Ford's agency in Australia should be fired! If you watch a lot of cricket over the break (and I do) you are also forced to watch a lot of commercials. Id like to nominate three commercials for a special citation for causing the maximum discomfort for the largest number of viewers most often during the summer viewing season. (I'd like to hear yours...)
First we have coming in at third every commercial for the post Xmas sales. No one got any communication value from their investment in air time and cheap vomit bombs on screen because everyone was doing the same thing. So the viewer got the message: pretty well every outlet is having a mega-humungous sale. SO why advertise the fact if they can assume you're part of this frenzied orgy of discounting anyway? So next year don't waste your money. Just put up the sale signs and open the doors.
Second place goes to the federal government's "Every cigarette is toxic" campaign. Guys, when will you wake up to the fact that smokers will not be scared off by nanny state finger waggling. In fact smokers are in most cases intent on self harm due to their self loathing and lack of self love. You telling them it will kill them is just what they want to hear. Government advertising is uniformly stupid because governments are uniformly stupid. And by governments I mean ministers who dictate the message and the medium. If they would leave it to the experts surrounding them and not indulge in amateur advertising antics...
But our big winner for 2005/2006 is Henry Ford's crowd of bunglers, for their 2005 Runout Sale campaign. I single out for special mention the weaklings in Ford's agency who let them run this stupid, stupid campaign. It features a marlin fisherman jumping overboard just when he's hooked a big one and presumably swimming to shore then running into his nearest Ford dealership, trailing seaweed, to buy a crappy out of date Ford, while someone in a blue coat, presumably a Ford employee, is by turns applauding them and preening by stroking their lapels. A woman runs away from the delivry table having just given birth, and streaks in to a dealership. WHere's the afterbirth? That's what I was concerned about, not the bloody cars. Can you hear the mentally-deficient account director seling in the concept to his or her equally challenged client? "This script says, contrary to the real situation, that your crs are popular and you're not having trouble getting rid of them at all. Look, real people running into the dealership, just like they do every day... because Ford cars are so popular. Get it?" Now how hard is that to sell? No, because clients are so up themselves about their product that they'll buy any old shite that panders to their insecurities. And agencies know it.
If the Advertising Standards Authority were to live up to its name just once, it would ban our three winners or at least banish them to the regions where nobody cares what they watch. They think informercials for pimple creams and other snake oil is actually real programming out there. They have no self respect. They deserve what they get. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go. Let's watch some shite on tv...  ¶ 6:50 PM