Showing posts with label adverts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adverts. Show all posts
Saturday, January 21, 2012
missed typo....
......or deliberate? This made me smile today: I was looking through the What'sOn section of GetReading, and saw this ad for a concert:
Now, how do you go around proving that you are qualified for free entrance?
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
The Tory Imagination Isn't Working....
as I said in my last post, devoid of ideas.
Forgive the crappiness of my picture editing skills.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Here Come The Girls - run for your life!
I'm going to return in this post to one of my favourite topics - adverts. I've shyed from this subject for a while, simply because The Guardian Guide does demolition jobs on them so well. In a way, I feel writing on the same or similar topic feels just like aping, even though it's a tried and tested literary thing. Now, of course Advertistan is a fairly easy target, comprised as it is of stereotypes, models, cliches, fantasies, lazy thinking and fatuous claims, all played out under an eternal sunshine, but it's a sunday evening after a long tiring day and I can't be arsed aiming at anything else. Besides, I just want to put my own point of view on something.
The object of my ire is Boots' 'Here come the girls' advert. OK, it was a memorable ad a couple of years ago, but this year's version (and the scary thing is that this campaign seems destined to run and run) pokes a finger through the thin membrane of what we laughingly call reality and finds nothing inside, save a little dirt (apologies to Joseph Conrad for that stretching of a phrase). In other words, it's totally unrealistic. Here's the premise: an elderly couple are having a meal in an otherwise abandoned restaurant, possibly Italian. Next to them is a large table, clearly reserved. Suddenly, in burst a group of what are mainly women, obviously on an office do. I say mainly, as there does appear to be at least one bloke among them. They give each other gifts. One of the women is pregnant, and gets a gift of two 'In the Night Garden' hand puppet, to which all the women coo. the token bloke gets a beard clipping kit, the waiter (Italian? Greek? Spanish? but clearly Good-Looking Dopey Foreign Bloke) gets a present, even the elderly couple who have had to endure all the festive bonhomie on the table next to them get presents. The waiter gets a note from one of the women. Then all the girls march out, arms linked and four abreast, singing 'Here come the girls'.
And it's bollocks because?
Not a single one of them is honking, screaming, gorilla-butt drunk.
In reality, they'd all be off their tits on lambrini and Bailey's and vodka and Cava ('cos that's class). They'd be throwing food round the restaurant. Two of them, previously best of friends, would be beating seven shades of shit out of each other, while The Fat Ugly One With Chafing Issues would be seeking to be the peacemaker. The Mousey One would have trapped the Token Office Bloke in a corner, earnestly telling him about her cat and her stash of chocolates and her box collection of Ally McBeal and her mum who calls her up twice a day, while trying to relieve him of his trousers. Meanwhile, two of the really fat office ladies would have Good-Looking Dopey Foreign Bloke pinioned down in some dark corner of the restaurant, doing and suggestig unspeakable acts. Finally, they'd all stagger out, chanting 'here come the girls' while any men with any sense would flee for their lives. and trousers. Then our troop would move into the nearest nightclub to cop off with blokes called Wayne, or Carl, or Danno.
And this is why Advertistan is crap.
The object of my ire is Boots' 'Here come the girls' advert. OK, it was a memorable ad a couple of years ago, but this year's version (and the scary thing is that this campaign seems destined to run and run) pokes a finger through the thin membrane of what we laughingly call reality and finds nothing inside, save a little dirt (apologies to Joseph Conrad for that stretching of a phrase). In other words, it's totally unrealistic. Here's the premise: an elderly couple are having a meal in an otherwise abandoned restaurant, possibly Italian. Next to them is a large table, clearly reserved. Suddenly, in burst a group of what are mainly women, obviously on an office do. I say mainly, as there does appear to be at least one bloke among them. They give each other gifts. One of the women is pregnant, and gets a gift of two 'In the Night Garden' hand puppet, to which all the women coo. the token bloke gets a beard clipping kit, the waiter (Italian? Greek? Spanish? but clearly Good-Looking Dopey Foreign Bloke) gets a present, even the elderly couple who have had to endure all the festive bonhomie on the table next to them get presents. The waiter gets a note from one of the women. Then all the girls march out, arms linked and four abreast, singing 'Here come the girls'.
And it's bollocks because?
Not a single one of them is honking, screaming, gorilla-butt drunk.
In reality, they'd all be off their tits on lambrini and Bailey's and vodka and Cava ('cos that's class). They'd be throwing food round the restaurant. Two of them, previously best of friends, would be beating seven shades of shit out of each other, while The Fat Ugly One With Chafing Issues would be seeking to be the peacemaker. The Mousey One would have trapped the Token Office Bloke in a corner, earnestly telling him about her cat and her stash of chocolates and her box collection of Ally McBeal and her mum who calls her up twice a day, while trying to relieve him of his trousers. Meanwhile, two of the really fat office ladies would have Good-Looking Dopey Foreign Bloke pinioned down in some dark corner of the restaurant, doing and suggestig unspeakable acts. Finally, they'd all stagger out, chanting 'here come the girls' while any men with any sense would flee for their lives. and trousers. Then our troop would move into the nearest nightclub to cop off with blokes called Wayne, or Carl, or Danno.
And this is why Advertistan is crap.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Because You're Gormless.
It's all not going too well so far today: I was hoping to get a lot of writing done, but I seem to be being pursued by noise, distraction, more noise and rogue students talking about hairdressing and cars in a loud voice in the library while I'm BLOODY WORKING. So I've decided to take a break for a cup of coffee and scribble a few things down, just for the hell of it.
Talking of Hell, I haven't written anything about advertisements for ages. The latest beef: noticing that virtually all people in clothing/fashion/hair/makeup ads are about 5 years old. These are people who do not need tarting up, plumping up, or anything lifted, so why are they used? Advertising is all about creating our personal Shnagri-Las after all, and making us feel useless/inadequate/basically crap because we don't have this or that product, or our teeth aren't perfectly white, or our hair isn't Salon Fresh, or our car isn't purring down pristine routes. I just get pissed off at all these apparently over-privileged munchkins traipsing around in FantasyLand.
Some companies, of course, try not to use over-toned homunculi in their ads. Dove is one, with its Real Women "Campaign". I notice it doesn't use Real Trolls, however. Amazingly, Loreal use 70-something Jane Fonda in its ads for Face Glop For Raisin-Faced People. Now, Jane Fonda used to be a stunningly attractive woman, and is still so for her age. Unfortunately, in the ad, what holds me mesmerised are her teeth, which glitter blazing white in unnaturally even rows. It looks like she has an entire gobful of falsies, which makes me wonder why. After all, she is wealthy and famously health conscious, so how come it looks like she's lost all her pearlies?
I imagine she was in some kind of scrap. Perhaps she was on the piss in a bar one time and encountered a tanked up Olivia Newton-John, and they got into an argument regarding their fading revenues from old VHS fitness workout tapes. In a fit of rage, Jane glasses Olivia, who picks up a barstool and smacks her one in the mouth. Because She's Worth It.
Talking of Hell, I haven't written anything about advertisements for ages. The latest beef: noticing that virtually all people in clothing/fashion/hair/makeup ads are about 5 years old. These are people who do not need tarting up, plumping up, or anything lifted, so why are they used? Advertising is all about creating our personal Shnagri-Las after all, and making us feel useless/inadequate/basically crap because we don't have this or that product, or our teeth aren't perfectly white, or our hair isn't Salon Fresh, or our car isn't purring down pristine routes. I just get pissed off at all these apparently over-privileged munchkins traipsing around in FantasyLand.
Some companies, of course, try not to use over-toned homunculi in their ads. Dove is one, with its Real Women "Campaign". I notice it doesn't use Real Trolls, however. Amazingly, Loreal use 70-something Jane Fonda in its ads for Face Glop For Raisin-Faced People. Now, Jane Fonda used to be a stunningly attractive woman, and is still so for her age. Unfortunately, in the ad, what holds me mesmerised are her teeth, which glitter blazing white in unnaturally even rows. It looks like she has an entire gobful of falsies, which makes me wonder why. After all, she is wealthy and famously health conscious, so how come it looks like she's lost all her pearlies?
I imagine she was in some kind of scrap. Perhaps she was on the piss in a bar one time and encountered a tanked up Olivia Newton-John, and they got into an argument regarding their fading revenues from old VHS fitness workout tapes. In a fit of rage, Jane glasses Olivia, who picks up a barstool and smacks her one in the mouth. Because She's Worth It.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)