As another month clocks over and as we head into the countdown to Christmas, we’re all feeling pretty good here at TV’s Worst Adverts.

Not because of the quality of adverts on the TV at the moment, obviously, there’s still some real stinkers, but because we’ve made it to 100 posts (for fear of some sort of Police investigation into reporting irregularities, I must admit that we’ve only had 88 posts directly about adverts but 100 posts is 100 posts in our eyes.)

To celebrate this achievement, Mike was kind/bored enough to write us a guest post. Read Mike’s most excellent guest post about the Audi R8 here if you haven’t already.

(Note: Without wishing to spoil the magic of TWA, I should point out that some of the content in Mike’s post is made up. No really, it is!)

So here’s this month’s top 5 bad ads:

• Picture Loans - Dad’s Found Your Scooter
• Halifax
• Glade - Touch and Fresh It’s All Gone
• Dulco Ease
• Head & Shoulders - Everyone Knows a Bloke Like Mickey

That means that despite the ban, Picture Loans retains its place at the top of the Shit List. Have 25 grand on us!

A Bit of House Keeping

This month I was going to bemoan the recent lack of reader submitted bad ads but managed to notice just in time that I’ve linked the submit button to the wrong page. Apologies. I’ve fixed it now though so get clicking (then typing).

A Good Ad. What’s Going On?

OK finally, after a month of whinging I thought that I’d include a nice new advert from Carling. It’s still part of their “Belong” campaign but it’s so much better (for, if nothing else, it doesn’t include Hard-Fi) than their adverts of late.

So sit back and enjoy. Ta ta.

As a women enters her twilight years, she may start to look back on her life.

Remembering the good times, the bad times. The highs, the lows. Her favourite episode of Spaced and how she laughed when she heard Ross Kemp had been hit by a bus only to cry when she found out it wasn’t true.

One thing that probably wont be classed as a *good time* though was when she went through the menopause.

The hot flushes, the depression, the realisation that she is finally growing old. Not to mention the “vaginal dryness and urgency of urination“.

It’s never going to be your number one, happiest memory from life, is it? Unless of course you’re a sadist, you hate menstruating, you enjoy a good mood swing or you’re pumping your body full of phytoestrogen.

Thank God then for Ymea (pronounced by the middle classes as “E-May-Ahh” and by the working classes as “Why-Me-Uh”) because all the phytoestrogen it contains helps you have “the time of your life during the menopause”!

Sounds a bit far fetched doesn’t it? OK, I appreciate that they couldn’t use the line:

“Ymea. Making your menopause not quite so shit!”

And it’s not like they’ve used “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” from Dirty Dancing (or even better “Changes” by David Bowie) as the sound track to the advert.

But doesn’t claiming that by taking their supplement will make the menopause “the time of your life” ring just a little bit more than untrue?

Judge for yourself.

Here’s a quick update on a couple of adverts that have been mentioned elsewhere on TVs Worst Adverts. For some reason, the advertisers have seen fit to create follow-ups to these terrible shams of mockeries of adverts (”To really reinforce the brand, you know?” or some such irritating marketing theory.)

Nintendo DS - More Brain Training with Nicole Kidman

Firstly, Nicole Kidman’s been training her brain more and now her *brain score* is “begonia”.

No, hang on, that’s not right. Her brain score is now actually 24. See:

Yep. Definitely 24.

This has gone down from the previous advert (52) and, although there’s still a distinct lack of what the brain number means, Nicole seems pleased with the score. And that’s important.

Of course, it could be that she’s using some magical wireless box of technology that’s connected to the internet and she’s actually the 24th cleverest person on Earth!

But I doubt it.

Judge for yourself.

Vauxhall Corsa C’Mon Woman Cyclist!

Secondly, over in the sordid world of the Vauxhall Corsa C’Mons we get a glimpse at some of the techniques the puppets use to pull women. *sigh*

Yeah, turns out it’s a built in bike rack. Ooh, but there’s nothing an attractive young female likes more than a good built in bike rack.

Forget about looks. Forget about personality. It’s a built in bike rack you want!

Ironically, as the car being driven by the filthy little puppet pulls over to the side of the road and as the women cyclist mounts her bike on the back of his car, both of them are thinking the same thing:

“Nice rack!”

(Note from Silky: Apologies for the very low quality of that joke).

But we desperate fools, who will try anything to get an attractive women to even so much as look in our direction let alone get into our cars, should remember: a bike rack will never, never, never, never, ever help us achieve that goal.

Judge for yourself.

Oi! Scumbag! Your house is a filth-infested, shit-hole and it’s killing your kids!

So implies the latest advert from Oust as they attempt to “Howard Hughes” our squalid lives.

Yes, it turns out we’re surrounded by millions of conniving bacteria just waiting to infect us when we least expect it.

When we’re walking through a room.
When we’re throwing something in the bin.
When we’re DRAWING THE FUCKING CURTAINS!

That’s right, even your curtains are bacterial A-bombs just waiting to go off in that sewer you call “home”.

Nowhere is safe, I tell you. Nowhere!

In fact, there’s bacteria on your mouse as you’re browsing this site. Now it’s on your hand.
Just scratched your nose? Now it’s on your face.
Just licked your lips? Now it’s IN YOUR FUCKING MOUTH!

But don’t worry because as we all know (thanks to those kindly folks at Yakult and Danone) we have about 3 mega-zillion bacteria living inside us as we live and breath (Wikipedia tells me there’re actually about “10 to the power of 14 micro-organisms in the gut” although this can more than quadruple after visit to that dodgy Chinese down the street). And these bacteria are made up of some good bacteria, some bad bacteria.

You know what it’s like though, it’s the few thoughtless idiots that give all bacteria a bad name (E. Coli, I’m looking at you). That’s always how it starts; a bad egg, a couple of nasty headlines, a few terrifying adverts.

And the nation is crippled with paranoia.

We stop preparing our meals on the toilet seat. We stop forcing our kids to eat of the lid of the bin. And we spray everything with Oust.

In fact I’m so concerned about one day picking up the TV remote and bacteria eating my hand off that I’ve commissioner a crop-sprayer to fly over my house twice a day to squirt a few thousand gallons of Oust all over it.

And I’ve fashioned a hermetically sealed outfit made from an old diver’s suit. (Note to anyone else wanting to make one of these outfits: After the first test run I discovered that the only major down side to the hermetically sealed outfit is that you die of suffocation fairly shorty after putting on the afore mentioned outfit. A quick modification with the filter from my Dyson vacuum and it’s ready to go.) It’s a guaranteed germ free existence plus the added bonus of being able to walk under water. What have you got to say to that Oust?

Oh, wait, news just in: It’s not that bad. It’s just manufacturers making it seem worse than it actually is to shift more products.

Right, well, I feel a bit of a fool now for the whole aeroplane thing and the diving suit.

But hey, at least I wasn’t stupid enough to spray my dirty curtains!

Judge for yourself.

From Our Sponsors

It all started with a potty-mouthed dog and, as hard as it is to believe, TVs Worst Adverts has made it up to 100 entries.

So as a treat for you all I thought I’d give you a break from reading the rubbish I write and hand the keys to TWA to one of our regular readers, Mike.

Cheers, Mike!

Audi R8

There’s something not quite right about the Audi R8 advert and E-mails to Audi UK may show why.

First off the mobile phone giant T-Mobile had a complaint:

The next email was from respected motor journalist and TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson:

And finally Porsche had a point to make:

Can you imagine?

Hoards of drunken teenagers, rampaging through the streets, dragging their Addidas Classic clad heels and their hooded topped, er, heads over to your house intent on smashing up your gnomes, ripping up your daisies and wiping their pubescent backsides on your wedding dress.

It’s an apocalyptic scene, yes, but it’s one that strike fear into the very hearts of Daily Mail readers across the land.

Obviously it’s one that very rarely happens but, fuck it, it shifts newspapers.

Sadly, the mum from the current BT adverts (You know the updated version of the Goldblend couple. Now they’ve got kids but a modern twist; she’s divorced, he’s younger etc.) seems to have read the Mail and believed it to be based in fact. So much so she is racked with terror and paranoia when she rumbles her son Tom hosting the Worst House Party In The History Of House Parties Ever.

“What’s going on?” she asks with such a mix naivety, shock and accusation that you’d think she’s just caught Tom in a post coital embrace with his little sister as they wilfully delete the folders with all the pictures of themselves as babies.

I mean teenagers, what are they like?

Watching cartoons, drinking lemonade. Fucking hooligans!

What I mean to say is, how very sanitised this view of middle class life and adolescence in the year 2007 actually is.

You know, I’m reliably informed that in the original draft of the script the Mum is so ashamed of just how whet Tom is that she unlocks the drinks cabinet, forces a pint of Jack Daniels down his neck, phones one of her recently divorced friends who is desperate to get back in the saddle and give Tom a couple of “Mummy & Daddies Special Bedroom Party” pills.

But revision after revision became slightly more watered down until we got to this:

“Tom has 4 friends and opens a bottle of fizzy pop. It sprays on the carpet.”

Magical.

Do those marketing execs at BT not remember what being a teenager of middle class parents was actually like?

Judge for yourself.

It seems that Wilkinson Sword have decided to throw subtlety out of the window.

I say this because previously in razor adverts there was only ever the implication that a close shave would make your more attractive to women. This was usually achieved by a shot of a man (with a cleanly shaven face) and an attractive women stroking it (the face).

Sometimes, they would ramp things up a little with a saucy tag line: “The Best a Man Can Get”. Missus! But that was as far as things went.

Wilkinson Sword, however, decided that Neanderthal man wouldn’t understand the implied connection between shaving and sex. So they came up with the (terribly dubbed) “How was it for you?” campaign. Which, whilst I’m on it, couldn’t have been written by a man for simply reason that since the dawn of time (and the birth of the previously mentioned Neanderthal man) no man has ever uttered the words “How was it to you?” to another man.

At the very least, it hasn’t been uttered by a man who would be overly bothered whether a woman found him attractive. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but make your mind up Wilkinson Sword; are you going for the Homo- or Hetero- market?

Anyway, what with there being more heterosexual men needing to shave then there are homosexual men needing to shave, it appears that Wilkinson Sword have decided to definitely target the former group.

We know this because at the very start of the new advert there’s a mixed-sex couple having a bit of a sexy romp. This is accompanied by the line “Let’s try something new”. Very kinky.

Sadly, it turns out that the “something new” was to “make yourself look like an Eastern European sex offender”. And this presumably means that the only sex you’ll be getting is in the showers whilst staying at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. Again, blurring the line between straight and gay.

I can’t decide if it’s very clever multi-orientation marketing or steaming great mess of an advert.

Either way, I’ve been asked by the authorities to ask you that if you should see any of the following men, please report them immediately to your nearest Police Station.

Thank you for your co-operation with this.

Judge for yourself.

Science - it’s going to save us all.

I genuinely believe that. I think science is the only thing that will make the giant environmental shit on our own door step we’re currently having go back up humanity’s back passage.

Mostly I believe this because we’re too lazy to save ourselves. I’m even too lazy to turn the light off when I close the fridge door, so science solved that one for me. And I’m too lazy to walk to the recycling bins down the road, so science has made my car more efficient. God, I’m even too lazy to swim to Florida for my holidays so science made the teleporter (OK, they haven’t done that last one - yet).

Anyway, science is ace at saving things and that’s we all love it.

But you know who traditionally hasn’t given a split atom about science in the past? Women.

Or at least that was until L’Oreal blew the minds of women World-wide with their “Here comes the science bit - concentrate!”. And more recently women were dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st cnetury with the crap-tastic Clear Blue Pregnancy Tester advert (Are they taking the piss? Oh yes, they actually are).

And suddenly women thought “Wow, science! It can save me/tell me if I’m pregnant in a flashy electronic way!”. But mostly they thought “Wow, science can save me!”

Yes, so now women, like Walt Disney before them, have a “science can give me eternal life” fantasy. However, unlike Walt Disney women’s quest for eternal life involves less sleeping next to some McCain’s Micro-chips for the next 1000 years, and more smothering their bodies in cream.

Nivea’s DNAge is one of the latest adverts to combine the power of science and the dream of living forever to part ugly/insecure women from their money:

And DNAge is magical stuff as the Nivea Website tells us, their cream contains:

“…the powerful combination of Folic Acid and Creatine to stimulate cell renewal and help protect the skin cells’ DNA against further external damage.”

But then again, this sort of power is also contained in breakfast cereal and steak.

Either way, what I really love about the new advert for DNAge Hand Cream is the statistics used to support the claims (As always the results of trials are printed in the smallest font available with the lowest contrast at the bottom of the screen):

“60% agreed based on trial of 27 women”.

Yep, 60% of 27 women thought their hands looked younger after rubbing Nivea DNAge into them. Hardly unequivocal is it?

So here’s my advice women, save yourself some cash and have another portion of Special K with a nice juicy steak on the side!

Update

Thanks to Stephen in the comments below for pointing out an error in my original post (now corrected) and for the link to his complaint to the ASA.

For those who don’t have the time (or possibly inclination) to read it, in short the ASA said the advert was (and I’m paraphrasing here) “Bollocks” and it must (paraphrasing again) “never been shown again on punishment of death”.

Good work, Stephen.

So there was I just the other day lamenting that Honda seems to have lost it’s way a little since the “Cogs” advert and along comes the new advert from Guinness:

Hhm, more than a little similar to the “Cogs” ad, wouldn’t you say?

Maybe, maybe not.

I get the feeling that a lot of the guys who make these ads simply lusted after Domino Rally as kids. Now they’re big boys, they’re just getting the opportunity to act out their fantasies.

The trouble I have with Guinness adverts is that to live up to their “Good things come to those who wait” tag line some of their adverts are way too long. This latest advert is no exception but puts a twist on that theme by being really dull too. By the time it got the end, I was half way through the Times crossword. And not the Quick one; the Cryptic one. And I’m shit at crosswords.

Anyway, for those of you who couldn’t make it to the end of the advert, it ends with a shot of a giant pint of Guinness. Now, what does that remind me of….

Here’s an old one that’s come back to haunt us again.

Before I get going, surely that should be “This is what Honda sounds like” or am I missing a trick?

I’ve been a really big fan of Honda adverts in recent years. They’ve produced some absolutely superb stuff (See here, here and here for proof).

So this ad is more then a little bit disappointing:

In fact it’s more than disappointing. It’s completely pointless. It’s pompous beyond belief and surely only cements the Honda civic place in the affections of Classic FM listening wankers.

What makes me angriest about it though is that the one sound missing from the advert is the one I’d love to hear the most: the sound of a Honda civic running down a choir in an abandoned car-park.

Maybe I’m being too hard on it, but I think that the previous adverts I’ve linked to above really connected with people. Although there’s the odd parody of the choir advert, you only need to see the advert for 118 below to see what an impact the “Cogs” advert had on TV adverts:

Come on Honda, make another classic for us.