Sorry, I’ve Had A Proper Read Of This Now And It Needs A Bigger Kicking
(Can I just say before I explain why I dislike this ad that I wouldn’t normally be so negative because I usually have no idea what factors impacted on the ad behind the scenes. However, with house ads most of those problems do not exist, so if they’re crap they deserve everything they get.)
1. For an ad with what appears to be 1000 words of copy, it’s really badly written. Examples include:
We think there are three things. In reality there are dozens obviously.
You should totally come in and talk.
If you don’t have anything to do with advertising, and found this copy of Marketing on the tube or somewhere…
It’s not like specialising in goldfish or helicopters or something
But enough with the trendcasting already.
Like everybody knows…
Fucking hell. It reads like it was written by a twelve-year-old, or aimed at one – two scenarios that seem unlikely to say the least.
2. Hypocrisy: ‘To a lot of people, a lot of advertising is tedious and self-aggrandising…’ This ad refers to how dull it is (‘We don’t mean to be boring’) and if it thinks it’s being amusingly ironic, I’m sorry to say that’s about the only point it makes that is absolutely correct. Self aggrandising? ‘We believe in creating…content that is genuinely helpful, informative or entertaining. We believe this kind of output represents the future for our industry‘. I think that counts as enhancing or exaggerating one’s own importance, power, or reputation.
3. What the fuck does the headline mean?
4. The ‘funny’ attempts at world-weary exaggeration at the beginning. Neither funny nor perceptive, and boy do they go on in a way that suggests that whoever wrote them is really fucking pleased with him/herself.
5. Unfounded exaggeration: ‘…we’ve gradually created a management team with a broader range of experience than any other in London.’ Come on! Who seriously believes that? London: the fucking capital city of one of the most advanced nations on earth, home to companies whose staff might just be a little more experienced than this lot.
6. ‘Our recruitment motto is this – beware the agency guy who says he has twenty years’ experience’. Great to have a recruitment motto that can’t possibly apply to more than 10% of your job applicants.
7. There are more, but I’m getting tired. Read through the copy yourself and you’ll find something either false, dumb or wrong presented in a way that’s false, dumb or wrong. But one last thing: Rapier? if I were choosing an agency name I’d discount all suggestions where one of the syllables is ‘rape’.
If that’s how they do their own ads, imagine what they do when they have to work with client comments.
Something better, I’d imagine.
Well, it can’t be worse.