I’m partial to Cider. You can now drink it in with ice in your glass, it’s a nice flavour of ‘orchard Alderman’ and you can sip it with your other middle-class pompous rugger-buggers in a beer garden at the local white-washed gastro-pub having paid £4.80 for the privilege. Once upon a time, Cider was the stuff that bearded, raincoat wearing, babbling tramps would swig from a 5 litre blue bottle, but since Magners had the ingenious idea of serving it with ice and marketing it at fuckwits, it’s now a completely different drink. Strongbow is no Magners. It’s not even a Bulmers. It’s still the common rancid cider crap that reminds you of when you were 14 years old swigging it cheekily in the woods with your mates. So how to market it in this age of cider-as-a-middle-class-drink? Well, if all else fails, do the ‘bloke’ thing.

The ‘blokey’ marketing however, has been done to fucking death. In fact it’s going beyond that. Even Death himself is sick and tired of watching half-arsed attempts at matchoism. I think it was the Coke Zero and Pepsi Max ads that tipped it over the edge (although it was teetering on the edge with the WKD ads).  So when Strongbow decided that they would advertise their rat’s piss with some sort of humorous, masculine, enticing 1 minute narrative it was clear from the start that it would neither humorous, masculine or enticing. What is it actually is, is fucking gashbag. Their attempt at parody is woefully bad. You can see what their trying, and yes, if it was a kid’s TV program then it might pass as suitable. But seeing as though their promoting a drink aimed at adults, it’s just ends up being something which you scoff at. The CSI-esque, 24-style visual metaphors are about as subtle as a Jedward-shaped strap-on. The granny-as-a-hard-arsed-bastard routine has been done and had never been funny – you only have to look at Catherine Tate’s ‘Nan’ to see how unfunny it can actually be. And worst of all, the black guy in the van. Ethnic minority quotas in advertising are so obvious these days that you find it odd when you see an all-white cast on a poster or TV ad. But this attempt really is groin-grabbingly blatant that is sticks out like a ginger at a Royal Wedding. In what world would anyone watch the advert and think ‘that black man in the van is contributing to the overall feel and story-arch really well and I don’t feel at all that he is anyway there to simply get this piece of shit through the advertising standards committee’?

Quota fillers are fucking everywhere you look in advertising. This is a slur on the advertising industry which is dominated by the same middle-class, white, chang-snorting, hooker-killing, bed-hair styling, rugby-shirt, chinos and boat-shoe wearing crimes against society. The cliques are such that the industry is filled with these cunts and they have no creativity what so ever in terms of representing diversity. Hence, the ‘quota-filling’ feel that is rife in the industry. Right, now where’s the White Lightning?