Oh dear, Ford.

Their advertising for the latest incarnation of the Focus has been, shall we say, a little on the unoriginal side.

Do you remember the “Own the Road” advert? The one with the bloke driving around streets that were made up of board games and Hot Wheels track as if a child had built it? You know it, the one that came out a few short months after the Peugeot 407 Toys advert.

Yeah, OK it wasn’t a direct copy, more a twist on the same theme, but it wasn’t quite as good as the Peugeot one, was it?

Well now they’re at it again. This time desperate to recapture some of the magic of the Honda cogs advert. So they’ve come up with the Beautifully Arranged advert:

Yes, just like the Domino Rally in the Honda ad was made from actual Accord parts, an Ode to the New Ford is played on instruments, wait for it, that are made from actual parts off the new Ford Focus.

How. Did. You. Think. Of. That?

Yep, every part of every instrument. Because it’s a little known fact that the seat belt on Ford Focus are actually woven from guitar strings. Very strong but, golly, don’t get it caught around your neck in a crash or you’ll end up like Saddam Hussein’s half brother, I tell you.

Anyways, this means that they’ve created a whole horrific advert, built around a horrific pun that is built around a… Ford Focus. *Yawn*.

Each time I see it, it makes me wonder, just how many Radio 3 listeners actually drive a Ford Focus? Put it another way, how many pretentious turd munching wankers (that is, people who will like the musical element of this advert) actually drive a Ford Focus?

My finger-in-the-air, armchair expert guess is none.

But just as you think “You’ve wasted a lot of money on that stupid advert with instruments made from car parts, let’s just get over it and move on” things take a bizarre twist in another advert in the series.

Alesha Dixon, of Strictly Come Dancing/Joke MC in Mis-Teeq has been signed up to sing to a Ford Focus whilst accompanied by people playing the car part instruments.

Truly, truly baffling:

Words fail me.

So what better excuse to post the Honda Cogs advert than as an antidote to Fords lack of creativity?

Enjoy:

Update

Here’s an article in a proper paper by a proper journalist about Ford and Honda. You see, I’m no the only one who thought of “cogs” when they saw Beautifully Arranged…

Update 2

And here’s a link to the YouTube clip that gave Honda the *inspiration* for the cog advert. Thanks to Spooning Monkey and Adwank for supplying the link.

Update 3

Here’s a clever car part advert from Renault for their Megane Sport. Using competitive components in their “Sport is Everything” campaign.

At one end of the greetings card continuum are the cards sold by the National Trust that are probably made by elfin beauties who live inside oak trees and skip through the forest picking flowers and berries all things wonderful to make their cards ever so, ever so special.

At the other end are cards from Moonpig.com. The one’s that you can personalise online to specifically make fun of someone you know’s complete lack of hair, and simultaneously tricking you into thinking that you’re making something precious and unique yet thousands others are doing the exact same thing.

Similarly, at the one end of the adverts continuum is the new Honda advert, a thing of thoughtfulness, of fun and of production values. At the other end is the Moonpig.com advert:

I hate the falling star/fairy dust that floats from scene to scene, I hate the lobotomised idiots giggling at just how bald they are but most of all I hate the jingle (if you can call repeating the word Moonpig over and over a jingle).

You thought the song from the Slim Fast advert was bad, but it’s nothing on this one.

The Moonpig tune is the kind that only someone with a very warped mind could possibly think is suitable for public broadcast. The *composer* should clearly either be locked up for his own protection or tried for crimes against Humanity.

In fact, I dare say that if Himmler wrote jingles, this is what he come up with. I can hear it now, echoing around the cellars of Prince Albrechtstrasse. Playing on a permanent loop, punctuated only by the screams of mercy and of desire to confess to anything just to make it stop:

“So did you say the Fuhrer is a little girl who prances around wearing only frilly knickers shouting “Look at me Eva, I’ve got titties!”?”
“I did, I did. Just make the Moonpig advert stop!”

I can genuinely say that I’d rather listen to an entire Mika album – a man who sings like a pig with bulldog clips attached to its testicles – than I would this Moonpig advert one more time.

And I don’t make that sort of claim lightly.

Thanks to Jono McLeod and Mat Cunningham for submitting this bad ad.

“There’s more to life than making films” Pierce Brosnan tells us.

Yeah, like riding horses, looking moodily into a camera, and playing snooker.

Or best of all making adverts!

I don’t know if you know it but Pierce Brosnan is a very lucky man (have you heard of the luck of the Irish?).

He’s not only one of the lucky few actors to utter those words forever immortalised in film “The name’s Bond. James Bond.” (although I’ve always felt that he sounds every slightly constipated when he says them), he’s also now uttered the lines that so many other Hollywood A-Listers dream of saying:

“You’re worth it”

Here’s him saying it in Foreign:

(Note to self: Find out if Brosnan always has the same foreign man dub his voice so foreign people actually think that’s what he sounds like.)

Or more to the point, to L’Oreal paying for Brosnan to appear in their adverts is more than worth it.

My favourite part is when Brosnan gives us the apocalyptic warning (and very clever play on words) that the future of our skin is in our hands. This fact – that you apply face cream to your face with your hands – is well known to most of us without shit for brains and is also why Brosnan doesn’t try to send the fear of God into us with the claim that “The future of your skin is on your elbows but you will never be able to rub it on your face”.

My second favourite bit is when he laughs maniacally at a sickeningly ugly man with cream on his elbows whilst burning the big wodge of 50′s he got from L’Oreal and shagging a super model.

No, hang on, that doesn’t happen. That’s just my extreme envy of Brosnan’s rugged good looks and charming smile exposing itself.

In reality, I’m so concerned about the future of my skin that I’ve had it flayed off and turned into a beautiful suit of leather down at the local tannery. It fits like a glove (particularly around the hands), I’ve a wonderfully rich, permanent tan and it will never again wrinkle or crease.

Although it may occasionally stain or crack if not treated with leather cream every so often, so was it really worth it?

Anyways, what I meant to say was: skin cream for men, huh, the same pointless, impossible-to-prove-if-it-really-does-anything-for-you, shit as skin cream for women but a little bit more expensive as only a handful (albeit growing handful) or men are a) gullible enough to buy it b) wealthy enough to buy it.

So I say, forget the face cream and get so character giving lines on your face.

After all: “You’ve earned it”.

Judge for yourself (in English)

Shut your windows! Lock your doors!

No-one is safe!

At least they’re not in the latest ADT Alarms advert is to be believed. Down every alley way, on every street, in every town there’s a burglar lurking.

Probably just waiting to crawl through your cat flap and steal your prized Dads Army toby jug collection.

So pad lock the display cabinet and chain your granny to her bed because they will steal anything!

But wait! What’s this?

It’s a race of sub-humans prowling the roof tops. Using their primal instincts to hunt out the heinous villains that are trying to jemmy open your windows. Communicating with each other in a primitive language the pack moves in to make the kill. Just waiting to bite your face off (Naughty Charlton, naughty!)

It’s quite a picture they paint of modern suburban Britain.

But you know what? It’s also largely complete bollocks. I can’t say that I know anyone who has ever been burgalised. I even once left the front door open to my Birmingham City Centre flat for an entire weekend and still no-one *broke* in.

Even if they did I think I’d rather take my chances with the burglars then have those ADT monkey-men; dishing out their vigilante justice to one and all. At least you might be able to reason with the robbers. The best you could hope for with the roof crawling simians is that waving a banana in front of them might prevent them biting your face off.

But I doubt it would.

This concept of primal instinct making us want to protect our homes never sits to easily with me. Although we love the romanticised justice dished out by Robin Hood; stealing from the rich to give to the poor, I accept that no-one wants their house robbed.

But I think it’s a bit of a stretch of reality to claim that if you caught a scally in your house you’d happily beat him to death with a cricket bat (signed by Beefy, Goochy and Lamby) rather than let him get his thieving hands on your 52 inch HD-ready flat screen TV.

Particularly if you’ve paid 200 quid a year for the past 25 years on home contents insurance. Can you picture yourself (primal) screaming with every swing of the bat “I will not have my insurance premium go up!”?

And you must admit, when you’ve finished pummelling the last breath of life from the robber you’d feel a fool; you could have just let the monkey-men bite his face off and not even broken into a sweat…

Judge for yourself