Ad’s All Folks: Halifax ‘High Five’

The Halifax ads are a British institution. Like Jedward, SuBo and Rossell (the apocalyptic coupling of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross), those 30 seconds of TV time stand up and say ‘Look at us we’re kooky!’. When the first musical Halifax adverts came out all those years, we were all quick to discuss how they warned us our homes were at risk if we didn’t keep up payments to the tune of ‘burning Down the House’. We took everyday banker, Howard Brown, to our hearts. In 2003, he appeared on The Office as Howard Brown and, in 2005, under the name Howard Brown, he released a charity single. Even today, he has his own Wikipedia page. How many people’s mortgages fell apart whilst he was living the high life of z-lebrity? It’s hard to say. Still, he was that famous, he didn’t even need to voice the animated version of himself!

Still, everything must end. Tories make way for Labour, Marathon makes way for Snickers and David Tennant makes way for David Mitchell. Halifax knew that their Britain’s Got Talent antics had to go.  The economic crisis created by a few tosspots in suits had left the world very different to one that applauded changing the words of ‘Who Let the Dogs out?’ to ‘Who Gives You Extra?’. After they had accepted £25 billion in the form of a bail out, the nation had turned its back on Hali. Drastic action was taken and from the ashes of Howard came the bright, burning visage of Halifax Radio!

Yes, now instead of singing us the praises of Halifax, four staff members (They’re real people you know! Like you and me! And you! And you Aunty Em!) discuss the praises of Halifax. How brilliant! How down to Earth!

How fucking nauseating.

The ad needs really only about 5 seconds.

‘Halifax will put £5 in your account every month’

Job done. However, this simple message is woven into a fake radio broadcast where everyone chooses to eat with their mouths full and drink tea before they are able to nod. Don’t know what I’m talking about. Watch the ad again. See, you don’t notice it before did you? Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.

I digress. After much chomping and slurping, the ginger Chris Moyles points out that instead of good morning, they should say High five to their customers! See, what they’ve done there is associate high five with the joyful experience of having £5 put in your account by your bank so you can pay off a small percentage of that £2,500 overdraft given to you by the very same bank. Woo! Come on everyone! High Five to a Spandau Ballet soundtrack. What follows next is a montage of the most embarrassing hand gestures known to mankind. Halifax manages to kill the art of giving and receiving high five stone dead. Some people, unable to cope with a high five, resort to giving low fives. Low fives? Low fives?! This is high five! Why do you think we’re playing ‘Gold’! If Howard was here he’d give us all TEN and do it to the tune of ‘All the Things She Said’.

Does it make me want to change banks? Of course not. At least when they were doing choreographed dance moves I felt I could trust them a little bit, but, when the simplicity of a high five is too much for some without the aid of the a giant foam hand, it’s hard to think they will be able to handle the complexities of an ISA.

John Noonan is fundraising for Alzheimer’s Society – JustGiving

John Noonan is fundraising for Alzheimer’s Society – JustGiving

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Ad’s All Folks: Wii Fit Plus with Ant and Dec

Writing a blog can be a tiresome affair. You get yourself all pent up to write something and then something else will get in the way, such as Xboxes breaking, discussing film references in Doctor Who with your siblings and just generally sitting down. As I write this off my own back for next to no award, it’s hard to get into the writing groove and easier to just be lethargic. Thank heavens for Ant and Dec and the Wii Fit campaign and inspiring me to start taking care of myself.

For those of my readers who may be too young to know who Ant and Dec are, they’re the equivalent of Holly Willoughby and Fern Cotton except without all the breasts getting in the way. They brought the country together during that terrible period that was the 90s through little more than a cheeky wink, an insatiable desire to getting ready to rumble and, earlier this month, helping the public to lynch Katie Price/Jordan/Tits McGee/insufferable oompa loompa impersonator with the stupid voice (delete as required). With numerous TV shows, award winning songs and HD Ready foreheads, it’s amazing they were never snatched up by Nintendo sooner.

After an initial campaign designed to show how in touch the Geordie twosome are with both reality and the wares of Nintendo, the run up to Christmas has treated us to numerous ads showing them popping up to meet members of the public and discuss their love of Wii (Snarf, snarf! I’ve made it sound like they’re talking about piss. I’m hilarious). I’m the first to snort at meeting the public in ads. Often because it’s quite obvious that the members of the public we meet responded to an ad in The Stage. This time round I’m quite happy to believe Ant and Dec truly are meeting the unwashed masses. Merely because they’re so uninspiring. None of your envirofone crucible of cheeky chappy demographics here, no siree*. Each person that’s been brought up before the chucklesome pair has been about as painful as a kick in the scrotum by Alex Reid. Staring down the camera lens like a rabbit staring down the barrel of a gun, they monotonously tell us why the DS lite works for them, or how the Wii has kept their marriage working etc… In all honesty, I tend not to remember much of what they say as I find I often black out and wake up to find myself bleeding from the eyeballs.

You’re probably wondering how the Wii Fit campaign fits into this. Relax, it’s Christmas. We’re getting there.

The Wii Fit ad has all the hallmarks of lazy targeting. Oh to have been there in the marketing offices of Flyster, Shyster and Fuckem on the day they put this together.

‘So, who likes to use Wii Fit?’

‘People who don’t realise that the Wii is a horrendous gimmick that should have died a death quicker than the Atari Jaguar.’

‘Aaaaand?’

‘Louise Redknapp.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she’s a woman?’

‘Correct. And why as woman would she use Wii Fit?’

‘Because all women think they’re fat! And men never do.’

‘Exactly!’

So, off trundle Ant and Dec to the nearest Weight Watchers club with Wii Fit in hand. They do their best to flirt with the ladies. Even if it does involve Dec simulating shagging the invisible man. After the cheeky banter, the cross examining begins with probing questions like ‘Do you find using Wii Fit fits into your normal routine?’. To which one gun staring bunny replies, Yes. Her reasoning being that she likes to keep fit but doesn’t like all that jumping around nonsense. You know the thing she’s talking about. Cardio. The thing that’s good for your heart. No, none of that hippy clap trap for her. She does the yoga simulator on Wii Fit because it’s gentle. Wii Fit breeds complacency it appears. When put effort into exercise when you can just pose like a tit in your living room.

So, when faced with this evidence it becomes apparent that if I allow myself to continue being lethargic, then I too could end up like her. All monotonous voice and large thighs. So, thank you, Ant and Dec. If it wasn’t for you, this article would never have been written.

*I really can’t stand that advert. That fucking WONGA idiot talking like Loadsamoney. It’s all so tacky. The amazing thing is that it could have been even tackier. Watch the following and glimpse into a world where Prince Harry became King.

Ad’s All Folks: Forever Friends Christmas Album

As Christmas speeds towards us like a Juggernaut on Bambi, adverts are either warnings against drink driving, the latest fad for the ankle biter in your life  Jamie fuckin’ pukka Oliver gurning over honey roasted parsnips like a spazz kettle. Sandwiched between these little vignettes of marketing are the compilation CDs. The latest one that’s caught my attention is piggy-backing on the cash cow that is Forever Friends. If you’ve never heard of Forever Friends, then you’ve probably never stepped foot into a Clinton Cards. To do so would be to see cards, calendars and mugs portraying the same couple of teddy bears hugging and frolicking with oversized heads and limbs. They’re like the soft toy equivalent of John Merrick.

What can we conclude from the 30 seconds we hear of the track listing? Well, initial thoughts are that somewhere along the manufacturing of this CD someone must have misheard or made a typing error, because clearly the title of the CD is ACTUALLY Just For Your Funeral. There’s not one track played during this half a minute that doesn’t make me think that I’m loved but that someone has planned my untimely demise and created the soundtrack to accompany my friends as they bid me farewell. It’s such insipid drooling dirge. The kind of thing that gets played over the highlights of funerals for royal type folks.

Maybe I’m just being cynical but watching the advert with the sound down seems to hint as to what my friend has waiting for me.  The soft snow, the oh so nauseatingly cute teddies, the hugging… They’re trying to throw so much schmaltz at me that they’re hoping I’ll slip into a diabetic coma! Oh yes, and whilst I’m languishing in hospital, in nonchalantly walks my so-called friend and, oh look, pillow of over my face. Struggle, struggle, struggle and off to talk to the big guy upstairs.

Don’t think I’m not on to you, Forever Friends! You big headed bastards. You won’t turn my friends against me! Never!

…

Just for you is available in all good record stores.

Fan Culture Will Hate Itself

Not as bad as everyone is making out...

Fan culture is a tiresome affair sometimes. I mean that genuinely. Reading the latest batch of rumours to come through the Doctor Who filter, the same thing comes up time and time again. Someone declares their misguided idea as fact and decries Russell T Davies et al for being nothing more than idiots for not following suit. More commonly, a writer will try something new and the same ‘fan’ will try to claim that they could have handled it better then anyone at the BBC ever could.

Whilst a well meaning maniac is part and parcel of the whole sordid sci-fi affair, its grating to read these ‘fans’ claim to know more about the show than the actual creators. As if somehow sitting in your bedroom watching endless box sets and eating turkey twizzlers gives you a green card to being a show runner.

Look at Matt Smith. The forgotten Beatle has yet to have an episode air and some members of the Doctor Who community are crying for him to lynched from his spot and replaced with someone ‘old and dark’.

The reason why I bring this bile up is that I’ve just recently finished ‘And Another Thing…’ by Eoin Colfer, the sixth part of the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. A lot of fans have been very upset about the idea of someone other than Douglas Adams writing about the adventures of Arthur Dent. This, to me, seems  a bit unfair to Eoin and a bit generous to Douglas. Let’s be honest, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish was awful and Mostly Harmless wasn’t far off from being next to suicidal. Even Douglas Adams admitted that he could have written them better. When talking about the ending of Mostly Harmless, he’s quoted as saying:

People have said, quite rightly, that Mostly Harmless is a very bleak book. And it was a bleak book. I would love to finish Hitchhiker on a slightly more upbeat note.

But, no, there are those supposed fans who feel the need to talk for all of us. They hated the book and, in the case of one particular blogger, started a hate campaign before they had even read it.

For me, whilst some of the language was a tad cruder than expected, it was enlightening to see that Zaphod Beeblbrox had one head. This was something that happened in the movie too. Sam Rockwell played the Big Zee as mono-cranium. Oh, how the fans cried out! What was happening here! Why would someone do this! Where was this one you called God now!

The movie makers tried their best to deflect the blows and point out that most the script was taken from ideas by the big DA himself. And yet the ‘fans’ cried foul and took their ball home refusing to play.

Now, here, in this new book, Zaphod has one head and, once again, the ‘fans’ are upset and the publishers etc are telling them that the ideas are form Douglas’s notes.

To be honest, I like my Zaphod to have two heads but when two different types of media crop up both claiming to be based on the scribblings of the original author, I’m happy to put my hand up and say ‘fair enough’ and ‘why not?’. Is it that difficult for some ‘fans’ to think that the original creator of the show might have a better idea of what direction he wants his creations to go in than, say, the spotty goit forever furrowing his brow and banging his fists against a keyboard in sheer blind anger because the Doctor isn’t dark enough.

No doubt when David Tennant hangs up his converse at the beginning of next year, there will be a division of opinion and, in some cases, even a sigh of relief. However, amongst the chatter of like minded fans, there will be that lone beacon of pouting, sulking  and megalomania and when that voice rises, we must be to do the only grown up and sensible thing we can do. We must stick our fingers in our ears and go la la la. And if that’s not grown up, we could teach them how to put their anger to better use.