The worst adverts of 2010
It's been a fruitful year for the AdTurds, with much more material that could be covered in the end. The Suggest an AdTurd feature is brimming like one of those huge tanks in the American midwest that's full of boiling, gaseous pig shit.
Go Compare ran away with this one in 2009 and like Cliff Richard, he's a very good bet for this year's gong too, despite stiff competition from Confused.com, WeBuyAnyCar, BT and Halifax.
There are dark horses too. Who saw the VanCompare advert coming? Or Bing's heroic attempt to take on Google with some monkey noises? Or the total horror of Jamie and Louise Rednkapp 'laaaahvin iiii...'?
And what about Spotify? That came from nowhere eh? But how many people who heard Jack Davenport's infuriating Alfa Romeo MiTo advert will ever forget it?
What has emerged is the likelihood that a genuinely hated ad is likely to find its way back on your box again and again. If people dislike it, they probably remember it; if the remember it, it's probably on the screens all the time; if it's on the screens all the time it's probably disliked. Hence your most hated ad is back on the telly again and again. QED.
That's unfortunate if you're driven to twitching fury by such adverts, but it seems increasingly clear that it's how ad agencies work. Bad adverts are, if you like, a necessary evil. But this is concentrated evil. One drop of that could turn you all into hermit crabs.
Read on! Weep! Vote! Smash yourself in the face with an iron! Watch again! It's the most annoying, most shit, most terrible adverts of 2010!
Halifax adverts
Effortlessly the worst series of adverts since, well, the last lot of Halifax adverts. While truly appalling, these adverts don't quite make me fear for the human race. They're like the Mumford and Sons, Tesco or Microsoft of bad adverts. Always there, always disliked, always shit (or mediocre at any rate).
But there are, to my mind, worse evils in the world. AdTurds readers seem to disagree, so expect this to go straight in at number one in the poll below.
Full disclosure: AdTurds has a bit of a thing for the blonde in the Lucky You advert.
Read the original entry: new Halifax adverts and Isa Isa Baby adverts.
Confused.com - Somebody to Love
After several failed attempt, Confused.com finally hit upon a character of its own designed to annoy the shit out of people everywhere. Only this isn't just annoying, it's also inept. A confused (ahem) message only serves to leave a bemused WTF rattling off the walls.
Imagine Confused.com's squiggly drawing thing being rather indelicately spitroasted by Gio Compario and Aleksandr Orlov and you have a pretty good metaphor for how their respective campaigns have panned out.
Read the original entry: Confused.com Somebody to Love
Marks & Spencer's Xmas Turd
Hard to believe now, but there was once something vaguely canny about these M&S adverts, before they fell in love with themselves so massively it's a surprise they don't simply have the cast frotting themselves on cashmere jumpers and gift packs of bubble bath.
This festive effort swith Peter Kay, Twiggy, Danni Minogue and some other people too dreary to mention is so smug that Piers Morgan thinks it's a bit much.
Read the original entry: Marks & Spencer Christmas advert
Thomas Cook Redknapp horror intersection
AdTurds has some inside information on this effort from Thomas Cook that suggests that it was responsible for more complaints than anything else the travel company has ever done.
That may or may not be true, but what is true is that Thomas Cook has a huge effigy of the gruesome Redknapps (who seem to exist purely in advertising these days) in its reception, no doubt now defaced by people driven to violence by Louise and Jamie's vile, whiny estuary voices.
Read the original entry: Redknapp Thomas Cook adverts
Bing clutch bags
Tasked with apparent no-win scenario of designing an ad campaign to humble Google, ad agency JWT struck a canny line with the 'information overload' line but went on to present it in the most annoying way possible.
I always thought it would have been better to have the information overload people spouting a load of gibberish about hot Asian babes too.
It's also problematic because the Bing engine isn't any better in displaying relevant information that Google, Yahoo, Ask or any other search engine in the entire world.
Read the original entry: Bing adverts
Dell treats Lollipop
On the face of there was nothing too annoying about this advert for Dell's laptops first off. But the sheer carpet-bombing ubiquity of the first few bars of the Chordettes track - particularly when it invaded Spotify - rendered it simply unbearable; and almost certainly used as a torture device in Guantanamo Bay.
Lollipop Lollipop Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli Lollipop....
Read the original entry: Dell treats advert
Josh T-Mobile
Pity poor Josh. Basically used and abused by a massive multinational in their doomed marketing campaign like a Thai ladyboy by a second-hand car salesman from Romford on his annual sex holiday.
Awful music, crap idea, poor chinless Josh. A powerful mixture of pity and contempt.
Read the original entry: John T-Mobile advert
Citroen DS3 John Lennon
The Citroen DS3 might have been the most enjoyable car AdTurds thrashed this year, but this ad featuring Lennon pondering the shitness of nostalgia and retro - in an advert that was all about nostalgia and retro for a car that was all about nostalgia and retro - was one of the least enjoyable ads.
Bonus turds for the affected out-of-synch footage too.
Read the original entry: John Lennon Citroen DS3 advert
VanCompare advert
The post that provoked nothing less than death threats, legal action threats and the infinite wrath of seemingly every Sweet fan on the face of the Earth.
All of that ended in a détente with the actual chairman of VanCompare and a message of good wishes to Andy Scott, believe it or not.
Still, this is possibly the most inept advert every to grace a television. Sweeeeet!
Read the original entry: VanCompare advert
BT family adverts
Perhaps the most unloved TV couple since Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood, Adam and Jane seemed to reach a climax this year in the 'is she or isn't she?' interactive campaign. Sadly the options didn't involve death or divorce, but whether Jane was pregnant or not (AdTurds readers suggested their own ending).
In the most stultifying spot of television ever, the answer was revealed as yes and somewhere in Scotland came the noise of John Logie Baird and Alexander Graham Bell softly weeping.
Read the original entry: BT advert - what happens next?
Go Compare adverts
AdTurds can't really find it in his granite heart to hate Go Compare. Annoying, yes, but no more than any Little & Large sketch from the 1987.
To complain of the rampant repetition; the sheer inescapability of Go Compare ads would be to complain about the ubiquity of grass, water, why the very air itself.
Still, a guaranteed big hitter in this year's poll - and maybe they'll finish it off with Gio exploding in gas, fat and hair after one 'whaffer thin mint' too many.
Read the original entry: Go Compare advert
Ladbrokes World Cup ads
Two of the most annoying people on television gibbering and gurning like idiots; an appalling campaign; distasteful subject matter; a soundtrack used in at least two different ads over the last couple of years.
Without Wright and Kamara is would be awful. With the charmless pundits it enters a new circle of Hell.
Read the original entry: Ladbrokes World Cup adverts
We Buy Any Car advert
Few adverts are genuinely hateful, but We Buy Any Car managed it this year with the advertising equivalent of having Fern Cotton blast an air horn into your face for 60 seconds several times a day.
Pretty much the nearest thing to a sonic weapon - a non-lethal weapon designed to disable victims by provoking vomiting or 'uncontrolled' defecation - that you'll ever see on television.
Read the original entry: WeBuyAnyCar advert
Alfa Romeo Spotify advert
Sadly, or fortunately, I've been unable to track down the audio of this bad, bad ad. Suffice it to say that this advert on Spotfiy was generating hundreds of tweets a day on Twitter, and none were positive.
Actually drove me to a Spotify Premium account. I've yet to work out whether this is sheer genius on the part of Spotify; sheer idiocy on the part of Alfa Romeo; a combination of both; or simple ineptitude. Either way it's abysmal.
Read the original entry: Alfa Romeo Spotify advert
Iceland 201 Christmas adverts
It was an oversight of massive proportions that Iceland's 2010 Christmas adverts, featuring Jason Donovan, were not originally included in this list, but an ad break that featured four or five versions of this ad recently convinced me of the error.
There's something genuinely unsettling about all of this. The insistence of it, the repetition and noise and the fact that the food all looks so horrible.
This isn't just an annoying advert. It;s an advert to give you nightmares.
• Read the original entry: Iceland 2010 Christmas advert
Vote for the worst advert of 2010!
Vote for your most hated ad of 2010 and we'll go an pelt the ad agency who wins with rotten fruit. And very hard stones.
‘I want one of those’ – Alfa Romeo Spotify advert
Truly one of the worst adverts ever heard, this Jack Davenport-voiced ad for Alfa Romeo has been turning up on Spotify recently for the Alfa Romeo MiTo; a car that, in AdTurds' opinion, has been smashed around the front and back ends with a hefty ugly stick.
So it's odd that the ad copy tries to suggest that simply seeing a MiTo is an earth-shattering experience that makes you say to yourself – breathlessly, of course, – "I want one of those."
That's never happened to me. I've always said "That is one ugly car from the front." But that's just me, and car design is one of the most supremely subjective topics imaginable.
What seems beyond any kind of critical dispute, however, is just how appalling the copy in this ad is. Davenport tries to inject some life into it, but it just makes him sound a bit strange.
Anyway, 'show, don't tell' was clearly off the menu for whatever agency came up with this slot, which may be a new one to AdTurds; an advert that simply insists that you want to buy a certain product, even if you've never seen, or heard of, it.
Full script below:
Once in a while a car comes along that sets your pulse racing. You're driving along in your perfectly nice little car and all of a sudden you see it, cooly gliding past on sport alloy wheels, its state of the art DNA technology set to dynamic drive.
Breathlessly you say to yourself: 'I want one of those'...
Kia Soul Spotify ads
One of the things that's been annoying me recently is particular adverts on Spotify, the free music juke boxy things that's revolutionised the way people listen to their favourite albums over and over again.
Now, let's get this clear. I don't object to the concept. After all, I'm getting free access to
a number of tracks that presumably numbers in the hundreds of thousands – and I'm one of those people that gets uneasy over the prospect of people assuming they can have pretty much whatever they want for free.
Anyway, some ads are clearly optimised for Spotify in that they're not massively intrusive and get across a clear message pretty briefly then get the hell out.
Some ads really don't work on Spotify, including a version of the awful Dell treats advert that manages to be worse than the TV version.
But worse, due to its terrible ubiquity, is the advert for the Kia Soul that features some shit-eating grin voiceover and plink-plonky electronic music.
In itself it's not bad, perhaps for the first two or three times. But the 30th time it interrupts your enjoyment of some calming soundtrack, classical music or anything at odds with the Mr Blobby-esque Kia theme tune and it's an exercise in pure, tear-inducing frustration.
It's like being drenched in a bucket of ice-cold water while enjoying a hot bath. And then punched in the nose.
You can't turn it down, you can't turn it off. If you want to keep listening you have to endure the ad for a 31st time. CIA operatives could use it at Guantanamo.
Anything in moderation is tolerable. Most things to excess are intolerable. But don't take my word for it, check out what Twitter is making of it:
• Dear Kia Soul, fyi I will never ever buy your car because your ad just froze Spotify halfway through The Sea. Soul killers.
• NO @spotify I DON'T WANT TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE FREAKING KIA SOUL. Ahh, much better
• I will never buy a Kia Soul, thanks to spotify
• If I hear that Kia Soul advert on Spotify once more I shall attack their showrooms with molotovs and fierce rhetoric about car design.
• Spotify, stop playing the ad for the Kia 'Soul'. I am never, ever gonna buy that atrocious little crap-box. Ever.
• Dear Spotify, the jaunty Kia Soul ad goes with Shostakovich's 8th String Quartet like napalm with bare flesh.
• I hate you, Kia Soul. You make #spotify worse again.
• God the spotify ads do my head in. There's nothing like a bit of "Kia Soul" in the middle of some NIN....
• No Spotify, I do not want to buy a Kia Soul. I want to LISTEN TO MUSIC
• THE KIA SOUL ADS ON SPOTIFY ARE LITERALLY THE WORST ADS I HAVE EVER HEARD. FUCK OFF WITH YOUR ~*~QUIRKINESS AND INVIDUALITY~*~
• kia soul advert on spotify wrecks the mood of all my music.
• essaying whilst listening to remembranza by murcof, on spotify. it's veryvery good, but I DONT CARE ABOUT THE KIA SOUL AGHHH make it stop
'Nuff said.