For some reason I had the urge to watch a YouTube video I'd first seen over a year ago. The utterly astounding thing is that this innocuous event in two children's lives has now been viewed over 67 million - yes MILLION - times. That's equal to the population of the UK. Question: just how do you bottle this and get a client to pay for it? The guy who made this is selling T-shirts based on the video, for heaven's sake!
Major Media Event Alert: Monty Python has launched its own YouTube channel. That's my excuse for posting my favourite Python movie clip here. It's one that the chimplets enjoy, sympathising with the agony of the Roman soldiers as they strain to hold back laughter. To them, it's just like those occasions when someone farts in school assembly.
Now this is what I call a product demo. It's an iPhone horse racing game which is demonstrated, in a lurid stroke of genius, by two blonde chicks spanking themselves. No more need be said.
A slightly off-topic Big Up to a blog that reminds us that advertising talk is not about navel-gazing from within the industry. I stumbled across the Token Feminist by accident. I was pleased to see someone fighting against the patronising and demoralising way that men talk to women. I did think awww, that's sweet, but it is worth checking out for the blog owner's opinions and her links to similar sites that occasionally rail against female stereotyping in ads.
There, my excuse for a mangled Gene Hunt quote from the best BBC drama in the last decade. Odds-on that it will have been disembowelled in the interests of keeping US audiences within their comfort zones. UK trailer:
US trailer:
If it's even half as good as the original, I'll eat my Datsun.
It’s best to ignore TV cookery shows, mainly because the chefs are evil. Estate agents are going out of business because of the housing slump, and its about time the gastronautical parasites suffer a penthouse defenestration. I have two beefs with these bastards. One is the fly-on-the-wall restaurant kitchen footage of them flinging good grub into the bin because it’s too runny/grey/cold etc. This is where the Victorian in me shouts "there are people starving in Africa!". Lo! The quest for artistic perfection! The second is less profound, but more annoying. It’s when Gordon/Gary/Marco etc. chop a fucking onion at lightspeed. What the fuck’s that about? Haven’t they heard of food mixers? The trouble with that is that it forms a challenge in the mind of the viewer. Wouldn’t it be just so cooool to be able to chop an onion like that. With real force. While talking. Nurse! There was an eSure survey getting the PR treatment last week which claimed that more than "one in 10 people in the UK have had a cooking accident or caused damage to their kitchen as a result of copying professional cooking techniques of top TV chefs". And that’s despite three quarters of them describing themselves as "amateur", "novice" or even "useless"! (The best bit of the survey said that a third would use a DIY blow torch instead of a special culinary one, the fucking idiot numpties). Which brings me to this, the current TV ad that I hate most. Each time this tosser appears, I pray that there’s an accidental dismemberment, so much do I loathe his effort at cooking green worms. It does achieve its aim of hammering the brand name into your skull, so job done, I suppose. The idea behind it isn’t original. Here are two arty experiments that played with it, and I’m sure there are more.
YouTube has some ambiguous content, and it's never entirely clear whether the interesting stuff has been spawned in a marketing brain. I'm open-minded about this one, currently one of the rising stars of YouTube, and am rather fond of its completely stupid but nevertheless spooky premise. Anyone remember the Portuguese ghost girl? Well, try this one: the Argentinian gnome.
The Observer newspaper - the often-wrong, Blairite Sunday version of the Guardian (beloved of the corduroy-wearing Crouch End crowd) - has some cracking advertising.
In the last year Gordon Ramsay has appeared in TV ads for BT and the Blood Donor Service, and had his grumpy face on a press campaign for Gordon’s Gin (Gordon’s… geddit? Yes, I laughed so hard my spleen ripped). His Kitchen Nightmares and F-Word series are on perpetual loops on satellite telly, and his Hell’s Kitchen format is being flogged mercilessly in the USA. He has also lost his top spot in the Good Food Guide, has been sued for non-payment of bills, has had his New York restaurant panned by the food critics, and has seen the end of his tenancy at the Mayfair Connaught. His sweary aggression has been great fun to watch, but the Gordon Ramsay brand is starting to look a bit thin. A rumbustious public profile is telegenic only for so long… too much of it and you just start to look like a rude, self-parodying dick. Where will it end? Coming later this year: Gordon F-ing Ramsay in Panto. It’s time to lay off the media and just concentrate on the bloody restaurants. The last word goes to this brilliant piss-take from twobob:
So, England are out. Frankly, I don't give a damn. That's because, being 75% Greek, I still have a team to cheer on at next year's European Championships. The assumption that England have a divine right to qualify has always puzzled me because I could never understand what could possibly motivate complacent millionaires to win, especially when they're up against modestly-paid but passionate players from "little" countries. I loved the irony this morning when this ad popped up just after the morning news. It's a prime example of the shit advertising on daytime telly (I'm off work this week to decorate Chimplet #2's bedroom), and has amazingly been around for three years. That's three years of annoying shouty woman haranguing smug git in fake courtroom. Sadly apt for those poor Anglo Saxons with injured pride. I doubt you could make a claim for it though.
We've all seen the news: kids watching the wrong stuff on TV; kids spending more time online. Here at Giraffe Towers, we wanted to see the implications first hand. We therefore incarcerated a test subject in the basement of our (as yet unfinished) brand laboratory. We exposed him to 140 hours of web TV nonstop, without sleep, and fed him a modern diet of blue Smarties and Dr Pepper. We then set him loose and monitored him using hidden video cameras. One unexpected side effect is that the previously cheery little fellow started to speak in German, despite being a monolingual chav kid from Basildon. Remarkable.
It's hard to believe that it was only in 2004 that Barry Scott burst onto British telly. It seems like he's been around for a decade. Type in “Cillit Bang” on YouTube and you’ll get pages and pages of videos spoofing his shouty style. Hell, the real ads are as cheesy as you can get. Even the name of the product, by household giant Reckitt Benckiser, sounds like a joke. Scott is almost a self-parody, but I think using him as the face of the brand is bloody brilliant. 12% market share in 3 years is no laughing matter. Here he is in one of the more recent Cillit Bang ads.
Under-rated comic Peter Serafinowicz (most famously the voice of Darth Maul and the exasperated flatmate in Shaun Of The Dead) has been spoofing Scott on his new TV show. He’s a brilliant mimic – watch the two Cillit Bang spoofs here and here.
Attention all men: as if a relatively simple product couldn't get any more complicated, the Gillette Fusion Power razor now comes with Stealth technology. Now you can creep up on your enemies and secretly shave them while strange women will feel compelled to rub their faces on you. Now that's real power. Think I'm lying?
The trouble with some furniture store ads is that they promote the shop, but not the idea of living with the new stuff that you know you have to lug to your car (or even worse, wait for some pikey delivery men to bring to your home when it's least convenient), unpack and assemble. The new MFI ads create a nice little bridge between the having and the buying: life going on in and around the swanky new bedroom / bathroom; and the presence of MFI's friendly staff who remind you that you still need to visit the showrooms to buy them.
So, a nice round of applause for MFI's agency, M&C Saatchi? Maybe we should spare one hand to clap with, because the idea is clever enough to catch the attention of the TV viewer. Decide what gesture you'd like to make with the other hand when you take a look at this, one of several such TV ads made for IKEA in the USA by Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, in 2002.
I’ve become something of a discrete gum muncher during the course of my diet, and have really taken to the new-to-the-UK chewing gum Trident. The product is yummy, but it’s such a shame that its TV ad is so bloody irritating.
The Mastication For The Nation campaign is a confusing attempt at rustling up revolutionary fervour with some kind of reggae poetry. The idea sounds reasonable enough, but it’s such a pity that this gentle TV watcher feels compelled to visit extreme violence upon the over-spliffed character rather than work out what the ad is trying to say. But maybe that's the point. Perhaps I'm supposed to hate the ad. Stroll along any British high street and you'll see teenagers masticating furiously. Assuming they're the target market, some bloke talking shit will appeal to teens who know full well that anything that annoys old farts like me must be cool. And "Mastication" easily transmogrifies into "Masturbation" in playground speak. But that reggae feller... what a wanker. Agency: JWT
Apologies for this very late posting. It’s been a hectic, elongated weekend which involved one small, work-related episode where I happened upon a client’s representative in a London pub. This fellow, in all probability named Rupert, was being a bit of an arse. In circumstances too tedious to account here, I found myself the victim of a class attack. I may have provoked him by disparaging the current Tory leader (an acquaintance of this chap). The argument progressed to discourse over the value of natural intelligence versus a well-developed network of contacts. Rupert was proud to admit being mentally-challenged but, despite this, was a millionaire with posh women beating down his door; measures of success that he attributed to the place he went to school: Eton. “I am Eton through and through,” he said. “My old school tie will gain me admission anywhere. I play for the Eton Old Boys rugger club and even have the name of the school tattooed on my cock.” Gads, his crowd were an ugly mob of upper-class twits. They were murmuring contentedly at Rupert’s smug put-down of this chimpish bitter-drinking oik. “That’s a coincidence,” I replied, looking at the horse-like faces of his rowdy retinue, “I have the name of my old school tattooed on my cock too.” In reply to his greasy, quizzical look I revealed: “Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham Boys’ School. Including apostrophes.” I was about to add that I had the phone number down there too, but it's not polite to brag.
Holy shit, I've lost two stones in three weeks. Aaaah fuck, but if I stand like this on the scales, I've put on a stone. Poxy scales. How do I know where I stand with this weight loss malarkey? Yes, my coat is a little looser and the jeans a little baggier but I still feel like a fat bastard. I don't mind admitting it, although I reserve the right to twat you one on the nose if you said it to my face. Nowadays, such behaviour would be acceptable. You can tell I'm a bit annoyed this weekend. Last week one the neighbours' 20-odd cats pissed on my sons' football boots, which were left out overnight after both boys completed a weekend of training and matches. The younger of the two spent ten minutes running away from a basset hound that invaded the training pitch yesterday, unaware that the half-blind mutt thought that it was chasing a fucking moggie. I've never hidden my utter detestation for people who adopt hordes of these feline parasites as pets. In my grandfather's day I'd have gotten away with lynching the little buggers, but that's now bloody taboo. Too cruel. Yet it's OK to mass produce farm animals, pump them full of drugs and obesity enhancers so we can feed like fucking pigs and raise a generation of kids who'll die before their parents. So, with the country going to the dogs, what has obsessed the nation this week? Answer: three chav girls bullying an Indian housemate on Celebrity Big Brother. To non-Brits, a brief explanation. Assuming you know the BB format, you may be aware that there is a celebrity version. This year, the house included Germaine Jackson and Dirk Benedict. But the talking point was Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty and three young women who proceeded to bully her. The loudmouth is Jade Goody, famous for forging a career based on the stupidity displayed in her performance in a (non-celeb) Big Brother four years ago. Her two disciples are brunette Danielle Nobody (famous for being sacked from a beauty competition and for being the girlfriend of footballer Teddy Sheringham) and "blonde" Jo Uglyfuck (who used to be in a band). Consider these two snippets:
After a week's worth of having the media gorge on the bullying and racism displayed by the gang of three, Jade was evicted on Friday to face the music: (This one's 16 minutes long)
That clip'll give you a flavour of the media baying we've had to put up with. The noise got so loud that Carphone Warehouse pulled out of its BB sponsorship. So far, at least nine other companies have joined the queue to replace Carphone Warehouse. Every Tom, Dickhead and Harry is condemning the bullying, racism etc. At times like this, I seriously despise the numpty fuckwits around me. I'm talking about the fuckers who ring radio talkshows, the wankers who write letters to the papers, the columnists and media commentators. There were questions in Parliament, and even Gordon Brown (watch out America, here's the guy who'll be tickling Dubya's bollocks in the summer when Blair resigns) weighed in despite never watching the show. Behind the words of every one of them, you can hear their breathlessness at having claimed the high moral ground and the telltale squeak as their buttocks tighten in liberal sanctimony. So what's my problem? Am I sticking up for racism? The answer's no. My problem's with the way the public are scapegoating Jade Goody in what looks increasingly like a big media set-up. She's almost certainly ruined her "career". Jo is a has-been and has had her day anyway. Danielle is thick pramface Scouser who's going to lose the most. Apparently her boyfriend has already dumped her (Sheringham fronts an anti-racism campaign in football, and a third of his team-mates are black), and she'll never work again unless it's in porn flicks or serving fries. As for their victim Shilpa, she's got it made. Her Bollywood career was waning, and last month nobody outside the Indian community knew of her. Now she's a household name. As well as being gorgeous, she took the abuse with the sort of dignity that's becoming difficult to find in Britain, and declared she held no grudges against Jade or the others. Just watch. Jo and Danielle will be ripped apart when they're evicted. When it's Shilpa's turn, everyone will be gushing over their new darling. The contestants will get what they deserve, but the hot-headed mob that watch this shit will be diminished. Meanwhile, Channel Four and Endemol (BB's makers) will be counting their stacks. Incidentally, there's still a war on in Iraq.
Here’s a cultural curiosity from Saudi Arabia. This appears to be a spoof of the Egyptian movie genre (which must mean shouty families and threatened domestic violence), obviously compulsive peak time viewing in Riyadh. It seems more fun than watching EastEnders.
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