Commercial Break

Adverts are a fact of life now. Rather than railing against them all, I prefer to rail against unimaginative and shitty adverts. That still leaves no shortage of material.




Advertising. Doesn't it just bug the hell out of you? Don't you find your blood steadily begin to boil as those insipid, simpering fuckwits on the Halifax advert commit yet another crime against nature with that godawful advertising campaign? Does anyone else find that they can no longer watch a Werther's Original advert without thinking of a Grandfather being arrested for committing paedophillic acts on his grandson and then giving him sweets to keep quiet? Would you take out insurance with a firm whose jingle and phone/car-hybrid mascot are without doubt the most annoying thing on television and, were it not for the UK's strict gun laws, would be responsible for the thousands of TV repairmen being called out to repair gunshot damage to televisions? No? Then why the hell not?! Is advertising responsible for dumbing down and selling out (depending on whether you watch or star in an advertisement) or is it just doing what it says on the tin; bringing goods and services to our attention and not much more?

Looking at what advertising is and what it actually does is nothing new, and for a supposedly ephemeral industry, it generates pretty strong feelings. Bill Hicks said that anyone involved in advertising should kill himself or herself in order to save their own souls. He also said that the words of an artist who has appeared in an advert were like turds falling into his drink. This may be funny, it may even be true, but is it fair? Why should adverts attract such a stigma, to the extent that some actors only appear in commercials that are guaranteed not to be shown to their domestic audience? (any number of Hollywood A-list stars have starred in advertisements for Japanese products for example)

One of the reasons why adverts so offended Bill Hicks (and many others) was that they cheapen art. By art, I mean any artistic expression be it painting, acting, singing, etc. A program called The Day Today showed a spoof advert featuring Nirvana using a similar song to "Smells like Teen Spirit" to advertise panty liners. The sketch was funny to me because I simply couldn't imagine Kurt Cobain 'selling out' and allowing his music to be used on adverts (of course, since his death and the passing of copyright to Courtney Love, Nirvana songs have began to show up in commercial breaks; she truly is a Yoko Ono for the 21st century). By contrast, no-one was surprised in the least when the Spice Girls appeared in adverts for Pepsi (amongst many, many other things). Nirvana were (and still are) viewed as serious artists who wrote music because it was something imperative to them, whereas the Spice Girls were (and still are) regarded as money whores who would have advertised Zyklon-B if they'd been offered enough cash.

Let's stay with the Spice Girls example; the multitude of products they advertised increased their profile with the public. The product's profile was also raised by having well known people advertise it. Would a multinational company like Pepsi have asked them to star in an advertising campaign if they weren't high profile (and presumably, high earners) as well? And would the Spice Girls have appeared in the commercials for anything other than a huge amount of money? It doesn't take a genius to work out that the answer to both of those questions is no. But should that actually matter? Well, from one point of view, definitely. If artists stopped relying on inspiration that comes from within and started basing their work on the desires of a big spending corporation, then the world would be a less interesting place. Would Da Vinci have painted the Mona Lisa? ("The thing is Leonardo, the sponsors just don't like the smile. Teeth and tits my friend; now THAT sells!") Would Shakespeare have written so much and with such quality? ("Now then William; we need to do something about the witches in Macbeth. Ugly old women just don't fly in today's market. The young people find them repulsive and the old people get offended. Now if they were sexy young witches who seduced Macbeth...maybe one of them could fall in love with him, so we won't need Lady Macbeth...c'mon Will, work with me here...").

It's pretty obvious that I'm biased about this, but I do tend to think that the advertising industry should keep it's grubby little hands to itself when it comes to images and idea's that have been inspirational, or hilarious, or uplifting to other people. For example; Samuel L Jackson, the baaaadest motherfucka ever to appear on a cinema screen, Mace Windu and Shaft combined, recently did an advert for Barclays Bank. It was quite obvious that Barclays wished to associate their name with the extraordinary coolness that is synonymous with Sam. What we actually got was Sam making some sort of Jedi-inspired speech about finance that probably left a bad taste in his mouth. The net effect of that advert has been to lower him in many people's estimation. And Barclays? There is still nothing cool or Jedi-like about high street banking. So why did he do it? Simple; for the money. And should we think "Good for him"? Well, you can if you like, but wouldn't you have rather the money spent on an expensive advertising campaign be spent on improving their service? (and perhaps to plug up my overdraft? I wonder if Sam Jackson has ever in his life received a letter from his bank telling him he's exceeded his limit again...).

With all of that said, one of the reasons that I personally dislike adverts is because the vast majority of them are utter toss. I object to sitting through a mercenary attempt to sell me the food/drink/bra that will change my life when the advert promoting it doesn't engage or entertain me. I'm happy to say that advertising has no effect on my spending habits, so I don't think I'm being too hypocritical by saying that all I want out of an advert is a 30 second burst of entertainment. For example, I love the new Mr. Kipling's cake adverts that portray him as a sadistic, malicious, selfish git. But I only enjoy them because I remember the adverts for the same product in the 80's, where Mr. Kipling was a genial and good natured old duffer who sounded disturbing like the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. Watching the new adverts is rather like discovering a kindly old uncle is on the FBI 10 most wanted list (and yes, the fact that I find THAT funny probably says far too much about my sense of humour...).

Adverts do have the potential to gain artistic merit in their own right, but all too often they are either obvious pieces of plagiarism (a McDonalds advertising campaign of a few years ago was a shoddy rip off of the spoof 'Top Tips' section of Viz magazine), anodyne, limp wristed shite (the Halifax adverts, in trying to be inoffensive adverts that the whole family can enjoy, have become the biggest cause of increased blood pressure in my house since the announcement that N'Sync may be appearing in Attack of the Clones), or just plain dreadful (an advert for water filters was on TV recently; I forget the name of the filter, but the advert will live with me for all time due to it's wooden acting and 80's soap opera plot). Yet the people who work for advertising agencies are, by and large, creative and imaginative people, so there is no reason why most adverts shouldn't be as fun to watch as the programs that they interrupt (or even more so if most TV these days is anything to go by). Ok, so their work is going to be used as a sales pitch. So what? No-one forces anyone to buy something on the strength of an advert. Commercials and advertisements are here and they can't be uninvented or made to go away, and there are more of them in a wider range of places than ever before. So can we at least make them worth watching? Surely that's not too much to ask of the industry that convinced us that Dr Pepper is a nice tasting drink.