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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Some Ads Are More Evil Than Others

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Regrettable Juvenilia

15:56 / 23.09.02

The Most Evil Ad of All:

Seriously, this one isn't just evil in a "affront to all that is good and decent in the world" way, it's on a whole new level. It's that Army (ARMY!) advert with the girl driving the truck and talking about how really rilly rilly great it is being in the army, lawks what fun, and how her best friend (cut to shots of the two of them being all glam and girly, just to dispel the idea that to be a woman in the army you might have to be all macho or anything weird and scary like that) "doesn't get the same buzz" (cut to friend doing shit office job, and then sitting dejectedly staring into space in her lunchbreak - READ A FUCKING BOOK YOU TARD)... This "buzz", of course, being the buzz of contributing towards people being blown up into many small pieces or otherwise maimed.

The ad reaches its zenith of evil at the moment when the girl driving the truck is listing her typical cargo. Now, in the past, there has been the tendency for army ads to play up, at least some of the time, the British army's "humanitarian" role, all the bits of the ob which aren't really about killing and hurting and killing etc etc. But not here. Oh no. Here we get the driver cheerfully ticking off "bombs" and "bullets" as part of her cargo, complete with - and this is the worst bit of all - a little cartoon fizzing bomb logo flashing up on the screen.

I despair. "I'm Andy McNabb. I'm Andy McNann. I'm Andi Macdowell. Oh..."

17:06 / 05.03.03

I've got to talk about this.
It's an ad where the Jack the Lad, wise but matey man comes on screen and talks about how everything is conformity nowadays, we all wear the same clothes, drive the same cars, watch the same TV. So what is the answer? How can we escape being part of the mindless crowd?
BY GETTING A FUCKING MARBLES CREDIT CARD, THAT'S HOW.
He then handily points out how if you get a Marbles credit card you don't have to try to break conformity by dressing in a 'strange' way, or using one of those hideous pavement scooter things. Well thank the Credit Christ for that.

17:30 / 05.03.03

Yeah, all those army ads fuck me off royally. 'We get to drive big trucks and play with guns! Go us!'

Biz: I adore 'Thank the Credit Christ for that' - I will henceforth use that phrase at every available opportunity.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

17:52 / 05.03.03

The Navy ads on XFM are rilly annoying too (not to mention 'The Sex Lottery' ads)

Boring Person < answering phone >; Hello?
Navy Bloke; Hiya it's me your token black/Asian/female friend. I'm just phoning to talk about how I went diving in Brazil/learned to use some really cool stuff/went to see >insert cool band name here< play in New York last night and at no point had someone shouting at me or had to learn how to kill people that our Government is currently having a disagreement with! My life rocks! So what are you doing?
Boring Person; Ummm.
Navy Boke; Hah! See?! Being in the Navy is really cool, it's just like your coolest nightclub ever and I'm not mentioning the fighting, the discipline, the Institutionalised Racism or not being your own person. Byeeeee!

Fuckers. And the 'sex lottery' ads basically say that if you have any form of sex, you're going to get scrotal herpes and all your bits will fall off, then you'll go mad and die. Even if you just kiss.

18:52 / 05.03.03

the dad playing 'smell the family' advert now has a sequel, in the changing room with the blue sirts. frank, it would seem, just can't say no to a pub lunch.

15:22 / 12.03.03

This was an interesting thread to read, as I haven't seen most of the commercials you guys mention (different continent, and all). Many sound well horrifying, like that one for donating blood to save C-list celebrities?!?
There are some severely scary anti-marijuana ads running in the States right now, back me up fellow Yanks. There's one where a woman's looking at a pregnancy test, which is positive and a man who's ostensibly her husband is there too. You think the test's for her, but then the camera pulls away and there's a very young scared looking girl sitting in the bathroom too. And the voiceover says something about how marijuana impairs yr judgement. Wo!
The other is a girl and a boy at a party. The girl keeps toking up. Then later she seems way out of it, kind of laying back, and the boy leans over and starts unbuttoning her shirt. The camera cuts away from them and you hear her softly moan, "noo..." And the voiceover says, again, "marijuana impairs yr judgement." WTF?!? So we have here, that if you get high, you will get pregnant. And/or if you get high, you will get raped, which will be yr fault, for getting high. The latter ad doesn't even seem to be saying that pot impairs yr judgment so you might rape someone. Seriously, it seems to be on the oh-so-original blame the victim tip. Great.
I also love that as a country we have to have ads that basically say, like "be nice to people!" and "talk to yr kids!" It's like the 'be a good person' campaign. Jesus.
I'm so riled now. Imma go shoot my tv.
Oh, The Monkey--since you mentioned the use of "Lust for Life" in ads, I thought I'd mention that the (satirical weekly, for those who don't know) Onion had an article about companies using heroin anthems in their advertising. "Lust for Life" was mentioned, but they wrote that a bank was using "The Needle and the Damage Done" also. I tried to find it on theonion.com, but I don't think it was archived. Friggin' hilarious.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

17:31 / 12.03.03

On the subject of the marijuana ads, some of the ones that crop up in quality comics like 'New X-Men' are pretty fucking awful too. I almost feel like I should do a Bill Hicks at Wizard or something "If you don't approve of drugs then throw away all your comics 'cos those guys... real fucking high!"

18:06 / 12.03.03

Two other anti-pot ads:

A couple of guys in a car, at a drive through, toking up and having a good time stumbling through the giggles of ordering a cheeseburger. One hits the gas, and runs over a little girl ridinig her bike in front of the drive through lane. Lesson: Marijuana makes kids jump out in front of your car.

Then there's the best: This is bob. This is the joint that bob smokes. This is the dealer who sold the joint that bob smnokes. This is the cartel who distributes the pot that (etc). These are the innocent families killed by teerrorist funded by the cartel that sells the pot. Lesson: Smoking marijuana helps people fly planes into office buildings.

Offensive in the max, to say the least. There are some great parodies of these at detroitproject.com, a campaign to show how driving SUVs helps fund terrorism by guzzling fuel. Good stuff there.

I suspect the people in charge of the War On Drugs just don't care anymore. The quality control on these ads is just frightfully low.

18:13 / 12.03.03

The one that really irks me lately is an ad for vehix.com. Smug white aging boomer dad surfs vehix.com designing a car he'd like. Tells aging white boomer mom about how he'd like to get their daughter a car for when she goes away to college. "You're buying our daughter a new $50k coup?" she asks, in a tone quizical, yet lacking any shock over the expense, as though they do this every thursday after brunch with the Hennesy's. "No, I'm, giving our daughter our old station wagon. This is just a replacement vehicle." Its the smug expression and lack of concern over the expense that makes me want to run off and join the Black Panthers and start killing whitey. My house didn't cost as much as that car, you fucker.

00:49 / 13.03.03

The anti-pot rape ad seemed to be more of a message like "get stoned and you can get some!" aimed at the boy. I guess there's not much else they can do with the drug in question I guess.

Brigade du jour

01:14 / 13.03.03

DEFINITELY the worst adverts around at the mo are the ones on the BBC for News programmes ... I mean, is that advertising for advertising's sake or fucking what? I don't need to be sold the news, I don't need to be reminded of the news, it's on at the exact same time every fucking day! Except weekends when they piss things around just to climb on my tits. Anyway -

Actually I don't even watch the news and this I'm sure only compounds the problem, but if I did ... yeah, maybe I'd be even more pissed off because I WATCH IT ANYWAY YOU STUPID BASTARDS!

Mind you, Sophie Raworth and Natasha Kaplinsky always look really nice, which almost makes it okay.

14:32 / 13.03.03

I don't get the ads that connect drugs to terrorism...IIRC the only drug *truly* connected to terrorism is heroin. And when yr shaking, sweating, puking, and just in general seeing a dead baby on the celing, yr not gonna care about terrorism. As if some junkie's gonna see that and say, "well shit! I didn't know I was supporting TERROR! I think I'll give up the H!"

14:41 / 13.03.03

Not so much evil, more just really shit, but there's one for Colgate gel at the moment. The product combines the power of toothpaste with the minty freshness of mouthwash, and to demonstrate this an artist is flinging toothpaste and mouthwash at a canvas. It turns out that the masterpiece he is creating is a picture of the bottle of Colgate gel. That is just shit.

15:03 / 13.03.03

Aside from the drugs ones, How about those anti-smoking ads that are running in comics at the moment, claiming to reveal the secret emails etc. from tabacco companies..

Government sponsored advertising encouraging kids to question what they're told and to search out restricted documents and develop a healthy paranoia about hidden conspiratorial agendas, in an unending quest for THE TRUTH..?

Funny old world.

15:10 / 13.03.03

Oh, and there's this ad for some kinda razor blade which starts with a loud voiceover saying;

"THE RULES HAVE CHANGED! THERE IS NO MORE 'UP' AND 'DOWN'!"

And every single time it's come up, I've jumped out of my seat with a frightened "what the hell?" reaction.

I mean, what an incredibly strange pronouncement to begin an advert for razors with..

And the rest of the ad begs the questions a)what exactly do they do to razor blades to make them 'turbo-charged'? and b)why would anyone want to shave with something that's 'turbo-charged'? It sounds like quite a frightening prospect to me.

18:09 / 14.03.03

The anti-smoking ads are bad on purpose. They're funded by the tobacco companies as a part of a settlement with the government. So, they make them so bad that every teenager who is forced to look at that crap will light up out of a pure sense of rebellion to it. Hell, they even make ME want to smoke out of sheer spite.

00:16 / 24.03.03

1) Bloody Cable Company. All the ads have some horribly sickening cute little brat talking in a cutsey little voice about the horrors of dial-up internet. BUT THE WORST ONE in the series, she talks of how dial-up is "like the immigrants to Canada in history class who travelled a long time, got scurvy (yech!) on the way over and had their teeth fall out. Like dial-up you have to wait and you suffer."
They're comparing slow internet to immigrants dying trying to reach North America?!?

2) There's an election coming up, and the government ads make me cringe. Not looking at the TV, I can't tell if they're ads for Walmart or the govt. Worse is that they're along the lines of "we're putting all this money into education" when they've done nothing but cut funds for 8 years now...

15:13 / 03.07.03

Just thought that a special mention must go to the current UK ad for what I can only assume to be the new 'Vauxhall Paedo'. The one where the car splits in half, then when the 2 sections join back up again, the two 10 year old boys in the back seat have aquired a young attractive blonde woman in her early 20s who they both leer smugly at to the surprise of their parents.

I mean, is it just me or there something deeply fucked up going on there. It's like a Chris Morris sketch or something. All very odd.

18:23 / 03.07.03

Going back to the tobacco funded anti-smoking ads, what about the ones that say "tobacco is whacko, if you're a teen" The way that proviso is added, almost as if to say there's no problems with it once you turn 20. Fantastic.

Regrettable Juvenilia

19:08 / 03.07.03

Those "if you're a benefit cheat, we can track your movements / check your bills / bug your house / stripsearch your lover" ads. Especially for those people who really dug the 'Safe Beneath The Watchful Eyes' ads in busstops. Leaptopia meets the Mysterons. They make me physically sick.

09:22 / 07.07.03

Not really a complaint but the new Herbal shampoo shite ad, I went to school with the girl in that, very strange watching that when I was a bit wasted.

As for more evil ads how about those pizza ones that claim to be closing down small Italian restaurants, very strange selling point I thought.

No star here laces

09:39 / 07.07.03

I have to admit to a strange love of the John Frieda "Frizz-ease" ads. They fill me with a sense of confidence in the technological know-how of these Frieda people. I really, really believe in this product. "For straight OR curly hair".

15:25 / 29.07.03

That new fat-phobic Toyota Corolla advert with the swingers party or whatever - bunch of car keys in a bowl, it's a fat woman's turn to pick so all the men are quivering that it might be them, but she picks up the Corolla keys and suddenly everyone wants to go with her.

Also an ad for a digital camera - someone taking pictures out of the window of a vehicle, of some random woman going about her business, a woman who is none the wiser that she's having her picture taken. I just think that's disturbing.

11:29 / 17.02.05

*bump*

Thank God for google. I was going insane trying to find this with our search function.

I have a few new commercials to add to the heap:

1. That car one (Ford?) with the "famous fashion designer". Arrrgh god in heaven take it off. It makes me cringe every time. I hope someone was fired for coming up with this one.

2. Special K "Drop a Jeans Size in 2 Weeks!". Do you know how? By having a bowl of Special K for 2 of your 3 daily meals. In other words, by starving yourself. Way to go Kelloggs! Unfuckingbelievable.

3. ... I'm sure there's another one I really hate. Will see if I can remember it later.

12:58 / 17.02.05

Has anyone seen the new road safety ad (in the UK)? Basically, it opens with a close-up of a crushed pushchair. The camera pulls back to reveal the dented bumper of a car...a car that's come to a steaming halt on the pavement having careened off the road and - we gather - killed a young child. Camera closes in on the cracked windscreen and, finally, an out of date tax disc.
Over this a solemn voice-over intones, hypnotically, "If you see a car without an up-to-date tax disc, ask yourself this: If the driver can't be bothered to renew their car tax, can you be sure they've bothered to get insurance? And if they haven't got insurance, are the likely to have an MOT? If a car doesn't have an MOT, how do you know the car is safe...?'
Basically, people who dodge taxes kill babies. Grass them up before they get a chance to squash yours.

As far as I can tell, no one's really made much of a fuss about this.

14:26 / 17.02.05

Well, whilst I'm quite a fan of taxation (in theory), I have to say, that's pretty, bloody, appallingly awful.

For some reason I can't think which adverts are getting my back up at the mo'. I'm sure I'll remember whilst watching telly this evening.

lord nuneaton savage

14:55 / 17.02.05

I think it may be some kind of face cream being advertised, but the one where they say that there secret ingredient is BOSWELOX.
WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!

ARE PEOPLE REALLY STUPID ENOUGH TO THINK THAT JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING HAS A SIMILAR SOUNDING NAME TO BOTOX IT WILL DO THE SAME THING?

REALLY?
Oh, they are...

14:58 / 17.02.05

As far as I can tell, no one's really made much of a fuss about this

I know what you mean, I had a bit of a 'what the fuck' moment with this as well. Realistically though, isn't the message here, presumably that you as a citizen have a duty to scutinise the windscreens of all the cars on your street, or in fact of every parked car that you pass as you walk around anywhere from a distance of less than three feet, and then write down the licence plate numbers of any offenders, who if they live on your road and their car is out front could very well be watching as you take down their details in your trusty notebook, and then go home and phone... well somebody anyway, I'm not sure if the ad specifies, because otherwise you're effectively complicit in the murder of babies, a bit difficult to take seriously ? I mean I can picture Mrs Brady Old Lady from the pages of Viz being up for all this, but I don't know about anyone else.

Then again, perhaps I'm just being a wrecker and a force for conservatism, seeing as I'm not out there right now getting on with ruining what little semblance of civility there remains between me and the neighbours after that party last year - really, what do I know ?

And if nothing else, these ads could potentially be a real shot in the arm for car thieves -

" You were casing out that vehicle, weren't you sir ? "

" No, I wasn't. Before I was so rudely interrupted, I was attempting to ascertain whether it's owner was a potential child-killer, worse than Harold Shipman, who after all only offed the old and doddery, who, while apparently being a bit more vulnerable to being hit by a car than a kid in a pushchair, since they don't usually have someone to wheel them about the place and keep an eye on the traffic, don't seem to play all that well with the relevant focus groups, the losers...

" And if you think about it, officer, all I was doing was your job for you, and if this is all the thanks I get I'd like your name, rank and number, closet kid-killer that you obviously are. I shall be writing to my MP... "

15:03 / 17.02.05

well, we don't know the numbers do we? maybe there is a statistically significant probability that a car that hasn't been taxed also hasn't been MOTd. i think (in a very very vague way) that i've heard reports stating taxless cars are x-times more likely to cause an accident, so maybe it's fair enough. lately i'm freaking me a bit to the speed limit one where the dead child kinda morphs back to life - the bit where her broken arm fixes itself is nasty.

the deagostini ads have been brilliant this year, nothing quite matching the sublimity of last year's 'i love horses', but from 05's crop the 'war movies' one (close up of david niven going 'kill em') is certainly a classic.

15:53 / 17.02.05

WITH 'ARTY' DRAINED COLOURS, SLOW MOTION SHOTS OF KIDS RUNNING AROUND AND MODELS SITTING IN COFFEE SHOPS AND A VOICEOVER BASTARD MAKING 'MEANINGFUL' OBSERVATIONS ABOUT MY LIFE!!

See, that's like me, only with pharmaceuticals. Of course, I'm neither disabled nor elderly, but everything I watch seems to think I am. You know, maybe I am those things...

THEY LIVE!!!

16:34 / 17.02.05

nothing quite matching the sublimity of last year's 'i love horses'

I was also a big fan of that one, and was particularly encouraged by one of the featured articles - a step-by-step guide to 'Mounting smoothly'.

03:31 / 18.02.05

Ok, I'm not sure how many of you have Directv, but their new promo ad scares the everloving fuck out of me. It shows a guy progressing from childhood to old age while passing from room to room during which he is constantly bathed in the loving glow of TV... the voiceover goes something like "It's a part of us, we remain loyal to the very end..."

That "loyal to the very end" bit is pretty much verbatim, by the way. Eeek.

08:06 / 18.02.05

Fuck off Ikea

10:17 / 18.02.05

I think it may be some kind of face cream being advertised, but the one where they say that there secret ingredient is BOSWELOX.

I have a theory about this one. It sounds like a word someone's mum would say in place of the word 'bollocks' (example usage: "Johnny's talking boswelox dear, he isn't really going to beat you up after school") and I think whoever worked on that campaign suggested it as a selling point purely to entertain their family...

Withiel: DALI'S ROTTWEILER

13:19 / 07.06.05

(Apologies if there's some etiquette point on resurrecting ancient threads that I've somehowe missed)

Apart from *everything by Jamster ever*, of course, it's the bastarding adverts on Classic FM that really get to me. Not that I voluntarily listen to the "Smoooothh passage to the afterlife" station, but during the unfortunately-quite-frequent times when I have to, the adverts really get to me. And the reason is this. They fucking.cut.the.adverts.at.random, and often play the same one over and over again. (I assume this is to prevent you just tuning out)
So your typical ad break will sound something like this:
"By donating to JudaeoChristian Aid, I helped to sponsor Gerald, a poor Lithuanian boy, to b-LOVE HORSES, BEST OF ALL THE ANI-o you get tired of those stereotypical youths with their nasty hoodies and sexual liberation? Buy this week's Mail on Sunday, and get a free truncheon, which which to-LOVE HORSES, BEST OF ALL THE poor Lithuanian boy, Gerald, a poor Lithuanian boy DAIIILLLYY MAIIILLLLOVE HORSES" Something along the lines of Finnegans Wake, as written by advertising executives keyed into the right frame of mind by having been kept in a urine-smelling room and fed only Werther's Originals for several months.

/twitches and froths

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