Worst slogans ever

Advertising slogans. Why do companies think they need them? Do they think that we’ll remember them more? And putting them to stupid jingles as well!?? Stop it! Now! Here are some of the truly despicable and downright shit ones….

1. McDonalds – ‘I’m Lovin’ it’. Loving what? Stuffing your face with a years supply of salt in one go, with enough saturated fats to bring down Godzilla? Yeah, I fucking love doing that I do.

2. Red Bull – ‘Gives you wings’. No, it gives you epilepsy.

3. Argos – ‘Don’t shop for it, Argos it’. You mean, don’t bother going down to a normal shop and buying something that you can touch before hand. Instead, why don’t you find something out of a shitty catalogue, do the stock check yourself, go to one till, then to another, wait for fucking ages with toothless teenagers and ranting geriatrics and get something that falls apart in 5 minutes. Yeah, I’ll do that. See Michael McIntyre’s take on them – brilliant.

4. Vodafone – ‘Make the most of now’. Translates as “don’t bother using any common sense, just do it NOW! Fuck the consequences, spend money NOW! Get on your phone NOW!!”

5. Moet Champagne – ‘Be Fabulous’. Drink our champagne and feel like a celebrity! You’ll look ever so sexy and cool and guys will luuurve you. And then take advantage of you. Then do you like a tramp in the back alley.

6. Tesco – ‘Every little helps’. That’s right, keep spending your money at our stores. Every little pound you spend takes us closer to world domination. MWAHAHAHAAAA! (Time Trumpet’s take on this is superb).

7. Ninetendo DS – ‘Touching is Good‘. Er… are you sure…..?

8. Stella Artois – ‘Reassuringly expensive’ – Bollocks. I saw 6 bottles for £1 for sale down CostMart.

9. Always – ‘Have a happy period’. Seriously? The second biggest oxymoron is history. The first is ‘The Best of Boy George’.

10. The worst one ever: Zurich – ‘Because change happenz‘. I don’t even know where to begin with this one. Forget the crappy z at the end which is the most puerile and pathetic attempt at association and belongs in the exercise book of a 7-year-old’s ‘my first branding’ project; but ‘change happens’?? Are you shitting me? What else is it going to do? Everything ‘happens’ doesn’t it? They might of well just said ‘nothing is nothing’, or ‘do do do, da da da’ or some other tautology of equal nonsense. Whoever thought of that line was either high as a Dutch bellringer or as stupid as Forest Gump and Paris Hilton’s love child.

Any others which I’ve missed which also deserve to be ousted?

Natwest really really care about you

I hate banks. Not only are they responsible for the entire global recession, the reason why war happens and probably why it hurts when I shit, but they try and make out they look after you and care about your needs as a human being. Bollocks. Banks, like every other company selling a product or service see you as one of those comedy walking pound signs with legs and arms. If it’s not commercially viable to do it, then they won’t, its as simple as that. So, they will never go out of there way to help you out or give you money if there is nothing in it for them.

Have you seen those ‘Money Sense’ adverts on TV? Those vomit-inducing, pieces emotive propaganda may make you want to pick up your computer monitor/laptop and set it on fire, but bare with it. Just remember that they’re all actors (noone is allowed to appear in an advert without an EQUITY licence so you MUST be a registered actor – for ANY advert)…

What the hell has salsa dancing got to with my banking situation!? Anyway, I digress….

The point of this advert is to make you think that by going to Natwest you are going to get a warm fuzzy feeling inside, that you’re loved and they want the best for you – free, impartial advice. WRONG. Not only are the bank being investigated by Ofcom for breach of advertising rules, the AIM have accused them of false advertising. The Times has also exposed these troglodytes for what they are – pushy sales people trying to flog their products, and using people’s insecure financial situation as a club to beat as much pounds, shillings and pence as they can out of you before their bosses, RBS go under because the fatcats in the City have been gambling away the nations money like a Premiership footballer on speed. And then they have the temerity to dress it up as ‘real people’ talking about ‘real issues’, with smiling bimbos and pimple-faced Hull Polytechnic sociology graduates (who only got a 2:2) telling us that you’re fat enough not to by food for a week, or you could probably go witout heating for this winter if you just grew a pair. Well fuck off Natwest/RBS, you Leviathanical gobshites.

But its OK, Halifax are here to save the day. They’ll give you a £5 every month if you bank with them. Not only that, they’ll deliver it to you by forming a human pyramid. Wow. That’s sooooo good of you. A whole £5?? Ah, but I have to have £1000 or more in there? And put in £1500 every month? So basically you’re just paying me a LOWER rate of interest and disguising it as a free gift. Well gee Halifax, I think I might just pass if it’s all the same to you.

Don’t be fooled by banks trying to be good to you, its not in their DNA. The only people they will EVER let you speak to are the drones that walk around in LED-lit bank forecourts smiling at you as you walk in the door saying “can I help you?” but really don’t know anything; or telemarketers who sit in a call-centre in Timbuktu and read off a script calling you mister Smi-tee, “oh, you mean Mr. Smith?”; or if you’re really really lucky or complain enough, they’ll let you speak to a floor/account/fuck-all manager who gives the air of authority by having a basic grasp of the English language, but still tells you pretty much the same shit you’ve been hearing all fucking year. But this time, rather than singing at you from a surfboard or atop of rooftop, they’ll “tell it like it is”. Well next time they do, try and find that button on the remote that goes lower than mute.

ITV – Braaaaavooooo (slow hand clap)

So the curse of ITV’s sports coverage strikes again. Not content with fucking up the F1 coverage for the best season the UK has had in a while, they have decided to let their (presumably) ‘quota-fillers’ loose on the football coverage. This is what happened if you missed it:

Thankfully, the Everton FC website will let you watch the goal, without having the urge to play golf with dickheads dressed as tampons.

Apparently, according to Michael Grade, it was a problem with the automatic advert thingy. But who cares? You fucked up. Stop making excuses. It’s just another reason why adverts are ruining TV. Why would there even BE an automatic advert-shower machine? Its asking for trouble isn’t it? In their endless pursuit to cram as many adverts as they can into sports coverage (2 in the half time break is just plain wrong) they have ruined the TV viewing pleasure of the entirety of Liverpool (and Dublin if you’re a Liverpool fan). The BBC is not without its faults, but its sports coverage is second to none, and I don’t think even Setanta would have made such a momentous fuck-up.

And, incidentally, anyone else think that “E-on sponsors the FA Cup – bringing family’s together” is a load of old tosh? Particularly that one where the bloke gets tackled and the women run over and tend to him. Not only is it outrageously stereotypical to women, if any bloke goes over like that on a football field, he deserves a booking for diving, and a damn good shoeing in the showers afterwards for being a wet blanket.

Anyway, I digress. Shame on ITV. Here’s hoping you are stripped of all football coverage in the future, if only to get that reprobate Townsend off our screens. Cunt.

T-Mobile and the Dancing Twats

Mobile phone adverts. Fucking annoying aren’t they? First of all, they always have plinky plonky music, which will at some point in the future be a song by some ’singer-song writer’ (or tree-hugging wankers as they are sometimes known) and then have some sort of strapline like “we’re better, connected” or “touch each other” or “why the fuck aren’t you on your mobile!?”

Let’s take for example that advert for T-Mobile with all those stage school rejects poncing around on the Liverpool Street Station concourse. Watch it below, although if you’re a diabetic, perhaps you shouldn’t.

So, apparently ‘Life’s for Sharing”, which is another one of those incredibly annoying statements that doesn’t mean anything. This advert typifies everything that is wrong with modern advertising. By doing something ‘different’ or a visual stunt (which is rhyming slang for the guy who made this piece of vomit-inducing tripe), the adman thinks that that is enough to sell their product, or in this case, their brand. By associating something ‘creative’ or ‘cool’ with their name, and then labeling it with a generic nihilistic tag line, they are trying to lead us to believe that by association that if I buy their product, ipso facto, we’ll be that cool too. Did you fall for it? Did you rush out and change your service provider to T-Mobile? I certainly hope not. The majority of us will base our decision on the cost of the tariff, or if you are more materially inclined then which handset is being offered with it. Not by how many fucking dancers they can pack a London station with.

So, please Mr. Adman, treat consumers with a little bit of respect and tell us the information that we want to know (i.e. price, how many minutes & texts we’ll get) and don’t try and manipulate our behaviour with convert narratives of behavioural inclination. Or the next time you’re trying to get to your train on time, we will all line up in your way and perform the fucking Macarena and see how you like it.

Screenwipe’s take on advertising

To kick things off, and to refer to someone who can say it much better than I, below are links to Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe special episode on advertising. As usual, he gets it spot on – also look out for his top 10 cocks of advertising…

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3