You don't fool me Smithkline-Beecham!! - I'm on to your evil plan!!!

But before I tell you what's *wrong* with Beecham's cold + flu remedies, I'll tell you what's right with them. I'm a big advocate of Beechams Hot Blackcurrent... for me, this is one of the few cold remedies that actually does the business. True enough, it's a bit expensive for what amounts to a cup full of paracetamol and blackcurrent flavouring, but when you're stuffed full of cold, nothing beats it for getting my head straight.

However, what I really, really, *really* dislike, is their most recent advertising campaign.

We're out of the flu season at the moment, so you might not remember this particular campaign - so let me remind you...

The plots goes something like this. Middle-aged-office-executive gets a cold... it looks like he's not going to make it into the office, and as a result he's going to lose out on some important deal to some annoying (younger) go-getter upstart. However, thanks to the miracle of Beechams Powders, Middle-aged-office-executive feels immediately well again, and manages to get back into the office in the nick of time and save his career, thus foiling young-go-getter-usurper.

Nooooooooo!!!!!!

This really annoys me. There's nothing I hate worse than flu-ridden co-workers dragging themselves into work, coughing, spluttering, and spreading their disease to all and sundry. Even now (in the middle of summer) there's a cold spreading it's way slowly across the office where I work... I suspect it will have caught up with me by next week. Why these people consider themselves so indespensible to the company that they can't stay at home with their nasty little infectious diseases *really* annoys me, and these advert actually ENCOURAGES people to get into public places and spread the infection.

(Which is, I guess, exactly what the cold remedy manufacturers
want them to do! More flu victims = more money in their pockets... an extremely literal interpretation of the concept of "viral marketing" !)

The product is great. The advert is irresponsible in the extreme. It makes me maaaaaad! Grrrrrr....