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

Ah. I'm glad I wasn't imagining that then. I *thought* that was what I heard them say, but dismissed it as an aural hallucination.

Just goes to show how dumb advertising execs think we are.

"Nutrisse means 'nourish'!" so says bimbo-whose-name-I-forget, whilst promoting hair dye.

You'd be referring to Davina McCall.

And yes, The Frosties kid seriously needs his cheesy grin punched right down his well fed little throat.

The Stella Artois priests on the ice advret is pretty annoying.

the 1664 ads drive me bonkers
the one with the chap looking for a chair is pretty horrible but the one with the "symphony" drives me nutty

If you buy tickets for a concert, unless it's a new work (and this one was written in 1664 so it hardly qualifies) the orchestra, conductor and audience can hardly be surprised it's only about 6 notes long

This is another 'Flash' ad as shown on the MSN games site.

Yesterday was National ADHD Awareness Day in the US. Periodically, during game-play, MSN showed an ad about ADHD awareness. This was the only ad they showed. Fair enough. The guy on the ad was Ty Pennington, who does a home-improvement programme from what I've been able to find out. Apparently he's regarded as a hunk and is instantly recognisable in the US. He suffers from ADHD, which was why he was doing the ad. Also fair enough. Snag: he was talking at about 250 words a minute, and the first second or so was unintelligible. I saw the ad about 5 times before I worked out that he was saying his name and the programme he appears on. I don't know how many times I saw the ad in total, but I *still* don't know the name of his programme.

My advice to the ad makers: By all means, get a celebrity with the appropriate condition to do the ad, but for 's sake, make sure people can understand what he/she is saying. I know that the MSN Flash ads only last about 5 seconds, but if the message won't fit into that space, shorten the message. Don't get the celebrity to talk at top speed. It doesn't get the message across any better, and often gets the viewer pee-ed off.

Hi Cheerful Dragon

I've just done a quick search on ADHD and it seems "excessive speech" is one of the symptons. That was probably the point of the ad in that case. And it worked cos you mentioned it on here then I went searching for info. I'm now more ADHD aware than I was before the ad aired.

It probably was annoying still.

Deb

It didn't make me want to look up ADHD; I already knew what it stands for and that it is characterized by a child not paying attention, being impulsive and 'restless'. I just thought "Who is this guy?", checked up on that, ended the search when I found out who he is, went back to my game and looked forward to the ad ending. I'm willing to bet a lot of other people reacted the same way. However, when you mentioned looking it up, I looked it up, too. From what I've found, "excessive speech" doesn't refer to talking incredibly fast. One site said, "Talks excessively without appropriate response to social restraint", another just said, "Talks excessively". I suppose the fast rate of speech could be an aspect of talking too much (trying to get all those words out as quickly as possible), but it doesn't make the guy a good presenter for the ad or any charity that's involved in the condition.

Having a condition that a lot of people don't know much about (MS), I suppose I should have been more tolerant. But I was often reprimanded for talking too quickly ('gabbling' was often used to describe it) when I was a child at school (not ADHD, a German mother who spoke that fast), and the reprimands stuck. I suppose that made me more aware of people talking quickly and how hard it can be to understand them.

Anyone got any idea what "prebiotic" migth mean?

Come to that, who can explain what probiotic is and what's so good about it, then?

In the context of nutrition:

Prebiotics are a category of functional food, defined as: Non digestible food ingredients, that beneficially affect the host by selectively stimulating the growth and/or activity of one or a limited number of bacteria in the colon, and thus improve host health. (Functional food or medicinal food is any fresh or processed food claimed to have a health-promoting and/or disease-preventing property beyond the basic nutritional function of supplying nutrients, although there is no consensus on an exact definition of the term.)

Probiotics are dietary supplements containing potentially beneficial bacteria or yeast, however lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are the most common microbes used.


Definitions are taken from http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Prebiotic+(nutrition) and http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/probiotic There's more information there on probiotics, if you're interested.

So now we know.

But frankly it's guff tho'....


All the ads with statistics in like 79% of women noticed a reduction in wrinkles...when they only poll about 80 people...

Methinks it's time to moan again about adjectives in music adverts. I would ban the use of 'fantastic' 'brilliant' 'amazing' and 'incredible'. I'll decide how good it is for myself thanks. Also, it's annoying when an advert for an album only plays a snippet from one song. They're hoping that folk think that every song on the album is as good as the single but I think it's a safe bet that the single is the ONLY good song on the album.

'This is the amazing new single from Lil' Chris'.

Amazing yes, but probably not for the reasons they intended. 'Tis a ghastly nonsense.

I agree about the misuse of adjectives when describing fairly ordinary things. Among the Flash ads on MSN Games, there's one for a game called Mah Jong Quest, a quite good Mah Jong game (not produced by Micros**t, I hasten to add). While describing it they mention 'exciting puzzles'. IMO, a puzzle can be interesting, maybe even intriguing, but not 'exciting'.

Ty Pennington presents a show on Discovery Home & Leisure called
"Extreme Makeover, Home Edition" where him and a whole bunch of other people go and makeover whole houses, sometimes actually knocking down entire rooms and once actually knocking down a whole hose.

Basically they receive tapes from needy and worthy families (the poor, hard working, sick, unemployed, homeless) and they go and send them on holiday for 7 days and they make-over their house so each family member gets a specially themed room to suit them and their likes and personality. Ty normally builds a secret room specifically for the most needy or deserving family member.

I did wonder why he was so loud and hyper on the show ADHD explains everything.

I wonder it the same condition explains Sky Sports News very excitable shouty bloke on a Saturday afternoon?

ADHD in that case is an acronym for 'Another Dreadful Hollering Devil' i think you'll find Roy.

Ok, i've got a new ad that currently bugs me, it's for Tiscali broadband and it's the 3 women having a conversation in the office about a guy they work with.

and one says "well jenkins told me......" so she doesn't know his 1st name then?

most places i've worked it's either 1st name basis or mr/mrs/miss/ms.

not just a surname. i was always told it's incredibly rude to call someone by just their surname.

the only place that gets away with it is the military and even then only in basic and trade training.

ah, i spotted another one that annoys me.
the john smiths ad where the guy picks up the tv remote and flicks channels until he reaches a program about shoes. then he gets barred.
how many pubs with tv have you been in where the remote isn't behind the bar and punters are allowed to use it.

the other john smiths one that annoys me is where the landlord vacuums the guys wig off his head. hello mate, can you spell assault?
he'd lose his pub for doing that to a punter.

and another one.

the barclays advert where people are hitting their heads on things.
the ad starts with a woman taking stuff out of the bottom draw of a filing cabinet and the top drawer just comes open and she hits her head on it when she stands up.
Sorry but I'm going to have to stop you showing that ad right now.
Those cabinets are specifically designed to NOT have 2 drawers open at once and drawers DO NOT open on their own.
So the advert is impossible.
To get 2 drawers open you have to physically pull them both open at the exact same time. I should know, I've done it.

New Toyota Prius ad.

Cites the environmental benefits of its hybrid petrol/electric drive, which is all well and good. But it starts by asking what it would be like if the air were clean again. Would the grass be greener? Would we all feel healthier?

Hang on - this is an ad for a petrol-powered car . It then states "up to 1 tonne less CO2 per year" with some explanatory footnotes (although I'm sure the footnotes weren't there to begin with). How does less CO2 mean cleaner air anyway? Since when was CO2 "dirty"? Would less CO2 actually make the grass less green? By the way, the ad doesn't mention greenhouse gases or global warming.

I would've been quite interested in this. I could even have forgiven the excruciating irony of their decision to use hybrid synergy on a ****ing SUV first . But this just takes the biscuit. They have assumed that their target market are all scientifically illiterate tree-hugging hippies who are incapable of differentiating between climate change and air pollution, and who would actually believe they were *helping* the environment by driving this thing .

I think what annoys me most is that I actually approve of the product - but now wouldn't dream of buying one for fear of being associated with the kind of people gullible enough to fall for this patronising b*****ks.

Quite a lot of backstreet, non-town centre pubs just leave the remote lying on the bar. My local does. That way if the landlord's busy serving and the footy's about to start, the nearest person can change the channel.