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: 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.

Ad’s All Folks: John Lewis: She’s Always a Woman

I’m 29 going on thirty
I know that I’m naive
Fellows I meet may tell me I’m sweet
And willingly I believe

Oh , 29, 29, 29, tweeeeeeenty nine. In a year’s time, I’ll be 30. Then before you know it, I’ll be dead.

Oh, I’m sorry readers (all two of you), I shouldn’t really start off in such a depressive tone this close to the start of the weekend, but it’s all John Lewis’ fault really. Their latest ad campaign has been described ‘an empowerment of women’, ‘breathtaking’, and ‘original’. Truth be told, I find it maudlin and depressing. I like my ads to be light hearted and witty. Something akin to Cadburys and their minute and a half of joy adverts.

However, like some fashionista grim reaper, John Lewis fast-forwards through the life of a nameless woman from the cradle to the grave (Okay, so not completely to the grave, but she does, at least, have one well tailored foot in the grave). All the while, another easily exchangeable Mr Potato Head  with designer stubble and a guitar warbles through a Billy Joel hit. It’s like watching Kate Winslet in The Reader. Except with less Nazis. After the full minute and a half is over, I’m weeping into a bottle of red wine and pondering the futility of existence. A gorilla playing the drums this isn’t.

As for being original, well, I leave it to this advert for Italian fashion company, Calzedonia, which goes someway to showing that are no more original ideas.

Ad’s All Folks: CSL

Sofas are a devilishly tricky thing to farm off to the great unwashed. I sit here on one presently and later on, I’ll probably lie on it whilst watching Doctor Who, but that’s it. That’s it two functions used up in an evening’s television. Yes, tonight, there will be people around Manchester giggling on their couches with candle wax and vacuum attachments whilst I struggle my way through Oblivion, but, let’s be honest, those people are few and far between.  No, in my honest opinion, there’s not much you can advertise about your couch apart from the fact you can sit on it comfortably criticising adverts like a disgruntled bargain basement Charlie Brooker.

That said, it hasn’t stopped companies from trying. In 2009, DFS encouraged us to dance self-consciously to bad radio rock in front of computer enhanced couches that were made to look bigger than they actually were.

It’s interesting to note that performing this bizarre dancing ritual is preferable to looking after your husband who has keeled over from an apparent heart attack.

Australian Sofa company, Freedom, suggested that sofas could be used as the final cry of victory in a domestic fight.

The problem being that they inadvertently suggested that if you wanted one of their sofas, you were probably a smug tosser who was cheating on your girlfriend.

So, aside from dancing and coming across like a complete set of piss teeth, how do you sell your couches? Over to CSL…

See, that’s how you do it? You tell your potential customers that they have excellent taste in sofas, but piss poor choice in men. Of course, it all makes sense now.  Yes, men use you like a set of stabilisers until they can get their mitts on a better bike, but never mind you’ve still got that lovely couch. You know, the purple one that you caught your boyfriend chatting up your sister/best friend/gran on.

There you go. You remember. You love that couch. Who needs men eh?

So, where do we go from here? Well, let’s follow the CSL example that life is crap but commerce doesn’t have to be.

I’ll never forget having to go home to tell my wife that I had contracted an STD from her mother. It was the day that Halford had their two for one sale on mufflers.

When I lost my limbs in a horrific car accident, I was so happy because at least I wasn’t going to scuff my new white Nikes.

And so on.

Ad’s All Folks: Credit Expert

I get confused very easily. Certain things have confronted me which have resulted in my brain taking some unpaid leave and I find myself struggling to understand their point, purpose and existence. Some of these things include:

Avatar – James Cameron writes, in my opinion, a below par action movie in which the passive Na’vi tribe show their love of nature by enslaving creatures to do their bidding and by brutally slaughtering humans passively. Realising that it’s all a bit meh, Jimmy delays releasing by pretending that he’s been waiting for the technology to catch up with his ‘vision’ and then, when the mortgage needs paying, releases it as a 3 hour cartoon in 3D. Everyone goes gah gah about it and I’m left struggling to understand why a semi-sequel to Space Jam is worthy of this much attention. Also, why are there always mech suits Jim? Why?

Mass Effect 2 – I’ve been playing this game for several hours and despite it being praised by everybody for its dialogue and voice cast, as well as the “fantastic” art design, along with the level design and shooting mechanics, I can’t help but disagree. I find it po-faced, repetitive and a wee bit too tits and guns. Also, I’m confused as to why I’m supposed to care which one of the four female characters I’m going to end up shagging. FYI since typing this I’m definitely on with the red head admin assistant, the dark haired Australian was looking good until I got friendly with the one with the blokes name, but really I shouldn’t care.

Jedward – Louis Walsh decided one day that he just couldn’t spend a day not being a bitch to Simon Cowell and went on to back two of the least likely people ever to get a contract working alongside Rob ‘Don’t call me Vanilla Ice’ Van Winkle.

(Actually, I originally thought the least likely person ever was Katie ‘Don’t call me Jordan’ Price. Then I remembered Ice with Jordan on Men and Motors in which Katie ‘Don’t call me Jordan’ Price and Rob ‘Don’t call me Vanilla Ice’ Van Winkle appeared as Vanilla Ice and Jordan. Then there was the red mist. Then I found myself on the floor with a gaping cut in my head as if I’d passed out.)

The worse part of the whole thing was the way we, as a nation, clung them to our bosom.

Haha! They’re a pair of Robert Pattinson wannabes who have silly hair and can’t sing! Haha! Look at them! Fucking morons! I hate them! I love them! I love to hate them! Saint and Begorrah! They’re cheeky chappy Irish. Look they’re trying to sing Ghostbusters with their limited vocal range. I’m so happy I might puke! I’ve forgotten about war and everything!

However, mostly I’m confused as to why Credit Expert have chosen the protagonist they have for their new campaign. Nearly all campaigns have a protagonist of some sort. Often an everyday Joe or Josephine, that, you, the consumer, can relate to. Someone you’ll want to have in your life. Maybe someone you can take to the cinema and during the course of the evening ‘accidently’ brush your hand over theirs as your eyes meet. I’m drifting…

Lynx have often gone with the man whose liberal spraying of fragrances such as Africa, Dark Musk and, uh, New Car, get him the woman of his sex wee dreams. Regardless of how much he resembles an anorexic Noel Fielding.

Products like Diet Coke often use the secretarial pool of lust filled women cackling and eyeing up shirtless men. This is not sexist by the way. If anything, it’s equality innit?

Products like Oven Pride… Well, they need to be sealed in concrete and dropped into the North Sea.

Whichever way you slice it; an ad lives and dies by its ‘star’. It also creates an attitude in your mind about the product. With this in mind, what can we take from Credit Expert’s new ad? Well, if I’m their target audience, then it appears I’m a creepy man whose face is not dissimilar to those that appear in news reports that start, ‘Police are searching for a man who’s wanted in connection to a series of sexual assaults in the Brighton area’.

He really is that shifty looking and, even if I overlook that, there is still his horrendous smugness. The look he gives as he plays his Fisher Price piano makes me feel a bit violated. His impenetrable gaze coupled with the Oven Pride giggle could actually be used as a weapon of mass destruction.

The advert also suffers from the ‘oh, look how KOOKY we are’ syndrome that often plagues ad agencies. Everything from the deliberately stilted acting through to the obscenely large truffle smack of people trying to get one over anthropomorphic meerkats. People who spend their days quoting Monty Python. That sort of thing.

I’m sure this will go down the route of ‘I love to hate it’ for a lot of people, but as I’ve said before on this blog, it’s hard to buy into a product, even if it is claiming to be free, when you feel you should be grassing up its protagonist to Crimewatch.