Send this fucker a bacon sandwich

A woman's work is never done, I was told, which is why they're paid half as much. I've had to let half of my scantily clad monkeygirls go because of the recession (it was either the staff or the champagne lunches - don't anyone tell you that my sense of priority is wrong). The downside is that now I've got to do more frickin' work, which is why my steady stream of pointless blogging bullshit has been drying up.
I need to excrete some piss 'n vinegar on the subject of this wretched flu thing that's getting the Daily Mail all excited. I wish someone would invent a flu that targeted those nazi bastards, but we've got to make do with some rather loose animal-themed branding. Which is why I want to direct a loud FUCK OFF to some twat in Israel who objects to the naming of Swine Flu. I knew someone was going to complain. By his book, offending a religion is unacceptable if the alternative is some casual racism. And never mind the poor fuckers who are dying from the illness. Fucking idiot.

It’s chol-, chlori- er, whadyacallit?

There’s a theme developing here, you’ll notice. For some reason, I’m either starting to notice ads pushing medical-sounding mumbo jumbo, or yes, there really are more ads pushing medical mumbo jumbo.
I guess this is what comes of having my team of scantily clad monkey girls sit around watching GMTV and reading brain-dead women’s mags, and then listening to their air-headed conversations. They call this audience research, but it sounds like they’ve gone native. Jesus, we’re the ones who write this shit. We’re not supposed to believe in it.
Here’s a particularly daft bit of advertising from the pages of Health & Fitness Magazine. Apart from pushing a product that sounds like a nasty water-borne bacteria (I suppose catching cholera would make you lose weight), it throws a series of vaguely meaningless terms such as “cleansing and purifying” as well as a word that makes my bullshitometer ring – “detox”. Just what does “detox” mean anyway? Is there a non-pseudo-sciency definition? And “chlorophyll”? What do plant molecules that are used in photosynthesis have to do with cleansing and purifying anything?
Again, this is pseudo-scientific woo using the sort of language designed to reassure and flatter the gullible.
I’m not saying the product is crap. It might actually be very good – but there’s absolutely no proof in the copy. No supporting evidence. Just fluff.
Still, the model is a rather fetching shade of blue and, as the copy states, “in Japan, it’s the no.1 selling supplement in its class”.
Next week: why Widnes is Britain’s no.1 holiday destination for trainspotting Eskimos.

Smarties' condom terrorists

You can tell that the economy’s drying up when brands start to play the nostalgia card. The Starburst name is making way for Opal Fruits, and Snickers (always a shitty name that sounded a bit like the word Americans use for sports shoes, in one fell swoop subliminally linking the chocolate bar with the taste of rubber) reverting to Marathon.
So a big boo to Smarties, for reintroducing the blue sweet a mere two years after its rejection for health reasons, and forgetting that the real selling point of the brand was its sturdy round tube, abandoned for the hexagonal tube three years ago. My research is quite limited: the two youngest chimplets liked the old version and now prefer M&Ms. My patented infallible Chimpmetrics weighting measure translates this to represent 67% of UK 6-10 year-old children, which is damning evidence.

In the interests of research, I dispatched a brace of scantily clad monkeygirls to Widnes to find a typical ad numpty, and ask her opinion:

"What a delightful horror story. You know, this reminds me of something that happened in the park last week. There we were, Ethel and I, sitting on a bench when a man ran up and flashed us! Deary deary me! Ethel had a stroke, but I couldn’t reach. Why are those people dressed like condoms? Why are they running away? This looks like the old woman who lived in a shoe. Wait a minute. That blue chap has a rucksack. He’s heading for the tube! Is he a suicide bomber? Are you allowed to do that nowadays? I found a penny yesterday."

The great advertising diamond conspiracy

I've had a few odd comments in my email inbox about my staff. "Where are the scantily clad monkeygirls?" asks one. Another enquires "Have you fired Dave?"
The diplomatic silence was necessary because of very sensitive investigations.
International underground chimpanzee media monitoring centres don't just run themselves, you know. The money has to come from somewhere. I have the secret monkey army to train, and a propaganda campaign to manage (thanks to one of my US-based sleeper agents for spotting one of my projects).
After one of my African diamond mines went off-line, the no-longer-scantily-clad monkeygirls went undercover to discover the whereabouts of an entire month's output, but not before the value of my diamond stocks took a hit.
All I will say is that Dave, you traitorous teddy bear, if you are reading this then I'm on to you. Did you think we wouldn't notice this remarkable coincidence?
Both appeared in the same week.
You can almost hear the copywriters groan.

Fairy: "We've got a load of diamonds to shift, how can we relate a completely irrelevant commodity to washing up liquid?"

Smirnoff: "Comrade Davidovich instructs us to dump these rocks onto the decadent Western consumer. What do diamonds have in common with vodka?"

Mrs Morrey, you are harbouring a potential mass-murdering parasite

I hate cats. Or rather, I hate people whose affections are blinded by the little furry bastards. People who think it’s cute when their wee psycho furball deposits a dead bird on their doorstep. Aaaah, that’s just sooooo cute.
I’ve seen our garden visitors – sparrows, blackbirds, tits (the only non-salacious use of that word you’ll ever see in this blog) and doves (i.e. proper pigeons, not the dusty flying rats that populate London) – virtually disappear since our pikey neighbours decided to join the cat crowd. They have made their contribution to the growing population of 8 million domesticated cats in Britain that are responsible for killing 300 million wild birds and mammals each year.
I exempt the agency cat, Mister Ajax, who is a grumpy fat old bastard, because he is too lazy and overfed with chocolate by the monkeygirls to bother hunting. In fact, he is so full of contempt for exercise that he just waits for the nearest rat to stroll past and die laughing at his paws. Now that’s my sort of cat.
I haven’t got a bone to pick with this ad or the several others that push the latest in pet nutrition because they are simply taking up the trend for complicating something that used to be relatively straightforward. Buy pet. Feed pet. And after a few years, Bury pet. Aah the good old days.
Now, with complicated pet insurance plans, complex pet nutrition options including lifestyle foods aimed at particular pet demographics, the bewildered old ladies and sad old numpties who don’t have anyone else to talk to can spend an infinity of time and money pretending that their pet deserves as complex an upbringing as a real person. And when Miggins dies, you can have him buried in a cemetery.

See also:
Pointless critter products
Put a bell on it

I could learn to like this

So, it seems that instead of the high-tech media centre with all the geegaws that I'm normally used to, I have instead a crowded room with filing cabinets, telephones and seventeen scantily clad monkeygirls with big hair. Yes, seventeen, and not even a computer or a whiff of PC in sight.
They call me "Sir", which is weird because I'm used to being addressed in sentences beginning "O", as in "O Mighty Chimp Deity", but all is not lost because every one of my unusually large staff quota offers me a cup of tea.
That's more like it. None of this poncey coffee rubbish made from machines that sound like a Welshman with a cold. There's a big telly in the corner attached to a piss-off huge Umatic tape machine. Bloody hell, we're still using these in 2007.
There's a brilliant ad playing on the telly. "Turn it up please."
"Yes Sir! chorus six of the monkeygirls.
This'll make good watching while I'm waiting for my brew.

Oh shit where am I

My name is FishNChimps. I had an accident with a tea trolley and woke up in a 1973 ad agency. Am I mad, in a coma, or back in time? Whatever's happened, it's like I've landed on a different planet. Now, maybe if I can work out the reason, I can get home.
But there’s a big man wearing flares, poking me in the chest. “Where the fuck have you been? I need those numbers for my copy.”
It’s a mock-up for a press ad for breath mints. There’s a laughing girl in a bikini. “What numbers are those?” I enquire, confused.
“Stats, you fucking numpty. I need to know whether girls who like breath mints have big tits.”
“Er, haven’t you asked the planner?”
“What’s a fucking planner? Just fuck off and ask one of your girls.” Ah, I see a Newton’s cradle before a wall-full of posters for cigarettes, vermouth, pharmaceuticals and large cars. They all have girls in bikinis. He must be the creative director. “And don’t bother looking for an account man, they’re still on Friday’s lunch break.”
The Pirelli calendar shows it’s Wednesday.

Embarrassment is behind the Trident complaints

Accusing someone of being racist is the nuclear option in any argument. It’s tough enough as an individual – if you express a view that's subsequently labelled racist, it would be very difficult to extricate your point from the cloud of doubt that surrounds you should you have the gall to stick to your guns.
It’s a done deal. Call you racist. Argument over. Get your coat. Go home.
When the accusation hits a corporate target then there is no hiding place, like Cadbury who had to back down in the face of over 500 complaints.
I’m going to put my head on the block by saying that the racial stereotyping within the Trident gum ads is not racist.
Most of the complaints seem to focus on the original ads featuring the black poet not, as some news stories suggest, the subsequent ads where white people mimic the poet’s accent.
This is puzzling, as the wave of complaints are targeting the performance of a black actor. The problem can’t be the accent itself because there are umpteen ad campaigns where West Indian intonation is very clear (quick examples: the Lilt ladies c.2001-2003, Malibu 2003 to date, even that awful white couple from last year’s Woolwich ad; plus a whole host of white people singing the Banana Boat song in West Indian accents for Kellogg’s Fruit & Fibre in 2004).
The first Trident ads are entirely cringe-worthy. They are teeth-gnashingly, toe-curlingly, poker-in-the-eyes-ingly embarrassing to watch (but everyone remembers the brand name – so job done). I believe it’s the aesthetic awfulness of the ads that have caused offence, and firing the Trident racist nuclear missile was just an easy way of blasting the ads off the screens.

In the interests of research, I dispatched a brace of scantily clad monkeygirls to find a typical ad numpty, and ask his opinion:

"OFFENSIVE! You say? Why, I say it is too. Why waste your life listening to POETRY like some weak Athenian? I don’t have time to listen to this yet I fear this will not be over quickly. What is your profession? Are you Persian? I like the manner of your dress. You ARE a Persian then. There's no reason we can't be civil.Yes, I do have some complaints. COME AND GET THEM because TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL!
Madness? THIS! IS! SP-" [interview ends]

On a quiet day

While the scantily clad monkeygirls are outside playing on the swings, Dave and I like to dress up in our cat suits and watch telly.

Meet. Drink wine. Shag.

Look at the body language.
The distance between the pair suggests that they kind of know each other, or at very least have only recently met.
Her head is tilted, she is leaning slightly forwards, her left hand flat on the cushion. Her legs are pointing towards him. She is looking into his eyes, challenging him to look at her boobage.
His knee casually points towards her, his stance open. A furtive glance at her rack isn't going to satisfy him.
He's in charge - this is his pad (note the minimalist alpha male decor) and he has drunk a little less wine than his prey.They support their heads in a way that could easily suggest boredom, but there is no uncomfortable moment. Not now. Not here. The small talk is over.
If there was any doubt that this pair are about to launch themselves at each other, then check out this image from the advertiser's homepage:

OK, so what the fuck does this have to do with selling wine?
Note the copy.

"Les vins de Bordeaux. Some offer you just a drink. Others offer you a chateau"

Eh? As meaningless sentences go, that takes some beating. But it doesn't matter, because with the words Bordeaux, Chateau, combined with the image of pre-copulating strangers in a posh pad, the idea is sold.
What other alcoholic drink - no... what other country's wines - would even dare to connect drinking with sex in this manner, even covertly? If this ad were flogging wines from the New World or any other European country, the effect would be as cheesy as the canapes served at a librarian's party.
But Bordeaux is as French as white flags, onions and seduction, the randy fuckers, so they can get away with this.
Sometimes I wish I was French.

In the interests of research, I dispatched a brace of scantily clad monkeygirls to find a typical ad numpty, and ask her opinion:

“Oo-er, he looks a very frisky young man. In my day... I once knew a Spanish waiter who looked like him - used to shove a bread roll down his trousers but WHAT is SHE wearing? A skirt like that in this weather and she'll catch a cold. Did you know you can get all sorts of diseases by wearing a skirt like that if you sit too near a lake? Especially if you're French. Those glasses are far too big. I will complain. Is she wearing a bra?"

Research is hungry work

This qualitative research lark is knackering. Having been on the streets interviewing, and without having had a break all day, I asked the scantily clad monkeygirls if they had anything to share.
Nothing but my…

said one.

OK, I agreed, and in return you can have a nibble of my

No thanks, she replied, Quite frankly, I’m not in the mood; what I really need is a refreshing

Be careful, said the other scantily clad monkeygirl to me, last time you made a right mess after you refused a piece of

Does this offend you?

Here’s the BBC’s take on the latest assault upon advertising by frightened ad numpties. People complained because a naked woman sitting under a lemon tree, advertising shower gel, looked like she could be under 16.
The ASA upheld the complaints and the advertiser, Cussons, had to either withdraw or radically alter the ad.
Stories like this give me an irrational urge to do something violent, like rip up a paper bag. I daren’t do that because, well, the paper might be the wrong colour or something and I’ll be hauled up before some new fangled tribunal for being a paperist, racist or some other -ist.
Rome’s decline was said to have been preceded by a period of decadence and I can see that happening here, where every sodding half-wit numpty has the power to prevent something or other because of a perceived wrongness. Bad English that, I know, but that’s OK in these days of moral relativism where one man’s / woman’s / transsexual’s red line is another’s green light.
So… it’s now wrong for an adult woman to look like she’s younger? Sorry but, ahem, I thought that’s the line the world’s beauty industry has been selling to women for decades. Somehow I can’t imagine that the nation’s paedophiles are crumpled before their VCRs wanking to a fucking 10-second lemon shower gel ad. If that’s the fear, then we should banish every single image of kids wearing swimsuits in clothing catalogues.
As it happens, there is something I find offensive about the woman in the ad. She sounds drunk.

Click To Play

In the interests of research, I dispatched a brace of scantily clad monkeygirls to find a typical ad numpty, and ask his opinion:

“Whaaa….? Feck’n shower y’say? Feck off. Dwanner feck’n shower ye cheeky feck’n fecker. Tha’ girl needs feck’n fattnin’ up. Girls today’r tae feck’n skinny. Gimme ten pined ferra feck’n sandwich ye feck’n feck.”

Other news: Tesco removes kids’ pole dancing kit from supermarket shelves

M&S dish up drool-worthy dinners

Unless my banana risotto is served up on time, the butler is saddled with a trip into town to fetch my dinner from Marks & Spencer. That’s the terrible price he pays every time the retailer unleashes yet another of its scandalously tempting food porn ads on the telly. Of course it’s worse when looking at these images on the 100-inch plasma high def screen installed in my drawing room; you could row a boat across the lake of drool emanating from my salivating jaws.
A couple of weeks ago Sam Cartmel of The Red Brick Road committed* a superb hatchet job on this and previous spots from the campaign.

I can only disagree; Rainey Kelly Campbell’s ads for M&S are a prime example of TV advertising at its most basic: showing off the product at its best, accompanied by a sultry eat-me-or-shag-me voiceover. If ad recall and sales are up, who’s going to complain?
Not M&S.

*Adwatch, Marketing magazine, 4/10/06
Agency: RKCR/Y&R