wurk»advertising {Your career. Your say.}

So you’ve booked your lads holiday online, it’s cheaper as you managed to find it on lastminute.com (you were lucky), everyone’s at your house before the taxi takes you to the airport, you’re all buzzing with pre plane excitement and then this one armed dude comes on the TV and instead of images in your head of tits and tassels in the Dam you have a guilt trip imposed on you as you didn’t buy a poppy this year.

Eh? I mean what a ridiculous angle to go down. The whole lastminute brand name is taken so literally in this ad this guy says for the strapline ‘I’d give anything for one last minute’. What? Anything? Like your grandchildren’s health? World peace? The cure for cancer? Selfish bastard. Poking fun at how this ad plays on the brand name isn’t the real problem here. The real problem is that holidays are stressful as it is. You have to get the money together, you have to save or borrow the vice cash and then you have to get there, the one thing you want is to then imagine how much care free fun you’re going to have, not be confronted with a heavy message that uses an old one armed guy who has probably never used the internet let alone been a lastminute holiday.

Then have you seen the new Tiscali broadband?

The one where the workmen throws a granny in a skip and she yelps, “Broadband for £14”. Who the hell signed off those story boards? How did a respectful person on a salary be allowed to take that to a client? Is the client who agreed to it still employed? Do you think whilst filing it the director looked at the TV producer and say “We’re finished!”. When I see that ad I get the same shudder down my spine as when I listen to “Girlfriend in a Coma” by dirty Morrissey – who I also despise.

What do we have next, oh no, it’s that saga of BT ads.

That guy whose apparently a comedian is in a domestic situation and moved in with his new bird and her kids – who hate him. They show these kids fucking up his life and the women doing nothing while he suffers – c’mon – who would walk into that mess really? You wouldn’t be picking up a 14 year old brat from school, listening to him as he rants about you not being his real dad, thinking, “just get him on the internet so I can bone his mum”. Of course you wouldn’t, you’d be at your mate’s house waiting for that taxi to take you to the airport, even if it does cost an arm and a leg.

Well that’s my rant this Friday. There just seems to be so much waste, so much brand damaging communication and a number of big budget clients and big agencies that just seem to be making even bigger mistakes.