What the FaceTime advert really means
If you don't have an iPhone... you don't have FaceTime on your phone. Which means you can't drunkenly sext face-to-face; displaying your pasty naked body to a shocked object of your missplaced teen affections.
FaceTime = WankTime.
Sickening bonus fact: Type 'facetime' into your iPhone or iPad and it will autocorrect it into 'FaceTime'.
RIP Len Ganley
Snooker ref Len Ganley, who died recently, appeared in this memorable ad for Carling Black Label - as it was known then - that I rather like.
It's hardly complicated and it's pretty sledgehammer stuff, but amusing enough - especially when you consider how lager ads these days seem to consists solely of footy blokes standing around in pubs looking gormless or cheering at imaginary television showing imaginary Premiership footy.
Now then, everyone do the Len Ganley stance...
Disgusting Haribo advert
Woah mama, what is this? Is it actually an advert? Or is it a stream of consciousness from a fevered ad exec, tongue lolling hideously from mouth, sweating and shivering in his soaked sheets, fretting about being unable to fulfil the Haribo creative brief?
It's like it was vomited forth from someone's subconscious. Someone only vaguely thinking about what a Haribo ad might look like.
"Umm, dancing family... eating sweets, chewy... er.... there's probably a dog in there somewhere..."
And the lyrics, if you can call them that? They're just a load of keywords from a creative brief arranged into some sort of vague structure aren't they? Even so there's a bit of an ooh-err missus feel to them:
"Oh so smooth; love them soft; squidgy squidgy baby!"
There are some fairly disturbing connotations right there. As for that terrible jingle, 'the happy world of Haribo', I'm unconvinced that I'd be overly happy living in the world of Haribo.
A world where everything looks and tastes a bit like rubber and no-one over the age of 25 has any teeth? No thanks.
Haribo seems to have acquired something of a reputation in recent years that makes even adults go a bit funny, like the way morons get excited about going to MacDonalds, as if it's the greatest bounty one could wish for in life.
I'm happy to do my bit to puncture that notion. Haribo sweets are fucking horrible. They're tasteless, they're sticky and chewy, like a bit of gooey snot you can't get off your fingers; they're the sweet equivalent of White Lightning.
If you buy Haribo and you're over the age of 10 you're an idiot. Just not as much of an idiot as these adverts seem to think.
Epic Nature Valley maths fail?
Social networks have been all aflutter with an EPIC MATHS FAIL from Nature Valley - they make flapjacks - on a front page ad on Metro today.
The oat-rollers declared that they have increased the deliciousness of their bars by 200% by, er, adding another bar to the existing one.
Leaving aside the fact that doubling deliciousness is a tricky task at the best of times - and a nebulous one at that - you would only need to increase deliciousness by 100% if you're doubling the amount of bars; assuming you think that doubling in size equals doubling deliciousness.
How silly Nature Valley must feel! How ridiculous that their #ELEMENTARY MATHS FAIL is being seen by people all of the country! How stupid they must feel that everyone on Twitter and Facebook and blogs is talking about their delicious, oaty, sweet flapjacks!
Mmmm. Delicious, oaty, sweet flapjacks....
Harvester advert. Fucking hell
Every time I see this I resolve to run home, knocking over children and old ladies along the way and running over hapless animals as I do my best to get to a computer and give it a good, hard AdTurding before I forget.
But I always do forget, so somewhow this has survived until now. I'm not sure when I first saw it, but it seems like a long time ago. And it's still getting the odd run-out. Oh, Harvester, if you'd only nipped it in the bud at the start of the year, I wouldn't have to do this.
Why. Why on earth has someone decided that:
Help yourself to salad;
... all the salad that you want!
should constitute the opening gambit of a rap about a horrible pub chain that is famously the butt of every stand-up comic's or sitcom writer's joke about shit food?
viz: Felicity Kendal: Oh, you never take me anywhere!
Karl Howman: I took you to that Harvester last week!
Be imaginative for fuck's sake. Rhyme 'gammon' with 'salmon' (would you like some salmon?Yes I'll have it with my gammon!').
Rhyme 'corn cob' with 'gob'. ('Would you like a corn cob? Yes please - shove it in my gob!')
Rhyme 'Harvester' with 'depressing canteen-like grief hovel with cheap overcooked food that leaves you with a strong sense of self-loathing and despair'. Well, you can make up your own there.
What the fuck is a a comma piri-piri, comma peking garlic sauce or a comma... EH? Do these things really exist? Comma? Peking garlic sauce? Hold the corn on the cob? What are you talking about?
This has not gone down well on Youtube, which is like a Mary Bell victoria sponge not going down well at a Women's Institute. Currently the second most popular comment on the full fucking-hell-is-it-really-a-minute-long? version is 'Boycott Harvester'.
It's the only sensible reaction to an advert so ill-conceived it makes Jenson Button's dandruff advert look like Black Narcissus.
NB. There's a 'making of' film featuring interviews with the PR and Marketing bods, director and a fucking food stylist. Filmed in Staines. Fuck.
PPS. Here's an utterly dreadful ad for Harvester from yonks back. Funnily enough I quite like this one though. At least it knows it's shit - like Terry and June or something.
PPPS. And here's another that suggests that you'll love Harvester because it's just like your home (what's the point of that then?) and then goes on to show a grotesque pair of Worzel Gummidge and Aunt Sally mannequins that will have your little ones weeing their bottomless Cokes into their beds for the next month. Weird. But I like this one too.
Levi’s ‘riot’ advert
Well, well, well. Aren't events a bastard eh? Were it not for this week's events in the UK this might have gone relatively unnoticed - another leisurewear advert courting a kind of 'dangerwear' chic.
But attentions have turned to just how aligned certain clothing brands are with the sort of people who firebomb cars and loot shops for, er, more clothes from people like Levi's, Adidas and Nike.
That's something that clothing manufacturers are understandably nervous about, but I doubt it will remain that way. Arguably some more prudish types may choose to move away from these brands, but the images of rioters decked out in Adidas and Nike will probably only serve to reinforce their appeal to young hoodlums.
In the meantime though it's fire-fighting all the way for Adidas and Nike, while Levi's has firebombed itself in the foot spectacularly with this advert. Clothing brands have aligned themselves with edgy urban imagery. Now the chickens have come to roost.
As for the Charles Bukowski poetry, I'm not convinced a 17-year-old Hackneyite wielding a golf club will relate, but where there's life there's hope eh?
The Money Shop adverts
Rioter who need cash for bail? Try The Money Shop.
Actually I do have a sneaking regard for how deliberately (presumably) utterly shit this advert is. But not as much regard as I have for the guy who posted this, currently the top comment on Youtube:
Wish the girl who snaps her key was saying 'Oooo' as she slides up and down on my dick
Really, The Money Shop's name says it all. You buy money. You don't swap it. You pay for money.
This is, at least, a lot more honest than the fairly despicable adverts that Wonga.com used to deploy, but fundamentally it's as depressing as the kitchen sink porn film the lead actress in these ads will probably be appearing in next year.