Hundreds of votes later and it’s not even close: you picked the Tui advert as the nadir of the worst adverts of 2017 by a landslide so great the only comparable geological metaphor would include Africa simply sliding into the sea like one of the those walruses on The Blue Planet II spotting an approaching polar bear and slithering off its icy perch.
To me the Tui advert is simply a bad advert – it reeks of undeserved smugness, entitlement and there’s more than a whiff of the Brits Abroad stereotype of us lot swanning around the world expecting the natives to bow and scrape as if we still own a third of it.
And the execution is somehow… off. It’s cringe-inducing not only because it’s just so pleased with itself, but also because there’s something not quite right about it, like watching a stand-up comedian die a death on stage. So simply a bad advert then – until you get to the soundtrack.
I’ve written at length on how advertising sucks up everything you like and turns it into something you hate, with the sole purpose of making you remember how something you loved became something you hate. Memorable, see? An so it goes with this rendition of Chaka Khan’s Ain’t Nobody.
But it’s not just a bad version of a song people tend to like. Bound up in its breathy, winsome delivery is a self-satisfaction so antagonising it couldn’t be worse if Toby Young kept flicking your ear and mouthing his tiresome cunting-for-money controversies while you’re trying to reach orgasm.
What is this style of singing, popularised by Kate Nash and Lily Allen? A posh-not-posh, twat-next-door timbre of Brit-school banality. Is its lightweight, trilly delivery supposed to evoke some sort of relatability? Like ‘we know this sounds awful but you could probably sound like this too’? A sort of non-threatening lilt for people who might be intimidated by actually good singing?
Whatever it is I want no more of it. In the Tui advert it’s reached its apotheosis. In this advert Tui has kicked us in the the Ts, crossed our eyes and put a U (for unbearable) in the middle.
Now fuck off, Tui. You are officially the worst advert of 2017.