly just grammatically incorrect clones of one another. The list is growing by the minute. Do the directors of these brands not realise that not only do they appear like copy-cats, but their agencies are uncreatively stupid, doing nothing but taking their clients for a very expensive ride?

Let's take a few of these happy-chasing brands, many supported by truly appalling advertisements that are neither clever nor the least bit amusing:

Gala Bingo - play happy (perhaps lose your money happy?)
Jacobs - snack happy
Hyundai - get ready for happy
Rightmove - find your happy
Dreams - sleep happy
Hungry House - 25% more happy (than their delivery people or commission extracted restaurants)
Stork  - bake someone happy
Fabreze - breathe happy
TUI Holidays - live happy (Ha! paying £5+ to drop someone off at the airport)
Liftshare - travel happy
Cats' Protection League - "get cat happy"

Help!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Season for all men

Well, we’re used to hearing about the Camping Season , which for Scouts runs from approximately 31st March to 31st October each year, although Graham Norton’s camping season lasts all year. Then there’s the Caravan Season , where Jeremy Clarkson spends six months with extremely high blood pressure as he tries to overtake them on the A38 in an excruciatingly expensive and completely unnecessary car. The Japanese have their Scientific Season, which was a series of sporadic weeks where they slaughtered endangered whales for scientific research, the results of which seem to be a closely guarded world-secret. This season now looks set, thanks to a group of spineless, land-locked countries threatened by the Land of the Rising Scientific Research with paying more for their Nintendos and PlayStations, to last until the final whale is wiped off the face of the oceans. I have written to the Japanese Embassy four times now seeking details of this research (email address info@l...

"Q". My name is Bond. Oh. not THAT Q.

I was sent a story today by a friend who knows my feelings on the subject - that is, about one of the consummately greatest of all British activities, namely, queuing. It seems some Danish Professor or other has come up with the theory that those who queue the longest should actually be served the last. He claims it makes purchasing something altogether more efficient and smooth through the idea of 'contra-queuing' (whatever the devil that may mean). 'Serve the people at the back of the queue first', he says, with profound wisdom. Altogether very professorial, albeit demonstrating a somewhat keen lack of understanding of the purchasing psyche. The Nobel Prize-chasing Prof suggests that if, for example, a popular entertainment act was to announce a tour, with tickets going on sale at 11am one morning, using the theory of 'contra-queuing', no one will want to be first to buy said tickets. So no one will turn up 14 months in advance and venues will...

"Pre-" . . . . . good grief!!!!!!!!!

I was looking through the Guardian this morning and noticed a position being advertised that I thought I'd take a closer look at. The first sentence, when clicking the link to apply was: "If you are registered, please log in and we will pre-fill this form for you." What is the current fixation with the prefix "pre" . It is everywhere, turning perfectly reasonable statements into total and utter gibberish! I would have thought that for one of our major quality newspapers, instead of "please log in and we will pre-fill this form for you" it would have been much more sensible to have something along the lines of "please log in and your details will be automatically filled in for you". It is the rip-off Britain merchants who have embraced this particular prefix with a vengeance. They have nonsensically slapped it in front of the word " order " so that the moment an overpriced games console, war game for that console, phone,...