Apparently these are the top ten most-watched UK TV ads of 2009 according to a site called tellyads.com.
1. Cadbury: Eyebrows
2. Comparethemarket.com: Comparethemeerkat.com
3. PG Tips: It’s The Taste
4. Churchill: Rolf Harris
5. Change4Life: Eat Well, Move More, Live Longer
6. Maltesers: Tiny Jeans
7. GoCompare.com: Only A Tenor
8. Vodafone: If I Ruled The World
9. Aviva: Green Army
10. EDF Energy: Eco20:20
In an article that seems to have been barely altered from the original press release, the Grauniad breathlessly describes just how many hits the various shit ads on the site have received over the course of the last year.
Public interest in TV adverts seems to be greater than ever, the poll reveals. Visitors to tellyAds have watched 6.3m clips this year, 50% more than last year.
Fucking fascinating, I’m sure. After some more PR puff for the site, we get the following amazing revelation:
The Cadbury’s “Eyebrows” advert features two children posing for a photograph. When the photographer is called away by a ringing phone, the children begin a synchronised eyebrow dance – without a blink – to the 1980s track Don’t Stop The Rock by Freestyle. The ad was created by ad agency Fallon and directed by Tom Kuntz, who was also responsible for last year’s Lynx “Chocolate Man” advert.
The article is written by Rebecca Smithers, consumer affairs correspondent, who presumably drew some sort of short straw in the office in the run-up to Christmas.
If you can bear to make it to the end of the article you finally get to the list of adverts, some of which I’ve genuinely never seen.
What should be apparent by now is that someone at The Guardian doesn’t get the ‘optimised content doesn’t have to be shit, obviously-optimised content’ thing, as the whole thing has LINK BAIT written through it like a stick of rock.
Even if you can bear to make it to the list of adverts at the end another, related, problem becomes apparent. This is no measure of popularity, penetration or quality, it’s simply a measure of how well optimised various parts of tellyads.com are.
How else would the Change4Life advert be the fourth-most watched advert of the year? Or an advert for Maltesers fifth? or one for EDF Energy be tenth? Why, specifically, would anyone seek any of those adverts out?
So, an utterly pointless article made from a barely repurposed press release, and some empty and misleading rundown of some shite ads from last year. Cheers for that Guardian.