Halifax is giving us extra – these Halifax adverts prove it. You give extra every day (unless you’re on the dole, retired or generally useless – or really shit at your job) so you deserve extra too. Access to your own money, advice on pledging hundreds of thousands of pounds to your bank, that sort of thing. To help us understand these notions, Halifax has a roll-call of unlikely-yet-wholesome archetypes.
Oh, Laura Smith – air hostess in excelsior. Ferrying small bags of sick to an airline bin, holding kids while their parents have a dump and getting £125 for swapping her current account to Halifax.
Mark Watts – playing footy with the nippers and showing us that modern Britain is demographically heterogeneous before going to try and get a mortgage as a first-time buyer. Good luck with that.
Gavin Yates – lifting a stegosaurus and being the middle-aged fat bloke in our series of adverts.
Linda Turner – looking as happy wielding that massive drill as she would be flying a Eurofighter.
Paul Knowles – Stupid Dad.
It’s interesting that Halifax isn’t showing us small-business owners in this set of adverts, because it’s exactly small businesses that were targeted by parent-company Lloyds in selling complicated and baffling interest rate swaps, in order to drive profits.
So complicated, baffling and unnecessary that investigations suggest that the financial safety of some small businesses could have been jeopardised as a result.
Small businesses such as that owned by Vicky Harris – snapper extraordinaire. Strapping on some waders and blow-drying a dog. Getting a hundred quid for swapping a current account to Halifax and maybe an interest rate swap to go with her loan too. That’s certainly extra.
Anyway, the ubiquity and fundamental annoyingness of these Halifax adverts means they’ve eventually penetrated my radar. My thoughts on bank adverts are well-documented – this one specifically is one of the more annoying currently on screens. That being said I recently switched my current account to Halifax for the £125. Considering everything they’ve put us through, I think it’s the least they can do.