I've just seen a traumatic advert

[Ginger Yellow]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

Can someone explain this ad to me? For those who can't or don't want to watch the video, its an ad for Sharp TVs featuring George Takei, who does his catchprase at the end. So far, so par for the course. But this is the thing. He's dressed up in a lab coat. And he talks about Sharp as "we". Celebrity ads and ads with fake scientists/engineers are two a penny, but I don't think I've ever seen the two genres combined. Are we supposed to believe that they've hired Takei as an engineer? If so, why? His character on Star Trek wasn't even an engineer!

[Guest]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

I like the aston that says 'Actor portrayal'. I always thought it was odd that lots of ads have a voice that is obviously Stephen Fry's or whoever's but saying 'we'. I have no insight into the thought process behind this except maybe they think he has an authoritative presence or one that subconsciously just plain old appeals to nerds something? Or he was cheap, maybe.

[Gerontophile]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

The one of these that really grinds my gears is the 'Injury Lawyers 4 You' thing with Billy Murray (The Bill) saying We are lawyers...

[Ginger Yellow]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

It's not quite so weird when it's just a voiceover, though. There's a kind of unspoken complicity there - you'll pretend you don't know it's a celebrity if we pretend we didn't pay a celebrity lots of money to shill for us because they have a recognisable voice.

[Nigelwyn]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

When I saw this I wondered why Springsteen had suddenly become tone deaf.

[Sam]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

That's quite something.

I assume the rest of the world is getting the same Budweiser ads for the World Cup (I assume this because they're being shown in English down here, with subtitles, not dubbed!)? That stupid penalty one with the crowd holding up the boards. Budweiser shouldn't be allowed to advertise, should they?

[ian.64]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

The one of these that really grinds my gears is the 'Injury Lawyers 4 You' thing with Billy Murray (The Bill) saying We are lawyers...

Retrospectively, I've always hated the 'Injury Lawyers 4 You' adverts as I found them the epitome of pseudo-slick (no matter how sleek they made it look it always appeared cheap and cacky), humourless and shittily unhuman televisual wank. I would posit the belief that no-one would've wanted to deal with their services as the adverts tended to portray the troubleshooters in them as cold, intense, po-faced arseholes who look as if they'd produce diamonds if they cracked lumps of coal between their arsecheeks. Chances are you'd want to keep schtum about that knock on the ankle you had at work rather than having to seek out a bunch of suitcase-carrying androids whose faces suggest they'd had a bad morning trying to cope with Apocalypse Now-sized haemorrhoids and now want to unleash their robotic fury on the world.

In the pantheon of most-hated ads, they'd be up there with the best.

[Cavalry Trouser Tips]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

"We're hard-nosed suit-wearing Johnnie Cochran-type bastards, who will bully local authorities into giving you cash for being a clumsy twat"

That's about the measure of the message isn't it?

[Guest]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

I can't decide what I think about the underwear ads with the passive-aggressive bitchy slogans like 'lucky you, at least you don't get guys bothering you all the time'. Part of me thinks they're hilarious and part of me thinks I ought to feel they're part of the same old media-oppression-aesthetic-bullying culture &c

[Gerontophile]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

"How does it feel to chew 5 gum?"

No... must behave...

[Cavalry Trouser Tips]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

Maybe it's because I'm currently playing it, but those British Gas adverts are a complete rip-off of the Super Mario Galaxy 'little planets' concept.

Mind you, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was even earlier...

[Guest]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

Have you seen the car ad that likens driving a Volvo to being Bella in Twilight? It's like the A-Team/Orange spoof only serious. It's brilliantly awful.

[Guest]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

The Diet coke puppets actually enrage me. I don't know why, but they make me annoyed enough to become furious. I think it's a lot to do with the horrible song they use - as irritating as Go compare - but it's also just that they're so *stupid*.

I need better things to do with my time, don't I?

[ian.64]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

Have you seen the car ad that likens driving a Volvo to being Bella in Twilight? It's like the A-Team/Orange spoof only serious. It's brilliantly awful.

Car ads are quite shit generally, aren't they? They always go for a slickness and coldly-up-themselves portentiousness which always suggests that car journeys are smooth, magical tours of wonder and discovery, where they probably (and I'm not a driver myself) are tortuous, stop-start odysseys of stress and complication.

But, in adland, it's always some enigmatic male model steering his motor through immaculately-photographed landscapes accompanied by 'magical' CGI effects of some kind.

[Gerontophile]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

Top Gear shows how to make a car advert (in VERY bad taste)

[Guest]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

That's why I love this ad. It takes 'driving is a manly odyssey round the Alps, aloneness and smoothness and all that' - and turns it into 'driving is like being a girl & snogging that terrible pasty boy with the bizarre hair'. It's terrific.

[Guest]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

This is a cool ad.

[sw2borshch]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

I think I'm going softer in the head as I've seen a couple of adds in the last couple of days with a couple of bits I liked.

What the hey is going on in that Walkers ad with Lionel Richie? I mean, it is the real Lionel Richie isn't it? With him and (spit) Gary Lineker being the oiginal Odd Couple? So bizarre I can't dislike it although Walkers are the worst crisps ever and almost have me praising a canny bag of Geordie-retro favourites Tudor.

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vqv1HmlXocIZKOlCPxN8cGOHchy9GIWnsLE21Na503Niep0jf3 DExMML3O1KSAv/2Q==[/IMG]

Then there's that Durex one with various couples getting in the mood and giving each other the glad eye including a couple of male coppers sat in the patrol car. Maybe I'm being overly hairshirtyas it's playing on, and I'm responding to, some kind of intrinsic funniness about the very idea, but it's still progress, of a sort. I think.

[ian.64]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

"I am strength." boasts Uman Thurman in the Alfa Romeo 'Giulietta' advert. No you're not, Uma, you're just as po-faced and pretentious as the vehicle you're flogging. But you're not entirely to blame as you just took the cheque, whereas the real blame lies with both ad-men and their clients, who seem to live in a hermetically-sealed world that has not been brushed, touched or even come into any kind of contact with the concept of parody or, indeed, outdated and cliched ideas.

Miss Thurman's defiant, car-based declaration should make you laugh, but instead there's a tiresome feel to it, as if they're saying to the audience, "Look, making these adverts is piss-easy! Get a film star to do a few high-kicks in front of a sleek new car while spouting any old shit! Money in the bank!"

[Sean of the Shed]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

The new UPS ad with the grinning idiots in their colour-of-shit uniforms and colour-of-Guinness-shit vans singing "That's Logistics" to the tune of That's Amore. I can tell you from the last 15 years of bitter experience that that is not logistics.
So, in the interests of fairness and reality, I've re-written it.

When you just cannot wait, it arrives 3 days late, that's logistics

You've spent all day indoors, they turn up at half 4, that's logistics

You try to send it back, cos it's smashed like a packet of biscuits

They will always swear blind it was fine when you signed, that's logistics.

[ian.64]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

Yes, that's a grating little number - your vast improvement on the lyrics is sorely appreciated.

There's a strange ad for a cider on currently. It's slightly bad because the bottle is dressed up as a ballet dancer (look, don't ask) and even worse because the label is so small that you can't make out the brand. Only a moment long, but it has that 'what the fuck is all that about?' touch to it. I'd want the fee I'd paid the admen given back.

[torres]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

This thread started off with that gobshite Jamie Redknapp advertising something or other so lo and behold as I'm driving my works van home to-day I'm graced with his presence on a massive board just by my house advertising M&S suits, I nearly drove the fuckin van through it I was that disgruntled. is there anything this cretin would'nt do for money?.

[Etienne]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

As soon as I saw that this thread had been bumped, I was sure it would be that logistics excresence.

[Ginger Yellow]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

Ezra Klein's blog currently has an ad for an unmanned drone.

[blameless]

I've just seen a traumatic advert

The "Red Car and Blue Car" Milky Way advert from the 1980s has been brought back - but they've ruined it by changing the bloody lyrics.

Bastards.