Halifax – Howard and Co.
15 April 2007 by SilkyThere’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.
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!


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