The winner of this month’s TV’s Worst Advert award goes to: Ocean Finance for their Long Grass abomination. A perfect 5. Well Done.

So the Top 10 looks like this:

1. Ocean Finance - Long Grass. Average Score: 5 out of 5
2. Dulco Ease. Average Score: 4.86 out of 5
3. H&M. Average Score: 4.75 out of 5
4. OLAY. Average Score: 4.6 out of 5
5. Trident. Average Score: 4.38 out of 5
6. Lynx - Bom Chicka Wah Wah. Average Score: 4.35 out of 5
7. Halifax. Average Score: 4.29 out of 5
8. IAMS Cat Food. Average Score: 4 out of 5
9. Argos. Average Score: 4 out of 5
10. Dollond & Aitchison. Average Score: 3.83 out of 5

Thanks to all those of you who voted.

Fact fans out there will be interested to know that by far the most viewed and voted for TV’s Worst Advert entry was the Lynx - Bom Chicka Wah Wah effort but it only finished 6th. So let this be a lesson to you all, if you hate an advert you’ve got to get voting!

Or maybe we need a fairer way to award the prize… Nope. You get voting.

This is one of those adverts where I have more a problem with the product than I do with the advert itself but it’s made it here anyway.

Every time I see that bloke get out of his car and push the top of the picture up (that sentence makes sense once you’ve seen the advert) then do the same with the screen in his car I think:

“When driving through the Arizona desert (or wherever it is) that looks like a great idea. When driving through the drizzle into the centre of Birmingham that will be rubbish.”

What is the point of being able to see more when there’s generally nothing to see?

I don’t know, maybe my cup is always half-empty…

Judge for yourself:

OK, it’s in German…aber es ist der selbe in Großbritannien.

We’ve covered the way stereotypical behaviour of women is portrayed in adverts here before, so it’s only fair that we cover that of men. So here goes:

McCoy’s crisps “ridged, thick and unashamedly colossal” depiction of men in their latest advert as homophobic, junior gangsters, without an ounce of loyalty makes me proud to be a man. It doesn’t get much better than this. I can only presume the brief for the advert said “What if Guy Richie directed a crisp advert”. Actually, even that would be better than what they got.

The ads shows a group of *mates* in a dark and dingy pub. They’re all wearing suits and shirts but no ties (This leads me to believe the men are part of an Eastenders/Miami Vice hybrid show. When they finish their pints they cruise up and down the canals of the Eastend, stood statuesque on their barges, the wind blowing through their hair etc).

One of them heads over to the jukebox to put on a tune. But disaster, someone bumps into him, he slips and presses the wrong button! As he heads back to his *mates* the dulcet tones of Puppy Love fills the pub.

Now, there’s no denying, by today’s standards, Puppy love is a terrible song. But when the bloke accidentally puts it on the jukebox, from the way people react you’d think he’d just raped a disabled choir boy on the bar. The looks the others in the pub give him are ones of pure disgust and of a burning desire to violently avenge this horrific crime.

“I mean, Puppy Love! What is he, some sort of poof?”

A giant vacuum tube descends, he knows he’s done wrong. There’s a look of sad resignation on his face as his McCoy’s are taken out of his hand and he’s sucked away.

Gone forever. His *mates* watch, turn back to their pints and forget he ever existed.

“Probably best, he might have been some sort of poof. He’d try some monkey business round my back door. Best shot of him really.”

The insinuation is obvious: real men don’t listen to Puppy Love but only real men are allowed to eat McCoys crisps.

But if you were guessing from this advert, who would be McCoys’ real man? Is he your ‘Sun reading’ man? Is he your ‘Jason Statham wanna-be’ man? Is he your ’suped-up Vauxhall Corsa driving man? Is he your Staffordshire bull terrier having sex with your crack-whore girlfriend on a sofa that’s inexplicably in the front-garden of your council house’ man? Is he your ‘petrified to do anything that might make other men think he doesn’t measure up to some archaic image of what it is to be a man’ man?

I think he is.

And guess what McCoys, that’s not the sort of man I want to be. So I might not be eating your crisps any more. Which is a real shame because they are different from normal crisps. Like you say they’re ridged and thick, and I like that texture in my mouth.

“You like that texture in your mouth?! What are you, some sort of poof?”

Judge for yourself:

Some times your product is so good and so popular that it becomes a victim of its own success. It does its job perfectly, everyone has one and, hey, they last for ever so why would they buy another? So your company has become as big as it can do and your profits don’t seem as great as they did the year before.

This is the problem facing Stanley, the makers of the Stanley Knife.

It’s a problem they’ve faced before. That time they decided to make other tools and it must have worked out pretty well for them because they’re still around. But none of their other tools are as ubiquitous as their knife. Ever heard anyone say “Stanley Saw” or “Stanley Chisel”?

As a side note, they did actually start making prizes for ancient Olympic event winners. Yeah, they were called Stanley Laurels. Sadly for Stanley, they don’t run the ancient Olympics any more. That’s another fine mess they’ve gotten themselves into…

No, if they want to make more money and they want to make it big they need to sell more knives. But, as I said, everyone has the original one. So they have to innovate. But, as I said, it already does its job perfectly. So they have to think of a problem with the existing knife that they can improve.

“Hhmmm, how about it takes too long to change the blade?”
“Don’t be an idiot. It only takes 30 seconds to change a blade. That’s one of the features.”
“But what if that were 25 seconds too long?”
“Bingo!”

So they’ve made a new knife that only takes 5 seconds to change the blade. Magical. I, for one, am really going to appreciate those extra 25 seconds of life Stanley have given me back. At least I would do, if I wasn’t spending them seething over the fact I’ve had to buy a new Stanley Knife, and that I’m betting the replacement blades are more expensive.

What’s more, I’ve got indigestion from having to eat my tea and cake too quickly. Damn you, Stanley!

Judge for yourself (It’s called Coffee Break on the Stanley Web site, because they don’t drink tea like wot we Brits does).

You surely must have seen that story in the news recently about Richard Gere’s and Shilpa Shetty’s kiss causing public outrage in India. In fact some religious sections of the Indian public were so outraged that they rioted and sent death threats to the pair. Now, regardless of what you believe in, isn’t having had a kiss off Richard Gere/Shilpa Shetty punishment enough for Shilpa Shetty/Richard Gere? No need to send them death threats.

When I first read this story it reminded me of the Kellogg’s Frosties ad with the kid singing the dog-being-kicked-in-the-nuts-by-Yoko-Ono jingle “They’re gonna taste great”. An advert so bad it made my testicles jump back up inside my body every time it I saw it. But I felt the same way about the kid as I did about the Gere/Shetty kiss, just appearing in the advert was punishment enough.

Others, however, did not. Now, when the fact that “the internet is a place where one is free to express one’s feeling” was combined with the fact that “any cracker still able to rub two sticks together can publish to said internet” a hate campaign was started. It spread through blogs and message boards and shockingly culminated in death threats being made against the boy. The ad was dropped. Mistakes had been made but lessons were learnt and no one was hurt. Let’s leave it at that.

But Kellogg’s wont leave it at that. The jingle is back! And, as mind boggling as this is, it’s even worse than before. They’ve done it in an operatic style (”I mean, my Sebastian he’s only 7 but he just loves the opera. We should set it there…”) with an ensemble cast (no one person to focus one’s rage on, clever!). But Kellogg’s it wasn’t just the boy. It was the tune, the terrible, terrible lyrics and the whole sub-Vindaloo marching concept that people hated (OK it was mostly the boy but he’s gone and the advert is still awful). So Kellogg’s please, please don’t so this to us again. Please. Please. Please…

(There’s the gentle sound of sobbing as the Nurse helps Silky back to his bed.)

Judge for yourself.

When you’re desperate, you’ll do anything for money: Sell your cherished record collection, sleep with your best friends mum, appear in an Ocean Finance advert. That was the sad choice the actors in the latest Ocean Finance advert had to make. Poor desperate fools.

And you know, it’s this kind of desperation that fuels loans companies. Because they’re essentially the psychics of the money world. They seek out the desperate and needy and squeeze every penny they can out of them (I suppose, for the sake of fairness, I should add: “in a perfectly legal way”).

“I’m getting a man’s name. Jon? No. James? No. Bill? Yes! No. Bill, Bill… err, bills! Now, what sort of bills? Credit cards? Car HP? Mortgage? All of them? Bingo!”

And adverts for these loan companies are great manipulators. They twist your debt-addled mush-like brain into thinking that getting a loan will free you from the hardship of life, stop the rain falling from the sky and maybe even make your kids slightly less ugly.

The Ocean Finance advert continues this trend. It’s an apocalyptic scene. Shot with the colour drained from the lives of a couple (let’s call them Barry and Jeanette for ease of reference) who live in a horrific 70’s house, with a run down crap-mobile parked on the drive and, oh dear God, look at the state of that lawn. We’re offered a glimpse of the neighbour’s house and that looks like a palace in comparison (”I wish we could have a conservatory, Jeanette, I really do.”). But there’s no time for dreams about conservatories, Barry, you’ve got to cut the grass.

But hang on, it gets worse. He’s so far in the red he’s having to use a vacuum cleaner that an elderly relative left him in their will about 10 years ago instead of a mower. In fact, cutting the grass with the vacuum cleaner is so hard and Barry is so badly in debt that he starts hallucinating. (Note to Barry: Hallucinogenic drugs are also a good way to escape the realities of life).

The vacuum cleaner explodes. The dog runs away (”Et tu, Rover?”). Barry looks to the sky in despair. Jeanette and the kids want to kill themselves. I just can’t see a way for them to get out of this hell hole…

Fortunately a loan from Ocean Finance has put the colour back in their lives. It also puts a new car on the drive, a conservatory on the back of the house, a new, less scraggy dog in their kennel. Barry can now afford what he’s always longed for: a ride-on mower. The kids are happy and by the look he gives Jeanette, Barry is finally getting some action again. Aren’t loans fantastic?

OK, so I accept that we can’t all be Alvin Hall (I for one look ridiculous in a bow tie and blazer), and most of us have probably borrowed money but (Warning! Unqualified financial advice approaching) if you are in financial trouble and have to take the desperate step of securing another loan against your house (which could be repossessed if you do not keep up payments) then don’t spend the money on a FUCKING RIDE-ON MOWER!

This advert and the number of loans companies advertising on TV at the moment is really a very sad tribute to the buy-now-pay-later, possessions-make-you-happy culture that we live in and it’s nothing short of despicable.

(Phew! Glad to get that one off my chest. Right, I’m off to call Picture Loans. The wife needs breast enlargement surgury and I fancy a platinum Prince Albert to impress the lads at the rugby club. Tut ta.)

Judge for yourself.

How do you know if it’s time to get a new girlfriend? Here is a sure-fire list to tell if it’s time to get a new special lady:

1. Your girlfriend confesses she really wants to look like Nadine Baggott off that Olay advert.
2. Your girlfriend spends, not only all of her money, but all of your money on Brantano shoes.
3. Your girlfriend takes hours to get ready for a meal at a restaurant. Tries on several perfectly acceptable dresses before sorting the laundry then turning up at the restaurant looking like some middle-class, ad-man’s wet-dream idea of a high-class whore and prancing around like the restaurant is a cat walk.

If your girlfriend does either of the first two on the list then maybe you can get away with having a word about her behaviour. If she does the third, get her sectioned then log onto match.com.

Oh match.com! There’s another terrible advert…

Judge for your self.

It’s that time of year again when we in the *blogosphere* like to give ourselves a jolly well deserved pat on the back. Yes, it’s Bloggers Choice Awards time.

Even though TVs Worst Adverts has only been going for a few weeks, a very astute, urbane and all round good egg has nominated us for a couple of awards.

Of course, we do what we do here not for the awards but for the love of our art (i.e. bitching into the blackness about the camel dung advertisers force us to watch.).

So under no pressure at all, here are the buttons you need to click to vote for TVs Worst Adverts:

I’m afraid to say, that unlike us here, you need to register before you can vote. But if you get the taste for voting, then hey you can come back here and vote to your hearts content!

Cheers Dave and cheers to anyone who does actually vote.

Silky.

There’s a section of the male populace that believes if they ever even so much as happen to see a musical let alone *sharp intake of breath* enjoy a musical that they will have to run out into the street and butt fuck the first policeman, construction worker, Indian chief, sailor or cowboy that they bump into.

I am not one of those men. I am, in fact, a big fan of the musical. Cabaret is surely one of the best films ever made. My Fair Lady is probably 45 minutes too long for my liking but “On the street where you live” is possibly the most beautiful tune ever written, ever. So yeah, I like a good musical.

The Halifax however don’t like a good musical. They hate musicals so much that they want everyone else to hate them too. And by God are they trying to get us to hate musicals.

For their campaign (that has easily been running for 5 long, soul destroying years) they take popular songs and ruin them by rewriting the lyrics to be about… banking. What’s more they set the *songs* against big, spectacular set pieces, with literally 100’s of dancers. But most gut-wrenching of all is the fact they use Halifax employees to *sing* the *songs*. By all accounts talent searches are run throughout the company for people to be in the ads. But if after a talent search of the entire company, you end with Howard, it’s surely time to pack it all in and move to a commune some where in Wales.

Life doesn’t get much worse.

Unless you ring the Halifax of course. Once I had the pleasure of being on hold on their telephone banking system for nearly an hour. I heard Howard sing “Sex Bomb” so many times I had to spend six months in a secure unit for my own protection.

Here’s the advert where they destroy Aretha Franklin’s Think but it pretty much sums up the seemingly never ending, ball breaking, musical hating campaign.

Judge for yourself:

Update

In the latest advert, Thomas from the Halifax branch in Leeds, *sings* along to “I’m Into Something Good” by Herman’s Hermits. I’ve read a few disparaging comments about Thomas that I’m not going to repeat here but does he remind anyone else of the mannequins from O’Neill shop windows? You know, the ones with the terribly fashionable hair cuts on top of their really big heads?

Anyway, here’s the advert. Enjoy!

I’m not too ashamed to admit that there are times when I watch an advert and I really just don’t know what the monkey it’s about. The new one from Carling for their C2 beer is one of *those* adverts.

For those of you that haven’t seen it yet, how lazy are you? All you have to do is scroll down to the bottom of this post. Well, even if you haven’t been bothered to scroll your still not as lazy as the creators of this advert.

“It’s for beer where can we set it?” “In a pub!”

Brilliant blue sky thinking! But it’s no ordinary pub; it’s one for robots. Oh yes, a pub for robots. And it gets better:

“Hmm, robots obviously can’t drink beer. They’ll drink… circuit boards!”?

Right, so the robots go there to drink circuit boards. This is so preposterous that I can only presume they were flicking through “The Idiots Guide to Robotics” and happened to land on the circuit boards page when thinking it up. But there’s more:

“We need to give them futuristic names too.” “How about R2-D2 and C3-P0?” “No it’s been done” “OK, X-2000 and DV-9000-F!”

So they’ve set the lazy, nonsensical scene now push the product.

“I’ll have one of those C2 circuit boards.”

There’s silence in the robot pub. The advertisers obviously want to use this silence to highlight the fact C2 is different and people might be shocked if you drink it (either that or the animators were so busy sobbing into their hands, lamenting their wasted talents that they forgot to put anything in that bit). Sadly during the silence, the audience is thinking “What the X-2000 is this advert about?”.

Finally all is revealed: “C2 Circuit Boards. Also available as lager.”

And the audience is left thinking “What the DV-9000-F was that advert all about?”.

I just can’t understand why they have chosen to advertise their product like this. If they are hoping for the C2 robots to become the new Smash robots they’ll be hugely disappointed. If they’re hoping that the adverts will sell their beer they’ll be even more disappointed. There just isn’t a market for this in the UK. People won’t buy it because (Note to Carling) people in Britain don’t drink beer for the taste, they drink it to get drunk. And I have it on good authority that at 2% volume, you just can’t get drunk on the stuff (unless you’ve fasted for a week and are on some pretty strong antibiotics).

So, please Carling, stick at what you’re best at: flogging beer to football and music fans, where it belongs.

Judge for yourself: