Pampers golden sleep advert
Possibly the worst example of trying to invent a perceived need there has ever been, Pampers is busy telling us that sleep is 'worth gold', and there's something called 'golden sleep'.
So what is Golden Sleep exactly? It isn't anything - it's meaningless, a bit of brandspeak made up to make buying Pampers products seem more important, and there's a bit of a hint in the campaign that your kids will grow up better if you shell out for some Golden Sleep for them.
There doesn't seem to be any kind of actual research or facts behind the idea of 'golden sleep', apart from the fact that a good night's sleep is obviously going to be of benefit to you and your baby.
This marketing bullshit I've found seems to back up the idea that there's actually no such thing as 'golden sleep'.
This summer, P&G is launching a new Pampers premium initiative to grow the total babycare category value by reinforcing the unbeatable dryness of Pampers nappies.
Also, as part of the ‘Golden Sleep' communication, Pampers Baby-Dry will receive a softness product upgrade leveraging the brand market leading position through continuous innovation and development.
P&G continually invests in innovation driving loyalty for the whole range by strengthening the trusted Pampers dryness equity.
Total babycare category value? Softness product upgrade? Trusted Pampers dryness equity? What a load of absolute bollocks.
The Pampers website doesn't have one single mention of 'golden sleep', or explain what it is.
Perhaps because it doesn't actually exist outside the minds of ad men. A rather shameless meme is born.
Samsung Fucking Jet
If 'Greed is good' was supposedly the mantra that summed up the 80s, 'Impatience is a virtue' is the utterly fatuous and obnoxious effort by an ad agency on behalf of Samsung for the Noughties.
It's another one of those Trainspotting-style ads that has lots of fast editing and bright young things sashaying around running, shagging and, er, smashing stuff up.
To illustrate just how amazing and cool they are, there's lots of images of older people being stupid and patient.
The message behind the advert is so empty and meaningless that it's irritating in itself, even if you ignore the inherent twattiness of the message behind it.
It's advertising for the Skins generation, only Skins gave every impression of knowing just how bloody awful teenagers and students are these days.
This one seems to suggest that being a total c*** is something to aspire to, and it ignores the fact that civil society is based squarely on virtues like courtesy, honesty, consideration and, yes, patience.
What next? 'Swearing is clever'? 'Being drunk is brilliant'? 'Tolerance is for losers'?
It's like Clockwork Orange remade with the cast of Hollyoaks. I'm reminded of a quote that always stuck with me from an original review by Alexander Walker of Kubrick's infamous film:
From it one takes away the fear that our children will kill us all
Watching this ad, I take away the fear that our children will all turn into appalling gormless twats.
Virgin Atlantic 25th anniversary
Patronising, naff, self-satisfied, assuming a level of public affection that doesn't exist, sexist, stupid. Misfiring irony is one of the worst traits of modern ads, and this one's dripping with it.
Everything in this advert follows the same false assumption that Richard Branson makes about himself; that he's quirky, cheeky, leftfield, mould-breaking and possessed of a special place in the hearts of the hearts of the British public.
Actually everyone thinks Branson is an irritating weirdy beardy who needs taking down a peg or two. And this ad engenders as much fondness for the brand as it does for the man.
This ad loves itself almost as much as Branson loves himself, probably in a directly inverse ratio to how much the country as a whole cares about it or him.
Adturd.
Right Guard 3-D advert – For all the c***s you are
As I've mentioned previously, deodorant adverts exist in an irony-free zone, presumably because men still believe they can actually pull women and be successful at work simply by not smelling like a jockstrap.
Deodorant ads play no small part in fostering this idea, one of the few areas of marketing where men are no longer portrayed as useless simpletons. All male grooming features cool-sounding products that basically make you smell or look slightly less repulsive than you generally would.
This one for Right Guard is so absurdly straight-laced I can only assume its operating on a level of humour so sophisticated that I can't actually detect it.
Its tagline is 'for all the men you are'. In the case of the bloke in this advert, every single man he is is a total c***. A self-satisfied modern yuppie who cycles to work, gives over-enthusiastic presentations, displays dangerously competitive table football traits and sits on a park bench in his garden at the end of the day surrounded by his doting family.
He doesn't exist, but if he did he'd be insufferable. A kind of Tory Party political broadcast made flesh. I'd rather smell of sweat.
• If you're wondering what the godawful music is, it's by 'David Were, John Cottam from Germany', apparently.
Bulmer’s cider
Cider seems to have made a bit of a comeback in recent years, by virtue of a bit of branding that has restyled it as a bit of a cool alcopop and the Stella phenomenon - charging an arm and a leg for something horrible to dupe people into thinking it's not horrible.
Bulmers - along with Irish brewer Magners (also, confusingly sold as Bulmers) - has cornered the market in charging over the odds for their product, as anyone whose heart has sunk upon learning that some idiot in the round wants a pint of ice and some fizzy apple pop will know.
Just to reinforce its Britishness, Bulmer's has released a terrible advert that's omnipresent all summer pushing its sweet fizzy pop with a terrible poem that's a kind of low-rent equivalent of If, itself a poem that Kipling thought was rubbish.
'30 degrees, knob-ly knees!' and a load of other stupid supposedly British cliches that make me want to retch. There are lots of shots of people doing stupid, supposedly British things and we're all supposed to smile in recognition of how bloody ridiculous but loveable we all are.
It's frankly nauseating, and bloody irritating and patronising. It's an idea of Britain straight out of The Sun, so bland it could have been dreamed up by Jo Whiley and so right-on it's like a David bloody Cameron speech.
'Glorious, magnificent, eccentric and ours!' It's a mantra born of a focus group, the empty rallying cry of a telecommunications brand evangelist, the ersatz motif of a society that doesn't really exist. It's fucking shit.