It’s Jenson Button’s 200th Grand Prix today, so we thought we’d turn our attention to something that’s been polluting the airwaves for some time now.
Head and Shoulders can’t be the easiest thing to advertise – it’s probably on a par with Canesten or pile cream – but that really doesn’t excuse this terrible mess of an ad that sees Button engaging in some sort of overview of his life in terms of what’s “on his mind”.
This begins in single-word rhymes – “racing, spacing” – before ditching that for a switch to an appallingly delivered “wow! It’s bracing! that sees Jenson walking on some water, um, somewhere, probably on a hotel roof in Dubai.
It’s probably the strangest moment of the entire advert and begs the question whether the script was written in English, so unwieldy and simply awful a line is it. Button does his best, but in truth it just makes him look like a giant tit.
“A cup of tea would be amazing,” is the next gambit as JB receives an elbow between the shoulder blades.
So, let’s take stock. Four opening lines that don’t appear to abide by any sort of form but do, at least rhyme. What comes next then, seems to render the whole enterprise void – because the weak rhyming structure goes out of the window. Lie-ins and rubber are also on Jenson’s mind, and having seen his girlfriend I’m not surprised.
But then it’s time for the money shot; Button wielding a bottle of Head & Shoulders in a shower, declaring it to be “stuff that works”.
Stuff that works is on Jenson Button’s mind? Surely the idea of something like Head & Shoulders is that it works and you don’t have to think about it; it’s a little problem-solver for people too busy to worry about dead skin falling off their scalp.
Anyway, I suppose we should look at what comes next. Beating The Boy From Space at Jenga and being unable to drive an invalid carriage into his house are also on his mind, it seems.
Finally, Jenson seems to believe that a corporate photoshoot constitutes a little perk. This seems unlikely to me, given that F1 drivers live a life comparable to a Greek God, but there you go.
The form and rhyming structure of this advert is utterly shot by the last line. It doesn’t even make sense. At one point Head & Shoulders is on Button’s mind; by the end it’s not.
I’m sure Button won’t mind, however. I suspect most people in the world would swap what’s on their mind with whatever’s on Jenson Button’s. Presumably a world of luxury yachts, motor racing, private jets, beautiful women and pots of cash are some consolation for making such an utterly shit advert.