If, like me, you’ve ever bunked off school, phoned in sick to work, actually been too sick to attend school or work, or been unemployed (for the record I’ve done/been all of those things) then you will probably have had the unpleasant experience of watching daytime television and the adverts which appear on it.
Daytime television is generally banal and depressing enough, but then when there is a break from Jeremy Kyle telling people how disgusting and reprehensible they are without even a hint of irony, you get the adverts. As if watching people with the most bizarre and depressing lives tear into each other in pigeon English on Jeremy Kyle wasn’t enough, you get advertisements for insurance companies trying to either get you to claim for money for no good reason, or give them your money, for no good reason. Or there are adverts for comparison websites, car buying companies or JML products polluting your eyes and conscience.
I know there has always been advertising and a lot of it is the work of Lucifer but it wasn’t always this bad. During the 90’s Guinness ran a series of entertaining, amusing advertisements for their product which didn’t patronise, terrify or cajole the intended audience which is what we now seem to be left with.
The Injury Lawyers 4U advert is great. Before even the advert came to be they chose a name for the company with 4U in the title, you know, because that’s how people spell now and they’re just like U, looking out 4U. Fuck off. It’s patronising in the extreme and suggests that those they wish to target for their brand of ambulance chasing exploitation are too thick to be able to spell or see through their thinly veiled pretence. The advert itself is hilarious, men in suits walking through some posh looking offices saying things like ‘We’re real lawyers’ ‘here to help you’ ‘lawyers you can trust’ what utter bollocks. Your not real lawyers your actors hired to pretend your lawyers and the lawyers your representing are not here to help others their here to find any possible reason to claim against somebody for some sort of compensation so why in the name of the great satan should anyone ‘trust’ you?
Then there is the Sun Life Over 50’s Plan and similar life insurance for those with the temerity to live beyond 50. Some of these are truly astounding in how far they are willing to push the boundaries of common decency. ‘WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOUR LOVED ONES IF YOU DIE SUDDENLY’ capital letters aside that’s pretty much word-for-word from one advert. So, the basic tactic for getting older people to hand over their cash is to tell them ‘you might die soon and then your family will be fucked so you’d better cough up’. To awaken and antagonise the lingering fear of death that we all have in older people is utterly despicable. ‘Leave your loved ones more than just memories’ is another quote. I lost a loved one recently and the memories are infinitely more important than what I inherited, I understand that when people near the end of their lives they will want to leave things to the ones they love but most people in that situation will naturally consider it at some point anyway and do not constantly need to be reminded they are going to die and have insurance companies trying to get hands in their pockets through the television every fucking day.
Lastly you get the cartoon ad. Because we’re all so fucking retarded now that the only way we can take on board information or comprehend a concept is if you have a claymation dog with a broken arm and the voice of Joe fucking Pasquale explain it to us. Jesus Christ Almighty! How thick do advertising companies assume the adult population of this country are!? They now use the most irritating and childlike images and audio to appeal to people to buy or insure things; how many times have you seen people singing or humming along to the webuyanycar.com jingle with a stupid half grin on their face? Or the GoCompare advert, Or the Confused.com ads? People even use the phrase ‘I’m confused.com’ no your fucking not, your not a website, you’re a person who isn’t sure about something. The terrifying thing is that the puerile, insidious marketing has managed to infect our common conscience to such a degree that they have had this effect on some of us.
I’m not saying I haven’t been taken in by advertising, the Apple ads for the iPhone when it first came out made me crave it like I was a crackhead who hadn’t had a hit for a week but the nature of some of our advertising at the moment is surreptitious, patronising, childish and flagrantly amoral.
