ADVERTISING is the most noble art form known to man, but occasionally lets itself down with cheap gimmicks like these:
There’s a Yorkshireman performing spoken-word poetry
Yorkshire has already sold out its gruff persona to hawk you everything from tea bags to Plusnet, and now it’s moved on to shitting all over its proud heritage of lyrical verse. No longer will the region’s poetry be associated with Ted Hughes or Simon Armitage, instead it’ll be known for trying to get you to join a building society.
It uses a beloved musical hit
What’s being shoved in your face? Doesn’t matter. If you tune out the marketing spiel you get to listen to a banger that’s easily accessible on YouTube. Unfortunately this advert will be on such heavy rotation it’ll ruin the song forever. And all because an advertiser couldn’t think of a creative way to shift car insurance.
Kevin Bacon’s in it
There’s only six degrees of separation between you and the Hollywood star, and there’s only six seconds until one of his f**king annoying adverts crops up on your screen. So what if he can use EE’s fibre optic broadband to land a plane? If it could end Bacon’s never-ending grift, that would be worth shouting about. Yeah yeah, he lost all his cash in a pyramid scheme. He doesn’t have to make that your problem.
It cares about a trendy social cause
Mental health, gender equality and climate change are all worthy causes that deserve airtime. What’s not needed though is petrol companies using them to make a quick profit. Especially seeing as they’re global corporations who made these issues worse in the first place.
It’s meta
The wankiest of all adverts are achingly self-aware in an attempt to stand out. They won’t even mention the product. It’ll just be a bunch of supermodels lying in a field chanting ‘Daisy Daisy Daisy’ until you’re forced to Google what the f**k that was about. When you find out it was promoting Marc Jacobs, you vow never to buy his cheap shit clothes from TK Maxx again.
