We all know how brilliant advertising is. But some ads make you agree with Bill Hicks. Tom Spicer, executive creative director at Arnold Furnace doesn't hold back about five of the most irritating examples to plague the noble art.
5) Operatic Go-compare insurance ad
Agency – in house
This came out in the UK about six months after VCCP had sensationally introduced the world to Aleksandr the Merkat and I can just imagine the conversations around the Go-Compare boardroom table. “They’ve got an ambassador, we should get one too. Something with a catchphrase that’ll leave people with a smile on their face and our name ringing in their ears.” Oh dear. Not content with being infinitely less funny, they managed monumentally annoying too. It is a great advertisement for why you should hire a proper agency though.
4) Test Match Ad-breaks
Agency – you know who you are
These are so annoying the urge to shove my foot through the TV whenever they come on is almost irrepressible. And boy do they come on. Ruining a perfectly good game of cricket they mug their audience at the end of every over. Every over! As if regular ad-breaks in Australia aren’t frequent enough they have to batter you with some crap about the colonel’s secret recipe every 6 minutes. Certainly it puts the brand front of mind, but only in a ‘so why hasn’t anyone ever fire-bombed them before?’ kind of way.
Having said that, it’s the best advert for Foxtel I’ve ever seen.
3) Patek Philippe print ads
Agency – unknown (I’d keep it that way too)
Most international ads suffer from a certain degree of wallpaperishness because they try to appeal to all of the people all of the time. This one somehow manages to be both bland and offensively smug. Is it the achingly American wardrobe? Or not one, but two eminently punchable faces? Or the sentiment that even after shelling out thousands of dollars on a shit watch, it still won’t be yours to own? You’d be hard pressed to find a better argument for male castration than this.
2) Cilit Bang
Agency – surely no-one would put their name to this?
Rumour has it when they filmed this they forgot the boom mic and Barry Scott literally had to shout to be heard. This ad is wrong on so many levels. Who the fuck is Barry Scott and why’s he shouting at me like I’m retarded? Then there’s the ridiculous claims that one featherlight swish of a cloth and the top of your oven is going to have the kind of shine you could do your make-up in. But the most annoying thing about it is that shit advertising like this actually works.
1) Pop up ads
Agency – C’mon, own up
Taking top spot (or bottom surely) in my pick isn’t an individual ad, but a whole genre. Pop-up ads. The problem with them is that successful advertising works by getting people to like you (or the message you’re peddling) on some sort of emotional level. Pop-up ads are doomed to fail because they interrupt you when you’re literally in the middle of doing something else. A thousand times more annoying than an ad in the middle of your favourite TV show, they are the flies that buzz around the shit none of us wants.
Tom Spicer
Executive creative director
Arnold Furnace
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