Life is full of people telling you what to do, what to eat, what adverts on tele to hate etc. But there’s surely no other area of your life where more people are telling you what to do, then the world of fashion.

Oh, just that word makes me want to puke blood. Fashion, eurgh!

The basic tenets of the fashion industry go pretty much against everything I believe in, so any advert for clothes has a hard time getting through to me. Here’s my stance: Being told what to wear by a small group of very, very rich business men is the biggest pile of festering shit this sick World has thought up.

Actually there is something worse. Its the message being passed onto me by corporate shill, Madonna.

Madonna and Me…

Now Madonna used up her allowance of public good will, ooh, 15 years ago now, but she still rams herself down our throats on a regular basis. If it’s not her bad singing, it’s her bad acting. If it’s not her bad acting it’s her bad writing. That’s because (and how I love this phrase) she’s great at re-inventing herself. Bollocks! Madonna’s only talent seems to be jumping on whatever bandwagon that happens to be riding past at that moment. She hasn’t set a trend since 1983, and that trend was the importance of style over substance.

She’s now signed up with H&M, allowing her to turn her completely untalented hand to the field of clothes designing. And guess what? Not only is she not the first celebrity designer for H&M (at least Stella McCartney *is* a fashion designer) the advert for her clothes is also an Ugly Betty-bandwagon-jumping rip-off.

Plot summary

Ugly Betty-a-like walks into bleak featureless setting. All the stuck-up super-model co-workers look down noses. Bizarre sycophant fashion Kato violently dresses Ugly Betty-a-like in catsuit. Madonna, in dominatrix (H&M not S&M! H&M!!) lesbian boss mode, likes it when Ugly Betty-a-like dresses identically to her and they walk out arm-in-arm, probably to a fashionistas-love-fest, leaving the bizarre sycophant fashion Kato behind.

In Summary

To be honest, I don’t know what the advert is really about. Halfway through I was so angry, my eyeballs popped clean out or their sockets. But I’m fairly certain it’s something to do with us all having to wear cat-suits. Which we must buy now from H&M or Madonna will come and spanky our bottoms/read to us from one of her childrens’ books.

Judge for yourself:

A reader wrote to me asking my thoughts on the new Dolland & Aitchinson advert.

Before I do, let me tell you a story about a recent visit to another high street opticians. I went in there to look for a new pair of glasses as I, dear Reader, am a goggle-eyed freak. When I asked the assistant if she could help me select a pair, she instead shallow fried me in a light drizzle of olive oil for 10 to 12 minutes, placed me between two halves of a bread bun and covered me in fried onions and ketchup. I was, understandably, outraged!

So how do I feel when the lovely man from D&A tells me:

“We promise to treat you like a person not a a sausage.”

?

Bloody relieved, that’s how.

Judge for yourself (When page loads, click 1) Play Glasses.)

Sex and the City, didn’t you just love it?

What? You didn’t watch it? No me neither, but apart you and me, every other person on Earth watched it (That makes us pretty special, wouldn’t you say?).

It was a God-send for women because it talked about issues they really care about like shoes and “tuchus-lingus“. And there were four main characters so everyone could relate to one of them right? There’s the horse-faced thinker, the uptight one, the workaholic one and the sexaholic one. Brilliant stuff, I think you’ll agree.

Dulco have tried to cash in on this popularity some 3 years after SATC stopped being shown. No, it’s not that they missed the boat big time. Tut tut, how could you think that? It’s more that they are filling the gap left by the show.

To be honest, I can’t decide if this is the worst advert on tele or the best one. I must have watched it, ooh, 100 times now and my jaw still drops every time she says:

“Bowel stuff… it’s hard and uncomfortable.”

Who the hell tells their friends the consistency of their shits? And her shit pain is bad enough that her friends can see she’s in quite some distress. In fact it’s so bad it’s worst than a bad hair day! Blimey!

Fortunately, her friend is carrying some Dulco Ease shit softener (and hydrator) around in her handbag (”got to have a handbag in it, women love hand bags”). Why are you doing that? It says it takes 2 days to work. What does she do, have a very well done steak and take a dose of Dulco Ease at the same time *just in case*? I bet she has a smug look on her face once she’s done it too.

I think Dulco might have missed the mark by trying to match up the style of the ad and their particular product, though.

I mean, which one are you like? The one whose shits hurt? The one who carries stool softener round in her bag? The one who doesn’t have a boyfriend (but may or may not have problems with her shit)? Or the one that is only there to make up the numbers so it’s obvious that its a SATC rip-off?

I just can’t decide. Maybe I will if I watch the advert a couple more hundred times….

Judge for yourself

Scene: 2 Advertising Executives just about to go into pitch meeting with Trident.

Exec 1: “Do you want to hear me do a funny accent, Sebastian?”
Exec 2: “Do I ever, Bertie!”
Exec 1: “I’m from Jamaica, mon. I like reggae music, mon.”
Exec 2: “Wizzo Bertie! That was v funny. Do you want to hear a funny word? Ginge told it me earlier.”
Exec 1: “Yes please, Sebastian. I love funny words!”
Exec 2: “Mastication!”
Exec 1: “Tee hee! That is funny. Do you know why that’s funny? Because it sounds like ‘masturbation’!”
Exec 2: “I know. I bet it would sound A1 100% pure humour in your Jamaican accent!”
Exec 1: “Mastication! Mastication! Mastication for the Nation! Mon…”

Wankers.

Judge for yourself:

Update

It seems that I’m not the only one who objected to this advert, and after receiving over 500 complaints the ads have been pulled from broadcast. Shame.

“I’m Nadine Baggott, Celebrity Beauty Editor.”

I didn’t think it was possible. I didn’t think that someone introducing themselves in an advert could raise a louder “Who the fuck?” than Barry Scott. (While we’re on it, who the fuck is he anyway?)

But OLAY have gone one better and followed the “Who the fuck?” up with an equally loud “What the fuck?”

*Celebrity Beauty Editor* is possibly the worst ‘made up job title’ ever made up. It’s left me confused. I’m not sure if Nadine spends her time editing celebrity beauty (whatever that might entail) or whether she thinks she is a beauty editor who is also a celebrity. If it’s the latter she is sorely mistaken.

Either way, when Nadine isn’t doing her made up job, she’s busy helping the World by discovering that pentapeptides (that’s now one “Who the fuck” and two “What the fuck?”s) are in OLAY. My limited research (I Googled it then looked at one result; in laboratory conditions though) tells me these are the “newest group of amino acids” which I have taken to mean “latest made up bullshit”.

OLAY cunningly recognised that women, regardless or how much time they had on their hands, wouldn’t want to smear bullshit all over their faces; let alone pay 20 quid for the privilege. So they’ve called it pentapeptides instead.

Note to Nadine: I strongly suspect you didn’t discover pentapeptides in OLAY. I suspect that the lowest pond-life variety of scientist put them there then someone from an advertising agency told you about them.

This advert is so patronising to women it makes me want to start having periods and darning men’s socks just so I can feel even more angry about it than I already do. Nadine, you bring shame on women everywhere! Stop pedalling this bullshit now!

Also, from the look of her, I strong suspect Nadine doesn’t keep her self looking young purely by using OLAY or she would surely be able to open her mouth wider when she laughs manically at celebrity beauty editorial meetings.

Simply slagging off critiquing a Mazda advert isn’t really fair without a bit of context.

Any advertising agency that works for Mazda has to contend with the death-wails of the monster that is the “Zoom-zoom-zoom!” jingle. A jingle that is so catastrophically bad (I want to become a 21st Van Gough every time I hear it) that I can only imagine that it was first hummed by the tone-deaf child of one of Mazda’s executives and it has to stay. No-one in their right mind (this obviously doesn’t exclude advertisers then) would think that tune was any good what-so-ever.

So their you go, even-handed context.

The latest ad has the set up as though a James Bond type has just got one over a Chinese crime boss. But it’s a man, in a Mazda MX-5, that can only mean he’s not a spy at all, but a hair dresser. Presumably one that’s just over charged a Chinese crime boss for a standard short-back-and-sides and the Chinese crime boss looks mighty pissed (”What aren’t you even going to ask if I want any product!”).

As the hair dresser makes his get a way he is pursued by a motorcycling rhythm-gymnast that dazzles by-standers with swirling ribbons (”I mean that just says Chinese to me on a fundamental level, ok?”) that, whoa! have metal spikes on the end.

Do not fear though, dear Reader! You are safe from danger because the roof of the MX-5 can protect you from any such attack!

(Disclaimer: as long as the motorcycling rhythm-gymnast is caught up in their routine that they forget to attack you for 5 minutes because that’s how long it seems to take to get the roof up.)

There is a happy-ending though (as long as you’re not a Chinese crime boss or a viewer of this advert) because, you know what, the motorcycling rhythm-gymnast is a woman! And the hair dresser manages to woo her into his car and they drive off into the sunset.

I can only assume this was achieved by promising of a hefty discount on her next highlights, because no woman would ever be impressed by a man driving a MX-5. NO. WOMAN. EVER.

Why this ad is so bad is because the goal it is attempting to achieve is impossible. Men plus MX-5 simply will never equal sexy/cool. Particularly if he’s driving along to a sound track of “Zoom-zoom-zoom!”.

Judge for yourselves:

This is on the blog because it’s filthy.

It’s just plain wrong that a cat food ad should stick in my head at all, I don’t own a cat and my next door neighbour takes pleasure in killing and eating them whenever she gets the urge so the chances of me owning one that lives more than a week are slim. But there’s something about this advert that’s dirty.

To be more precise, there’s something about the last line. You probably know it already, if your mind works like mine. It’s probably been stuck in there since you first heard it, you know it shouldn’t be there but stuck it is, in all it’s wrongness.

It’s spoken by a woman who sounds like she could be the younger, flirtier slightly more desperate sister of the M&S voice-over woman.

“I can’t wake up without my furry alarm clock…”

Furry Alarm Clock.

Whereas the M&S woman is trying, and, to be fair, succeeding in getting the food to sound tempting and delicious, her sister’s stuck with a cat food ad and throws in this line at the end to screw with your mind.

CATS. FOOD. A HUSKY VOICED WOMAN IN BED TALKING ABOUT HER FURRY….

… ALARM CLOCK.

It doesn’t even make sense but the insinuation is right there. She really wants to be doing a sultry and seductive food advert like her sister, but she’s stuck with flogging this so she’s going to awkwardly flirt and mess with your brain out of spite and get you to giggle like a schoolboy at something that doesn’t even make sense but sounds smutty just because of the way she says it.

And women like that scare me.

The feeling I get watching many of the ads mentioned here is “What have I done to deserve this?” Few ads actually supply a punishment of mythological proportions, but the Ford Focus Cabriolet pulls this off and leaves you feeling like Prometheus, spending eternity chained to a rock having your liver pecked out by an eagle each day then restored by the next morning for the punishment to continue anew.

The ad opens in a small, cosy Italian square (“Piazza, Charlie…”), spoiled only by the fact that some ignorant tosser’s left their Focus Cabriolet blocking half the street. A wide-eyed moron who’s gawping at the car proceeds to bump into another person, setting off a chain of mishaps, which the camera follows around the piazza, eventually coming to rest on the car again, only this time it’s got it’s roof up.

Yeah, look impressed.

That’s certainly the reaction of said moron, who proceeds to repeat a similar chain of mishaps all over again.

Thankfully, the ad fades out halfway around the second time but I’m left with the feeling that I’ve narrowly escaped being trapped for an eternity in the piazza. It’s not a pleasant sensation at all and I do start to question what I’ve done wrong to deserve this punishment.

Which is pretty much how I felt the last time I had to drive a Ford, so I guess the ad suits have hit the nail on the head after all…

Middle-aged men!

Do you smell like a monkey’s armpit after the monkey made the final of a shit throwing contest on the hottest day of the year?

And do you have about as much luck attracting females in their 20’s as, well let’s face it, a middle-aged man?

Do you wish you didn’t? Well now you can relax because there’s a solution to your worries: Lynx!

Not content with pushing the boundaries of trade’s description laws with their “Lynx Effect” ads targeted at teenagers and 20 year olds, they’re now going for their Dad’s as well.

In the new advert, a clearly past it old man, arrives at his son’s house barely has time to meet his son’s *hot* girlfriend when he promptly needs to go to the toilet (”I would have more luck with women if it weren’t for this damned prostate!”). There he discovers some Lynx. It’s been a long trip (he’s a Johnny Foreigner you see) he’s probably flown on a budget airline and is not a bit stinky in the under arm region; so he has a spray.

As he re-enters the living room, the *hot* girlfriend can not resist him and rips off his clothes. This is the Lynx Effect and it makes all men irresistible to women, or so they would have you believe.

“I love this country!” the old man declares.

He he he, aren’t women feeble minded and aren’t foreigners stupid. I could laugh my internal organs up its so fucking hilarious! At least I wouldn’t have to smell Lynx any more.

The real “Lynx Effect” is that it makes you smell like a teenage boy whose Mum buys him deodorant. And I’m telling you, that’s not good!

Some brands have managed to embed themselves in the public psyche: Hoover or Sellotape for instance. Just about everyone knows what they are, in fact they’re generic terms for that type of product.

For companies this is a bit of a mixed blessing. Their product name has become part of everyday speak but at the same time people don’t really think about their products; it’s gone too far and become just a word.

You want a new Hoover? You buy a Dyson (I mean who could blame you, Dyson’s are cooler).
You want to Sellotape a poster to the wall? You use Tesco own make sticky tape (You go for it, it’s loads cheaper!).

An exception to this is Google. Looking for something on the Web? Google it!

This is an advertiser’s wet dream. Google have managed to create a phrase in everyday use that not only has their name in it, it’s a ‘doing word’ (keep up at the back) and it’s only associated with their company! This success is exactly what Argos are trying to do in their latest ads; and failing miserably.

“Don’t just shop for it, Argos it!”

But it is never going to happen Argos, just leave it. Google are a cool brand, that people on the whole like. Argos are the makers of Elizabeth Duke jewellery. I promise you that it doesn’t matter how many times you force it down our lug holes no-one is ever going to say:

“I’m just going to pop into town to do some Argosing…”

Never, ever, ever, EVER!