Clowns Suck (and Bad Ads Do Too) (Athletics in General)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Athletics in General
Date:	20/09/06 (272 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Ads rule our lives

Disadvantages: Clowns

Let’s face it, our society is almost led by the nose by the ad-men. With our huge over-reliance on the pursuit of wealth and materialism in general, we can’t really survive without the notion of advertising in one form or another. Whether we like it or not, we are influenced (however subliminally) by the 2-minute break that we get inserted in our brains every time the programme/film pauses for breath. So when the ads get it wrong we remember. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the ad designers as they are ultimately targeted on things like recognition and how well folks remember and associate with their ad so if it is excruciatingly bad then the chances of Joe Public recalling the advert improve significantly. Whether this means that you will actually buy the product is another question entirely *rolls eyes* Of course, there is a hidden agenda in writing this semi-scathing piece about bad ads and it has something to do with my intense dislike of clowns. It’s a pathological thing and I’m being treated for it.

Needless to say, there have been plenty to place in the pantheon of terrible adverts and quite a few today ring a discordant bell with me and so, if you do have a few minutes spare, come with me on a reckless journey of bad advertising and painful product probes (I’m sure the word “anus” could go in that alliteration somewhere). Currently, my favourite ad to hate is the one for Admiral insurance. You know, the one with the divvy wearing an admiral’s costume with a parrot perched on his shoulder. Not only is it shockingly bereft of props, it has a stupid parrot comment at the end. I think the darn bird is supposed to be reciting the company’s telephone number of samfink but it looks like the whole thing cost about £2.23 to make and the parrot sound is being made by some geezer crouching around the corner.

In terms of all time, worst ads, the Werther’s Original would probably feature in my most hated section. The one with the young boy watching his dear old grandpappy eating his boiled toffee thing whilst rocking away in his chair like Val Doonican on medication. There’s so much cheesy grinning going on you could throw a bit of ham at the pair of ‘em and make enough cheese and ham sandwiches for the rest of the week. I’m afraid all that “perfect world” stuff the advertisers dream up to call up all those latent feelings of inadequacy just make me cringe and I’ll bet that absolutely nobody has a similarly, perfectly dressed, dubbed over grandpa like the one in this ad. I’d like to see a seedy equivalent made where he wrenches a sweet from his manky pocket only for the police to arrive, screeching to a halt outside his front door and arrest him for indecent behaviour (they don’t realise it’s a sweet he has in his hand).

In fact, ads that don’t worry about terrible dubbing annoy me on the whole. You’d have thought with the budgets the ad-men get, they could at least tailor ads to suit individual countries but, nooooooooooooo, not always. Kinder Surprise is another one where the people in the ads are obviously not speaking English. So there I am, watching this terrible dubbing wondering whether one of those directors who normally does those really cheap, martial arts jobbies with the lousy dubbing, has now gone into the Kinder Corporation. The actors mouth’s move but the words don’t match and all that excitement over a poxy chocolate egg with a crap plastic toy to go with it. Do get a grip, Kinder. It’s simply not cricket.

Is it me or is there a culture gap between the UK and the rest of Europe that may never be bridged? Maybe in the minds of the ad-man at least. What about that ridiculous advert where some woman drives a heart-shaped car into a clinically clean garage and two mechanic-type geezers do some kind of service to her car. I’m sure she drinks one of those medicinal yoghurt thingies with lots of wee bacteria that enable you to live forever if you drink at least half a dozen yoghurts a day, but have Danone executives ever set foot in a garage? Maybe establishments in mainland Europe are clean and inviting and inhabited by perfect looking blokes who all grin inanely but if you take your car to one of the garages in my town then it’s a land of freely running grease, spent car tyres everywhere and overalls that need a pair of pincers and the bomb squad called to dispose of them come the end of the day *cringes at the “Ooh Danone" jingle at the end of their ads*

Last but not least are all adverts for MacDonalds. Not because they are especially bad and not because I particularly dislike their product (even if I’m not that keen on Macburgers). The real reason I hate Macdonald’s ads is because of that f*cking clown. I don’t like clowns in general but when one gets canonised like blinkin’ Ronald Macdonald with rainbows adorning his head and a grin that would scare most kids to death then I simply have to object. No, whoever it was that invented Ronald the Clown should be mcshot in the head and the clown locked up in Pentonville for a long, looooong stretch. The only good clown that I approve of is Krusty the clown in the Simpsons and that’s because he’s more of an anti-clown than a clown in the more traditional sense. Who actually likes clowns anyway?

So there you have it and there’s a whole sub-culture devoted to exposing crappy adverts. Check out the site below if you want to explore more but for now….

Thanks for the read. You can go now.

Mara

For folks wanting more info about bad ads in general, do try http://www.badadverts.co.uk/ (he he)

Summary: Bad ads and bad clowns