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

The thread will be going on as long as advertising stupidity will.
No surprise it's still alive then, eh?

Now THAT's an advert no-one can complain about

...isn't it?

Bleedin' self publicists.

Watching that advert for some kind of absorbant towel and I wonder who
dreamt up the by-line;
"Juan Sheet does a lot"
Well yes, after a really good curry!

Yeah, that one's quite prominant on my "they didn't think that through" list.

On the same ad. I can't help thinking that Nicolas Cage must be hard up
to appear in this.

Is that on account of his glorious back catalogue?

Bloody hell, wrong thread - thought this was 'What films have you seen recently'

Have we covered the bad acid trip/'advertisement' that is Ray Winstone's giant disembodied head appearing in people's ordinary lives and coercing them to gamble? *shudder*

Wait, what?

*Puts on a cockney accent*
"It's all about the in-play"

Sadly, irritating as it is, I think that's actually good advertising - as in I sadly suspect it works rather well on enticing people to spend their money.
The gala bingo adverts on at the moment make the Ray Winstone ones look positively attractive however.

The thing that boggles my tiny mind is the adverts for instant loans.
Have you seen the interest rates on them?
At something like 586% or maybe more you would have to be a complete
wonga to use them.
Instant cash and eternal payments.

Don't you get annoyed by all food packaging or adverts or so, which state that their product is "delicious"? I thought this was a subjective opinion. Your product may well be delicious, but I'll be sole judge for that, thank you

And even more so when the product is cat food.

One pizza company had 'Shate and Enjoy' on the boxes for one of its pizza ranges. It always made me wonder if the box contents tasted almost, but not quite, totally unlike pizza. The boxes were later changed to say 'Square to Share'. Better, but not as much fun. I think they no longer sell those pizzas - I certainly haven't seen them in the shops recently.

It's when dog food is described as 'delicious' that things get ridiculous... dogs will eat *anything*, deliciousness doesn't even come into it.

>>The thing that boggles my tiny mind is the adverts for instant loans.
Have you seen the interest rates on them?huh
At something like 586% or maybe more you would have to be a complete
wonga to use them.
Instant cash and eternal payments.<<

Well you need to read the small print more carefully. You're doing the interest rate an injustice - it's usually more like 5860% AER.

The thing with those is that they are so-called pay-day loans. A bridging loan essentially.

I need £1000 *now* but I'm getting £2000 into my account next week.

OK, so these companies will lend you the £1000 but charge you £20 or so which you pay on the agreed date of settlement, which is within a month.

Companies are required to say what Annual Equivalent rate is and of course £20 is 2% interest on £1000 - but this was only for 1 week.
If I multiply that by 52 to get the AER it's a really horrendous number but it's not really a very good comparison in this instance.


A very good deal - provided you *do* actually pay it off there and then. Other types of loans will have severe penalties - like six months interest charges for doing that.

Of course, you really, really, really, don't want to default on one of those loans I expect.

I still find the payday loans thing astonishing. Are we really to believe that this many people have exhausted all the following alternatives?:

1. Contacting the creditor and asking to postpone the payment for a week.
2. Curbing their spending temporarily so they can afford the payment.
3. Borrowing the money from a friend or family member.
4. Going to their bank and arranging a temporary overdraft (probably at a price, admittedly, but quite possibly a smaller one).

Besides, who in their right mind would trust the judgement and professionalism of a financial institution who call themselves "Wonga dot com"?!

All valid points, well made.

I was just trying to point out that looking at the AER isn't really the best way of evaluating their value for money.

There's an advert for 'The Range' shop that irritates me at the moment.

Their tagline is the thing "If we don't stock it, you don't need it"

Oh really? I didn't notice you selling food - to take a simple example...