h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There's one for a Tyre and Exhaust place - they say "Tyre Prices" but my brain hears "Typewriters" confused me at first as I was playing Unreal at the time and only listening to the TV.

CHawke

There was one on a couple of years back for an instant meal thing. It had a female bouncer who said "I'm not the sort of person who likes waiting for things".

Are there people who like waiting for things then? They are walking down the street and say "Oh look! A queue! Let's go and join it!".

Joy of anticipation and all that. Some people see patience as a virtue.

Linder Barker has had her contract renewed for another year!!!! Another whole year of that snip snip jingle!!!

I used to hate the one with dancing cows. Fortunately it's not on these days.

Adverts with gratuitous semi-nudity, while always welcome, are often very badly conceived. I saw an advert yesterday that featured a young lady in a skimpy bikini, which was then slowly removed. The lady in question proceeded to walk away from the camera, topless and wiggling her ample derriere.

I'm sure advertising companies have done plenty of research to show that men become less rational and more suggestible when shown some flesh, however this is probably a factor in me having no idea who or what the advert was promoting.

It has been found that adverts with a lot of 'flesh' on view are less successful than those without. This is simply because men are concentrating so much on the 'flesh' that they don't notice the product. So why advertising agencies persist in using scantily-clad women to sell products is a complete mystery to me.

I think it's a matter of getting it right. If you manage to link the product with the half naked girl, then men will associate pretty women with the product. If you don't, mne just end up thinking "wow, she was hot".

Anyone noticed that a certain burger franchise has begun ripping off other people's adverts again (as they ripped off Viz magazine's 'Top Tips' some years ago). The woman reading her child a bedtime story with undue haste so she can rush out and shovel MSG down her neck - oddly similar to the BBC's Digital Radio campaign.

Can they not afford their own ideasmen (or women - no, it's probably just men in this case)

"The Midlands' largest M&S home store is ONLY at Merry Hill shopping centre"

ONLY

As if it could be somewhere else as well, or are they trying to suggest its so large it could be in Dudley and Birmingham at the same time?

I thought the Tyre ad said typewriters too.

I was just saying to the hubs that it's nice to hear about the old machines, and wondering at the strange look he was giving me.

As for scantily clad women: My hubs remembers the women rather than the product. I do most of the shopping, and I go out of my way not to by products (unless I absolutely need that brand) advertised in that way.

Kelli - that 'professional' chewing gum ad annoys me too.
I work in the dental health profession and would not advocate relying on chewing gum to clean one's teeth!

The use of that word 'professional' attached to any product irks me - whether that be toothbrushes, hairbrushes or gum.

Here's another hand up for the tyre advert saying typewriters. Daft aint we!

The Smint ad where the person (can't even remember which gender) holds the box up high, tips their head back and "clicks" a smint into their mouth annoys me intensely. Nobody does that! Everybody clicks it into their hand and then pops it into their mouth.

I also really hate the Bupa ad with a (bad) actor's voice telling us about "when I was told I had cancer..." with a backdrop of a lovely wood and a family doing lovely family things. The first time I saw it I thought it was an American ad it was so cheesy and bad.

One other (for now) is that one for Reef (I think it is - or some sort of alco-pop) with the stupid woman going "Juice! Give me juice!" and then saying "this is where we add the alcohol". I hate this one for no other reason than it is stupid and annoying.

Well, think of it like this. 3 of us in this thread thought "typewriters" if we extrapolate that out into the population as a whole, that's probably a whole lot of people who immediately made appointments for a hearing test - when it should really be the person doing the voiceover going for elocution lessons!

Add me to the typewriters list.


Does anyone else find the 'adverts' on the beeb tiresome? I have to change channels when the c-beebies stuff comes on. I'm just glad my children are well past the stage of watching such claptrap.

Don't like the Argos one. For doing a poor job, resorting to using Argos.


The designer reports he:

"Should be beaten, with sticks."

- Sick, on a few levels.

Then again I use the Argos catalouge a what not to buy guide, if they sell it, it must be naff.

This one had me so much it hurt -
The Weight Watchers (I think) advert, with the line

"learn to eat real food"

DOH!, there was me all this time eating plastiic food, sand and Iron ore deposits - I wondered why I was ill!

CHawke

Don't know if this has been done already.

But i hate the 'female products' adverts.

No i don't want to run round like a lunatic on skates, ride bikes, throw myself out of an aeroplane. I feel like crap and just want a big bar of chocolate and a tub of ice cream.

And why they constantly remind us females and you poor men about it, i haven't a clue.

I think on both sides we know when it is and what it does.

'inhales'

I detest pretty much any advert that portrays a 'battle of the sexes' thing, where one partner is stupid and incompetent and the other comes to the rescue. Not only has it been done to death but usually the stupid one is so badly treated that it alienates half the wathcers...

I've seen some adverts that are grotesquely sexist- portraying a 'stupid' husband and a 'clever' wife. Were the roles reversed it would never get shown. Like the Special K ads from a while back- leave the witch! She's Jonesing all your stuff!

But there are some that use the idea well- like that car advert where they're competing to see who gets to drive.