Advertising Part 1.

Ok so get ready for a strop. This one has been a long time in the making and I have a fair bit to say about the following because although a lot (and I mean a lot) of things annoy me on a day to day basis, this is right up there…

Adverts or commercials or 'the breaks', whatever you choose to call them are the bane of my life. There used to be a time not so long ago when the advertisements were good. Sometimes better than the soap, film, TV drama, documentary or whatever it was you were watching. I will talk about the kind of great commercials I mean a little later on but for now bare with me.

It is somewhat of an odd thing to hate adverts because they are everywhere, but the thing is why do they have to be so annoying? You can argue that if you find them annoying and they stick in your head, they are doing their job. This is true, that is after all how advertisements are supposed to work. I have enough brain power to understand that if you see an advert enough it is designed in such a way to stick in your mind so that whenever you are looking for a specific product you will think of the advert and subsequently (the manufacturers of said product hope) you will buy/use theirs.

The problem is subliminal messaging. You see there is legislature in place (it has been for some time) to stop advertisers using techniques that will hit your subconscious rather than your conscious mind. This sounds all a bit drastic but subliminal messages are a serious thing, I could be making you all want to give me money with out you knowing it. It can be used in such a way that when you want to buy a packet of crisps for example you only ever buy Monster Munch. What this leaves us is the necessity to make adverts that are either so unusual or catchy that you think of them all the time.

You see, my perspective of advertising is this; I want to find it funny and interesting and not always to the point as long as it's clever. Please tell me you agree with that… If not stop reading. You're probably one of the people who still like the Go Compare man. And he is just doing what he is paid to do but the 'masterminds' behind him who came up with the idea definitely need to be shot. And so do you. So there. Anyway, what I'm making a point of is that I don't mind if the commercial is direct simple and straight forward or if it's beating around the bush so far you haven't got a clue what it's about until its ending. It just shouldn't be annoying or stupid and seem to be on every five minutes of your life.

By now you might have a few adverts in your mind and "Yeah, I hate that one too." well here are some of the ones that are getting me at the moment; We Buy Any Car, anything for a fragrance, Go Compare, Yoe Valley, Money Supermarket, Churchill. There are a multitude of others, so many in fact that I can't focus. Fragrance adverts really take the biscuit if you ask me. They're all the same. They will start with a man or a woman depending upon the target audience and then some stupid close-ups; introduce the opposite sex and some slightly inappropriateness and whisper the name… Crap. Just crap, there is nothing about whether it smells good or anything just that you are supposedly not allowed to say the name of it any louder than a whisper.

I must admit as we continue with this that I actually don't watch that much TV, usually I pause or record things so that I can fast forward the breaks. I mostly feel the skull smashing irritation of adverts designed to appeal to cavemen while I'm at work. For those of you that don't know, I work in a call centre where there are TV's around with music channels on. Most of the time my ears have to suffer the endless repetition of MTV Base but then on top of that come the stupid adverts to boot. And people wonder why it's an effort to go to work… Taking a couple of steps back, these days I never hear anyone say "I love that advert." anymore (if they do it's generally someone a bit slow and it's a really crap advert - their opinions don't count).

Years ago, loads of adverts were great. Loads of them - I have a list but again, I'll come to that in a bit. I'm not quite finished yet. Right we all know that sex sells, my question to you is does it? There is no question that I prefer to look at a beautiful large breasted woman over well, anything else really but nevertheless the question remains that if it had never been said would sexuality be such a massive part of advertising today? I honestly don’t think it would because again it’s all about suggestion. Here’s a good example, there is an advert currently running for Herbal Essences shampoo & conditioner where this woman is doing a Mission Impossible style abseil to get this shampoo or whatever but then the camera pans back to show her absolutely fantastic bum. Now she has good hair, true but that's not what you notice if you see what I'm saying. What's the point of the bum shot? I like it, but have they done it to appease men watching it or just because… Women will look as well, whether they say it or not but either way it's pointless. It has nothing to do with her hair.

That's just an example of the nonessential sexual references in adverts these days. Honestly, if you watch the adverts after you read this, see if you can count how many don't have a cleavage shot in them. There won't be many and like I say I can always appreciate a bit of cleavage but sometimes I just think, would I remember the advert otherwise? There was a Dreams commercial a while back where a woman comes over to a child and the camera stayed on her boobs for a couple of seconds. I don't remember what the bed looked like at all, but even so I still remember it was a Dreams advert so again, isn't that what it's supposed to do?

I am now inclined to mention some of the all time classic adverts so that you can understand what I am talking about. All these stupid commercials at the moment pale in comparison to some of the ones I am about to mention. What I would like to say first off though, is that there was a Channel 4 special show on the 100 Greatest Adverts and most of them were 90's and early 00's and that helps just emphasis my point. The first one I want to talk about is the Renault Clio Nicole/Papa campaign of the mid to late 90's. Everyone remembers them. They weren't exactly to the point but at the same time they showed the Clio as a car for all ages. That was the entire gimmick, but they did it in a brilliant way. That came 12th in the top 100 and I agree completely with it.

Now I don't remember all of the top ten, and I am too young to remember a lot of the 100 but even so, watching them back was brilliant. None of them were repetitive or annoying they were just different for the time and funny. Have you ever seen the Smash robots? Little tin robots talking about the genius of Smash… pointless but brilliant. When that advert first ran, there was nothing like it and Smash became popular because of it. That advert has been voted TV ad of the century by Campaign Magazine and it came 2nd in Channel 4's top 100. The 1st in that 100 you might be wondering was Guinness - Horses in the waves… tick followed toc, followed tick, followed toc. Simply brilliant.

I also have to make a special mention - as Channel 4 did - to Honda - Cog or dominoes advert. You may remember it; a small cog starts rolling and then sets off a sequence of events to eventually close the boot of a Honda Accord. The intricacy of it was amazing, there were no special affects and when they eventually got it to work and it was filmed in one take. It took over six hundred attempts to get the whole sequence to go through properly but if you haven’t seen it before, watch it and you will see why it was worth it.

So unfortunately it appears the golden age of sheer genius advertising ideas are gone and it appears that we are destined to suffer the stark ramblings of idiots who think annoying people is the best way to get their attention. Unfortunately it seems to be working because they just keep going; I think we're on the sixth or seventh version of the Go Compare campaign… It genuinely makes me want to cry. To all you advertisers out there please, please be clever and deliver something that makes me want to watch you advert again and again. Better yet you could give me a job and help me help you make great adverts.