AdTurds was three recently, so I thought I'd better mark the occasion. I thought about mocking up an award of an actual turd - yer genuine Dirty Fido - and sticking it on a plinth, then going to the headquarters of not just the creative agencies but the companies in question and presenting them there.
Then I realised I didn't have the time, money, inclination or Channel 4 camera crew - to follow me around filming me failing to gain access to even the lift of those outfits before being ejected by security - to make such an endeavour worthwhile.
So I created an overview of the worst adverts that have been on the television since AdTurds hit the web. The ones that infuriate me; the ones I think are kinda despicable; the ones I simply think are total shit.
These are they. Feel free to add any you think I've missed. But they must be the absolute nadir. The ones that have you reaching for the remote, for ear plugs, for that loaded Smith and Wesson you just know is in your desk upstairs, next to the half-empty bottle of scotch...
Confused.com
The motherload. A series of adverts pulling every trick out of the bag - including what appears to be sexual molestation in its most recent ad - to make you sad, angry or possibly even dead.
The CIA used to blast horrible noises - rabbits being tortured and the like - at South American socialists; understanding that hideous, repetitive noises can be useful in driving people legitimately out of their minds.
It revived that trick when torturing Guantanamo detainees, using a mindless nursery rhyme to send prisoners round the bend until they started babbling a load of made-up nonsense just to make it stop.
That's what Confused.com does with its adverts. Only there is no end to it. If you use their service the adverts do not stop. Imagine being tortured. Imagine that, in an effort to make the torture stop you complied with the wishes of those inflicting pain on you. And then imagine that they keep torturing you anyway.
That's what Confused.com does with its adverts. They may be non-lethal weapons. But have you ever taken a Taser hit? They're non-lethal too.
Needless to say, this is an advert on a parallel with a binbag full of festering food remains and cat litter tray content bursting all over your freshly hoovered and washed kitchen floor. Then you fall over in the shit, get some in your eyes and mouth; stand up; slip on it again; bash your head on the corner of a work surface and die.
It's all of that. But I think it's how awful WeBuyAnyCar is in other respects that elevates it so:
BMW has a little bit of a brand problem - the public think they're cars bought by dicks. And while that may not be true it's not something you want to court. Why, then, show off two people who seem photo-fit descriptions of the word 'dick', smugging on about their brilliant lives?
Bad for a long, long time now - but who was your least favourite front person? Katona? Biggins? Donovan? Or Stacey Solomabs (as she's know by several AdTurds readers)?
For me Donovan was the front-man for the most offensive of the lot - an insane trip-fuelled odyssey through a nightmarish Lynchian world that provided an insight into what it might be like to experience a particularly vicious acid-induced mania. Genuinely hellish.
Kris Marshall never seemed a particularly charming feller to me - before the BT adverts he was chiefly known as a man who played an absolute bell-end in vile sitcom My Family. So, what better person to front your new, decades-long TV ad campaign?
Not only is the unlovely Marshall fronting these ads - he's pitched into a baffling, awkward step-family situation that someone at an ad agency obviously thought would be a neat reaction to the decline of the nuclear family. The end result is an advert that even nuns despise.
This is another company that I have a beef with, for what it does as well as how awful its adverts are. Hyper superannuated LOL! puppets playing techno and saying stupid things go some way to highlighting Wonga's target demographic.
Has anyone, anywhere ever welcomed someone noisily and aggressively interrupting a quiet moment that requires some level of concentration? The shock itself of a sudden loud noise, coupled with a group of people rushing towards you is enough to drive one to unthinking violence. But then it gets far worse - a little turd starts patronising you about your grooming rituals.
I'd like to see other private moments interrupted in this way in adverts. Perhaps someone on the bog, cracking one out in a shower - or balls deep in the missus perhaps?
"Woo! Hello buddy - how's your sex? Have you heard of Yorkshire Tea?"
It might be because Barclays spends so much time on making its rich clients even richer by locating arcane and unlikely tax loopholes that mean these people - people who have so much cash they literally shit it - can avoid paying taxes. Taxes spent on things like, oh, the NHS, schools and Portcullis House fig trees.
But it could also be these adverts, voiced by Stephen Merchant, that have been making people groan with the sort of nausea one associates with a migraine. The unwelcome, undeserved smugness of someone who doesn't know everyone hates them - precisely for being smug.
Cut almost from the same cloth is VanCompare's pitiful effort from a couple of years ago - the original write-up of which resulted in a torrent of hilarious abuse from idiot Sweet fans.
I made it up with VanCompare's CEO in the end - but this effort featuring The Sweet's Andy Scott remains possibly the most inept advert to grace TV screens for some decades.
In the same way that air-raid sirens once signalled imminent disaster, the rat-a-tat-tat beat of Here Come The Girls now heralds one of the most debilitating series of adverts to ever grace television. Stick on a tin hat, head down to the Anderson shelter and await faceless death from above.
The following is a selection of the searched-for keywords that are directing to the blog for the Duffy Coke advert.
I was moved to peruse them again following the write-up I did for it in the ten worst ads of 09 article. I think the keyword queries say far more than I ever could.<
br /> Read 'em and weep.
duffy is shit awful duffy coke advert ads we hate duffy diet coke duffy coke advert awful duffy shit duffy advert shit duffy coke advert shit shit duffy advert what does the duffy coke add mean? duffy coke ad awful duffy coke advert terrible duffy coke shit duffy shit advert duffy sounds like a sheep hate duffy coke advert horrible duffy ad i hate the duffy coke advert awful duffy ad awful duffy advert bad duffy coke advert ban the duffy advert diet coke duffy awful diet coke duffy shit duffy advert shit? duffy awful coca cola ad duffy awful coke advert duffy coca cola advert stupid duffy coke ad is awful duffy coke ad is shit duffy coke advert annoying duffy coke advert awful singing duffy coke advert awful. duffy coke advert horrible duffy coke advert horrible? duffy coke advert stupid duffy coke advert what? duffy coke advert why? duffy coke advert worst ever duffy coke annoying duffy coke singing shit duffy coke sold out duffy coke worst advert duffy diet coke ad stupid duffy is a shit singer duffy shit coke ad duffy terrible coke advert duffy's advert is shit duffy's awful coke ad duffy's stupid advert fucking stupid duffy coke advert hate duffy coke ad i hate duffy coke ad
I'm utterly baffled by the popularity of Duffy, a Welsh singer whose claim to fame is one radio-friendly chill-out single, a cod-Motown wigout and a boring album I've heard twice and can't remember a thing about.
Apparently she's won some awards recently, purely by dint of not being utterly terrible it would seem to me. As such she's reached that stage in her career that seems common these days where someone is propelled from being reasonably popular to Zombie-Elvis-riding-Shergar levels of fame and fortune in an instant.
And there's surely nothing that cements one's fame beyond being cast in the latest of an apparently-famous ad series.
Diet Coke seems to have carved out a niche for itself in this way by having a series of numbing adverts featuring hardbody builders drinking coke while gaggles of office workers look on damply.
Guinness, Levis, Dairy Milk and BT currently enjoy this sort of what-will-they-think-of-next? niche. Past holders include Flake, Oxo and PG Tips.
So, it must be a good sign for Duffy's career that she's been singled out to appear in the latest Coke advert, bearing the inexplicably irritating slogan "Hello you".
I find this motto insufferably smug in its meaninglessness, but that's by-the-bye. The focus of the ad is Duffy herself riding around on a bike looking and sounding like a duck singing 'I gotta be me'.
She cycles out of a gig venue in an infuriatingly faux-kooky style because she's just so individual and empowered and unique. Having biked it around the local supermarket she rides back to the venue, taking a swig of the tasty saccharine beverage on the way back to the stage.
It might be the worst advert ever, and even Youtube's viewers – usually akin to particularly suggestible sheep - seem to think it's a stinker.
I find it hard to explain what irks me so much about ads in general, and this one specifically, but it's probably something to do with the way we're so complicit in being so thoroughly duped by mediocre talent and rapacious companies intent on force-feeding us such sugary pleased-with-itself mind-rotter. (Note to Coca Cola lawyers: I mean television advertising, obviously).
It's heartening that even Coca Cola's target demographic have given this one the finger, though I'm still insulted that this advert ever got beamed into my front room.
If you search on Youtube there's even a 'Making of Duffy Coke ad' video, for the love of God. What this four-minute video can possibly offer to the sum total of human endeavour is beyond me and I'd rather shoot myself in the face than watch it.
Not content with this awful advert featuring a mediocre talent embarking on a journey so implausible as to be insulting to buy a horrible drink that offers us a hollow maxim, we're expected to lap up the making-of documentary too. Show mercy.