Ad’s All Folks: Australia’s Tough Call on Cigarettes

Over the last couple of days the new laws have been proposed in Australia and if they come to pass, cigarette companies will have to promote their cigarettes in olive green boxes with some form of reminder of the horrific damage those little things can do.

“We want to make sure that the glamour that might have been attached to smoking in the past is dead and gone,” the Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, said a couple of days ago. “Cigarette packs will now only show the death and disease that can come from smoking. The new packs have been designed to have the lowest appeal to smokers and to make clear the terrible effects that smoking can have on your health.”

In a way, they look like the front cover to a series of Stephen King novels.

So, anyway, I’m bracing myself for the inevitable public media battle that happened round about the time the UK began preparations for the smoking ban in all pubs and restaurants. What I’m talking about is the two factions of anti and pro setting up their camps, waiting patiently for dawn and then beginning their assault of hyperbole and conjecture against each other. And it is so very very boring.

‘We are smokers!’ cry the pro-league, ‘Everyone is entitled to live free and smoke hard. It is our right to smoke. To take away that right blah blah cough weeze figures and facts.’

‘We’re non-smokers!’ shout the anti-league, ‘Everyone is entitled to live free and live hard. We want smoking banned. Blah blah let’s go jogging blah!’

Both parties managing to cancel out each others arguments by saying that the very people they oppose have the right to do whatever they want to do.

And then you have the other party, the third one that no one really listens to…

‘Well, they should save the money and just ban it out right. That would help the problem.’

Well, yeah, like prohibition. That worked well.

Is there fundamentally wrong with shaming people into not doing something? Maybe. It could be argued that people should be allowed to make their own choices, catch their own diseases etc, but then you open the gates for the nanny state protesters and then we have to run for cover. That’s four parties filling up every internet forum and newspaper letter page until mid-2012.

So how we can end all this fighting. Just ban alcohol. Watch how quickly smokers and non smokers join forces then. Oh yes, we can argue till the cows come home about smoking, but to take away our right to drink?! Well, that’s just insane!

The thing is, that nothing is going to change until, and I swear I’m not trolling, smoking is banned outright. People will still smoke, people will still not smoke and the two parties will continue to resent each other. Because, and let’s be honest about this, black tar heroin has been around for a while and that was in plain packaging way before cigarettes. Hell, it even has the disability of being banned! It’s kind of like a narcotic cash cow, like cigarettes.

Ad’s All Folks: Ubisoft We Dare

The Wii console has become a bit of a cash cow since its inception. Its innovative interactive games have become a staple of family gatherings, Christmas and funerals. Its beauty is in its simplicity. Everyone can pick up a wiimote (Oh, I get it!) and be playing before you know it. Sure it is not like its cousins; PS3 and XBOX. Its graphics aren’t as smooth, its games catalogue somewhat limited, and, sometimes, when it call round to call its cousins they would pretend to be out or feign rigamortis till it got the message and left.

Then something went horribly wrong. Someone at Ubisoft decide that the family demographic wasn’t good enough. No, to truly make literal bags of money, the Wii needs to aim its sights at a newer more virile market. Forget your Greys, no you need to go for the people who like to stick wiimotes in any open orifice market.

In this ad for Ubisoft’s We Dare, we’re taken on a journey of sexy sexiness that can now be provided through Nintendo’s little white box.

With a backing track that sounds like a Doom level set in a brothel and an attempt to come across as sleek and glamorous, We Dare appears to be nothing more than a series of parlour games that could be played any numbers of ways other than what’s been shown.

 

But by Christ, they try hard to make you think otherwise. Take Jason Biggs here who spends the entire time looking a man who has been trying to get his wife into an orgy for some time now and, finally, FINALLY has the chance to do so thanks to Ubisoft.

If you ignore the ‘fun’ that’s going on, you’re suddenly distracted by the coldness of some the protagonists faces. Look into the eyes of this hapless feck.

They’re deadened not only from the knowledge of her husband’s soon to be infidelity but the understanding that, once again, it will be down to her to tidy away the body parts when this whole sorry affair reaches it’s inevitable bloody conclusion.

The reality is that most people who will even consider this titillating are middle aged couples whose thoughts of copulation are mulled over whilst peeling the sprouts for Sunday dinner and often involve several other like minded people.

 

Ad’s All Folks: TAC and WorkSafe Adverts in Australia

Warning: This episode of Ad’s All Folks contains images that some may find disturbing.

Fear in adverts is nothing new. It’s used for everything you buy.

Why did you put on deodorant today? Because you didn’t want to smell. Why? Well, if you smell then people won’t come near you, not even Sarah, that sweet girl you meet every morning at the coffee machine. You know the one. Always laughs at your jokes, eyes sparkling like a galaxy, breasts like the front lights of a land rover.  Soon you’ll become a social outcast with only your cats for company. And eventually, even they will prefer to lick their genitalia more than usual in a vain effort to escape the crusty, bottom of the sea bed smell emitting forth from the vast hairy holes you call armpits. Ooh, you dirty, smelly boy! Bad boy! Go to your room, you social fuck up.

See… Fear.

Fear is best used those in an advert if it’s convincing you that something is bad for you. However, most ad execs are aware that they are up against an indifferent population who, soon as seeing an anti-smoking ad, will jam their fingers in their ears and go lalalalalalalalalalaalalalalalalalala whilst marching to the back door to have a cig.

So, some come to the conclusion that you need to shock your audience. Grab them by the balls and make them lick those dirty lungs. Hold them. Squeeze them. Stop smoking your bastards or you’ll die!

A tad strong? Then you’ve never seen how the Australians do it. They are the second most terrifying country when it comes to adverts.

The first examples of Australia using Eli Roth style finger wagging were the adverts produced by the Transport Accidents Commission or TAC. These adverts went out of their way to show you the worse possible scenario of everything vehicular based.

Hey! Stop dicking around in cars or I make Hostel 3: Electric Boogaloo!

Take this example of the extras of Round the Twist getting up to some tomfoolery on the way back from a Kylie Minogue gig or whatever it was that Australians did back in the 90s when they weren’t getting undercuts or perms.

Then there’s this one where a group of men convince their mate to have another beer before driving home. Oh you crazy guys, what’s the worse that can happen.

Well, okay, apart from that.

The problem I have with this advert is that I’m pretty sure  that straight after that phone call they all had another drink in memory of their mate before getting in their cars and driving home. I call it the vicious TAC circle!

And that was the problem, the adverts become parodies of themselves. People began chatting about them over the water cooler in the same way one would talk about the latest horror film. The TACs polystematic approach wasn’t working. Hell, there was even a pop song about them by Australia’s answer to Slipknot, TISM.

Soon the adverts began to tone down their grisly foreplay and more subtle uses of wordplay and overtly smug men were put forward.

So, where do you go from there. Well WorkSafe Victoria decided to have a go. WorkSafe Victoria is a government initiative to encourage safety at work. How to put that message across? Subtlety? What’s more subtle than this?

See, subtle. And there’s half a dozen of these. From man throws pan of hot water over his head in kitchen to woman takes thumb off with bread slicer. All of them designed to shock, stay in the memory and make you fear even picking up a pencil before asking your boss what to do.

So aware are WorkSafe of the impact their horror porn makes, they even rolled out one this christmas that made you almost will injury upon a man despite him having a happy loving family.

Oh no! Where is he? Has he inadvertently welded his face to a pigeon? Dipped his todger in tar? Press play if you dare…

So why squinty in the previous ad will never be able to watch another 3D movie again, we’re made to realise that the true meaning of Christmas is to not to kill yourself in an industrial accident.

Merry Christmas everyone.

No?

Oh, you want this don’t you?

There you go. You sadist.

Oh and if you’re wondering why I said Australia are the second worse country, it’s because I need to introduce you to Thai Insurance ads.

Happy new year everybody!

Next week on a very special episode of Ad’s All Folks, Idiot Box helps his friend get some perspective on their itchy flaky scalp by taking them to a burns unit.

Ad’s all Folks: Carlton Draught – Slow Motion

Ooh, beer commercials. They think they’re so clever. They sell beer and make men go ‘I like beer. Let’s drink a beer because we’re men who like birds’.

Oh bollocks. What’s the point? I really can’t do it. This ad is just too good. It’s an ad that, whilst it may not make you go forth and act like a tit in pubs, it does highlight that sometimes to be genuinely memorable, you have to be a teensy bit clever. Are you listening Oven Pride and webuyanycar.com?

To take a break from my usual vitirol smeared over low income earning ad execs, let us just take a seat and enjoy a minute and a half of actual television gold. It’s not clever in the truest sense, but it will make you laugh.

Enjoy. I’m off to balance the universe for this article and shave a cat.

 

 

Ad’s All Folks: Big Brother UK 2010 – The Funeral Trailer

So, this is it. 2010; the year Big Brother ended. What once was summer’s must-see TV event 10 years ago is now summer’s ‘I wonder who’s still in the house. Oh it’s him! I don’t like him. He needs to be voted out’ TV. The producers inviting ever more increasingly bizarre and mentally deficient people to join the roster of housemates all in a desperate attempt to garner new viewers.

To promote the final season of Big Brother, Channel 4 have put together an ad that brings together some of the most memorable housemates to stage a mock funeral for the Big Brother chair. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when this was being filmed. The clash of egos and silicon must have only been rivalled in intensity by Mickey Rourke’s swansong smack-down in ‘The Wrestler’.

And to be fair, it works. If only for the testaments to arse-clenching constructed through the dancing of Nikki Graham and Nasty Nick.

He likes to move it, move it!

She likes to move it, move it! They like tooooooo MOVE IT!!!

So, aside from the rumours that 100 people will be whittled down to 13 on BB’s launch day, what can we expect from the show most people treat as the television equivalent of genital herpes. Idiot Box has put together 8 points to look forward to

1. There will be at least one person who will say that they are ‘in yer face’ and/or ‘tell it like it is’. They will enter the house and turn out to be neither telling it like it is nor entering any sort of facial interactions. They will be gone by the 2^nd week.
2. The more obnoxious the housemate, the more the ‘yoof’ will declare them a victory of modern entertainment. Should the ‘yoof’ cry loud enough, Davina McCall will tweet about them regularly. Whether said housemate wins or not, they will adorn Heat magazine covers for centuries to come.
3. A housemate will adopt a catchphrase that he or she thinks is catching on in the real world i.e. ‘Brrrrap!’, ‘Word my treacle’ or ‘Step up to me horse and call it Trigger, this a good brew’.
4. All housemates will be declared as being ‘a fantastic housemate’ by McCall regardless of whether they’ve been a wallflower with all the personality of a brick in a coma (see point 1) or a Hitler-esque monkey mule with a penchant for pissing in people’s mouths.
5. Two people will fall in love with each other. Theirs will be a timeless, undying love. Filled with passion, fire and spice.  It will not be a shameless attempt by two fame-hungry molluscs. Nah-uh.
6. There will be at least one gay person who will set gay rights movement back by about 50 years.
7. Someone will say in their VT they  don’t like immigrants.
8. There will be an immigrant.