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, logic dictates that 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”. Will it? And did she ever count on it being so universally despised? We’ll have to see
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.
Even Youtube’s viewers – usually akin to particularly suggestible sheep – seem to think it’s a stinker. I sometimes 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.
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. .
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.