Great pisstake.

Where are the boundaries in frightening people on behalf of a large corporation?

Obviously we ad people are unofficially paid to elicit emotional reactions from those who ‘enjoy’ our output, but no one ever seeks to define those reactions beyond what is considered to be against the wishes of Clearcast.

Real tear-jerkers, such as the new Sainsbury’s and John Lewis ads, are completely fine, but if you tried to put a brain-munching zombie in your commercial you wouldn’t stand a chance. Despite that, these ambient fear-based stunts never seem to be subject to the same kinds of strictures as their TV cousins.

Of course the ambient stuff has no regulatory body to insist on what’s right or wrong, but how far can we then go in scaring, swearing or stimulating the genitalia of an unsuspecting public?

Would anyone like to give it a proper go and report back?

(Thanks, D.)

Amazing.

It sells hard.

It entertains like a motherfucker.

My next truck will be one of them Volvos.

Realistically colourised historical photos.

Brilliant police mug shots from the 1920s (thanks, J).

Fancy a Stormtrooper costume? (Thanks, D.)

Disney princesses with lustrous beards (thanks, J).

the Terry Gilliamification of great art (thanks, S):

Movie poster clichés (thanks, B).

Peel garlic very quickly (thanks, L).

White supremacist is part African.

The world’s worst Tesco (thanks, J).

Books with the most Amazon stars.

Shitty photos of couples (thanks, B).

Worst toys ever (thanks, J).

Best corporate Twitter conversation of all time (thanks, T).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49sKKbmuQCg

This is a really good one. I think it’s what Tesco’s wishes it was.

It smothers Tesco’s effort in brandy butter then sets light to it.

Great observations, and even though you know (I assume) that this was all shot in August, it feels really genuine (see ‘truth’ post below).

And it got me 94% of the way to a tear or two.

UPDATE: apparently it’s all genuine footage from last Christmas. That makes it even better.

ACTUALLY, SECOND UPDATE: the more I think about it, the more the ‘money shot’ (the returning soldier) bothers me. The other scenes are just gently funny reminders of the Christmas we all love and enjoy; THAT shot is a giant supermarket that makes hundreds of millions of pounds a year using the incredibly emotional moment of a soldier retuning safely to his family for the purpose of selling Jaffa Cakes/sprouts/cheap whisky. I don’t see what one has to do with the other and feel a bit like another giant corporation has cynically used a family’s emotion to make a bit more money.

Thoughts?

I love reading Mediawatch on Football 365.

Each day they take apart the bullshit of football reporting: the inconsistencies; the hypocrisies; the unfounded hype; and the just plain wrong.

My favourite examples go something like this:

Rage, Attack, Slam And Blame
Headline on the back page of The Sun: ‘AVB LUKAKU RAGE.’
Headline on the back page of the Daily Mirror: ‘AVB SLAMS LUK OVER LLORIS KO.’
Headline on the back page of the Daily Express: ‘AVB attack on Lukaku.’
Headline on the back page of the Daily Star: ‘I BLAME LU.’

Actual quotes from AVB: “He’s a young player and wonderfully gifted – but I think he could have jumped over perfectly. I want to believe that Lukaku’s leg was not left late to clash into Hugo’s head. And I am disappointed Lukaku has not got into contact with Hugo.”

Give the man space…he’s going to explode.

The use of hyperbolic language in British football reporting is something I fnd fascinating. I understand that the back pages feel the need to whip even the tiniest disagreement into a frenzy of opprobrium, but it’s just so fucking silly. As the above example shows, a minor conflict of opinions is often conveyed to be more like AK-47s at dawn, but how did we get to the stage where we have to do over the truth in such an obvious manner?

To me it’s a close cousin of coming back from fishing with a story of the one that got away. The kind word for this stuff is ‘exaggeration’; the real word is ‘bullshit’, and the even more real word is ‘lying’.

And yet no one seems to mind. And no one seems to mind when it happens in advertising either. The simple instruction of creating a good ad is ‘find a difference and exaggerate it’. Here are some examples…

http://vimeo.com/44813306

Some of the most awarded of all time, and all complete and utter bullshit. Is the Sony TV’s colour display anything like as amazing as hundreds of thousands of balls bouncing down a hill? Is Stella so prized that people would insist someone else risked their life for a bottle? Is ComCast’s internet really as fast as those examples? (Actually, it probably is, but in relative terms it’s a massive exaggeration.)

And that’s all OK for some reason.

It’s because we are all used to this construction. There have been so many ads that use this technique to sell us stuff that we don’t even notice when it happens. Every happiness provided by Hamlet or part refreshed by Heineken has made this way of advertising acceptable.

And that’s fine.

But in my opinion it’s not as good as ads that use truth (or something like it):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSLOnR1s74o

I mean, why lie when you can be straight? I accept that many products have nothing different to say, leaving them in exaggeration land, but wouldn’t it be better if they improved their products, found a difference and told us about it?

It might be less entertaining, but as the above examples show, it might not.

You’re sad that Lou Reed died, so you frown. A banana in that position looks like a frown. There was a banana on the cover of a famous Velvet Underground album.

This is like newborn apes scrawling ads on trees with their own filth.

Hi all,

Do you give blood? You really should. It obviously helps people who might otherwise die, particularly around this time of the year, when people seem to be more likely to pop their clogs.

I gave blood thirty times before a fairly long run of tattooing prevented me from doing so again (you can’t give blood within six months of having a tattoo, fact fans. Nor if you’ve had unprotected sex with a prostitute. Or been to a dodgy part of sub-Saharan Africa. Or shared needles with someone. Basically, the blood donation centre is full of quite dull people). So with me off the team the dying people of Britain need you.

Yes, you.

Not that guy behind you.

There’s a place near Oxford Circus, and I recommend weekday mornings to avoid the crowds (if anyone in my department is reading this, you are free to come in a bit late if it’s because you’ve given blood). You also get tea and biscuits and a really warm feeling of having done something nice for people.

xxx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTLjulVbbE4

Animated gingerbread man prances around the Christmas feast-laden dinner table of Ant and Dec while singing ‘Be Our Guest’.

The problem here is that I have no idea which of these two is Ant or Dec, so Ant (or Dec) and Ant (or Dec) dash in and sit down. Then Ant (or Dec) and Ant (or Dec)  smile with delight at the acrobatics of the animated gingerbread man before Ant (or Dec) receives a flying napkin and makes an oddly disgusted face (was that really the best take?) and grabs a won ton from a won ton stand. Inspired by this, Ant (or Dec) takes a spicy prawn from the bottom of a pile (why? I have no idea. I think he might be educationally subnormal), Ant (or Dec) has a bit of panettone and Ant (or Dec) enjoys a mouthful of crackling, proclaiming it to be ‘delicious’. We then see the Morrison’s chefs, which are surprisingly small and plastic, and Ant (or Dec) enjoying some snow that turns out to be sugar (or cocaine; we never find out). The gingerbread man kicks some jizz onto Ant’s (or Dec’s) jacket (disgusted look again), while Ant (or Dec) pulls a cracker with the gingerbread man and someone flips a little biscuit into his mouth, causing Ant (or Dec) to look miffed. It all ends with a flourish from the gingerbread man, before Ant (or Dec) seems to suggest that Ant (or Dec) eats the little confectionary hominid.

Shit has been sucked.

Here’s the new Tesco Christmas ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_4AOpcBwZ4

When I watched it this morning I realised it had been on the previous evening but I’d only heard it. I was doing something on my laptop and all I could think was ‘what’s that incredibly long ad with Rod Stewart sounding like he’s squeezing one out?’ It didn’t interest me enough to make me look up, though.

So I had a look today and and, one small quibble aside (the piss poor ageing make up) I think they’ve done a good job.

The observation of the family moments at Christmas is pretty skilful, and Tesco is a big enough part of this country’s fabric to justify a ‘British Christmas=Tesco’ ad. Like John Lewis they set their bar quite high and it could all have gone horribly wrong, but in my opinion they’ve pulled it off.

So: closer to the JL end of the scale than M&S.

Hooray.