I get absolutely zero engagement on this at home, so here goes:
1. If there is a slapstick scene where something painful or potentially lethal is happening, it’s important that the viewer knows that the character involved is fine.
2. If a known TV personality is in an ad, it’s important that he/she is addressed by their real name in the script. That way, there is no need to pay IP royalties to the show from which they made their name. Cliff from Cheers advertised beer, pretty much playing the Cliff character – yet they were careful to call him John.
thecheshirecat says
If you’re struggling with small talk at home …
Junior Wells says
If a character in an ad is portrayed as inept, that character will be male.
Gatz says
There are new rules about ‘harmful’ gender stereotypes in the UK. Quitebthey they will be adjudged and enforced I have no idea.
https://www.marketingweek.com/harmful-gender-stereotypes-advertising/
Junior Wells says
Well,of course, for many years it was always the ditzy wife / girlfriend versus the can do sense of the male. That has been reversed down here, big time.
Moose the Mooche says
There’s actually a very nasty form of sexism at work in those ads where men are hilariously useless at cooking/cleaning/housework/looking after kids. The message is, “Ladies, men can’t do these things because they’re not made for it like you are… so get back in the kitchen, bitch!”
Junior Wells says
Yeah, there is some of that, but the more overt message based on research on who makes certain purchasing decisions is that men are fucking stupid.
Moose the Mooche says
I think this comment belongs on one of the threads about the new Pink Floyd box 😉
ivan says
*muttley giggle*
Black Celebration says
If any ad involves a group of schoolchildren, they will all shout the slogan in unison at the end. Adult presenter will be in the middle, amused at their youthful spontaneity.
Gatz says
Unless it’s that weirder than weird loo roll ad where children come up with inventive similes for the cleanliness of their anuses after using the product. Who on earth thought that one up, and why aren’t they behind bars?
Sniffity says
In ads for cars/SUVs, you will rarely see another vehicle on the road…no wonder they’re such a pleasure to drive.
salwarpe says
Oh yes! Or they will be sold as child protection devices in the urban jungle, following that much-aired fallacy “the best form of defence is offence’
JQW says
These cars will also carry registration numbers containing just symmetrical letters and numbers – ‘V’, ‘M’, ‘0’, ‘8’ and so on. Makes reversing the picture for left/right hand drive a lot easier.
Black Celebration says
Great observation.
moseleymoles says
Not only are there no other cars, but these drivers appear to motor exclusively on smootly-unfolding bends snaking through exquisite middle European mountain ranges.
This is because as a ‘mature product’ there is actually nothing that you can actually say in terms of product features that would distinguish a Golf from a Focus. Hence its all about the ‘feel’.
People carriers (Skodas/Vauxhalls) don’t get this aspirational mountaindrive vibe but instead a bright suburbia with harrassed but chirpy parent types, emphasising how owning one can get the kids football team to that away match or grandads lawnmower collection to the regional show.
Sniffity says
SUVs also tend to race through the shallows at a beach, cross gushing creeks on a bush track, or climb Hillary-like up steep rugged cliffs….unlike every SUV I’ve seen in real life which slows down to a crawl in order to go over a speed hump in the supermarket carpark.
moseleymoles says
Indeed, as the driver of Suzuki jeeps and landrovers back in the day I was a little disappointed on hiring a spanking new Seat Arosa on holiday this year, to find it had zero 4WD – so it’s just a tall car then right?
Rigid Digit says
Everyone has perfect teeth, a big smile, an the sun is shining.
And no-one coughs (unless it’s an ad for cough medicine)
Moose the Mooche says
Are you Morten Harket?
Charlie Barley says
Pay day loan companies laying down the seriousness of having to use their product by using animation, talking animals, cartoons etc.
Black Celebration says
Yes! We have a cute cartoon pig in NZ.
TrypF says
In toothpaste/toothbrush adverts, a woman (and it’s always a woman) brushing her already-frighteningly-white teeth in a slow, mad, grinning, Stepford Wife style that nobody has EVER DONE in the real world.
A frighteningly huge corporatation talking up the purchase of their product like it’s an act of revolution. “Break away from the herd, sheeple! Don’t let the Man tell you what to do…. buy the Mazda XJFD 5000”
Gatz says
Oh god, that ‘How do I keep my mouth healthy?’ woman who goes to her dentist, and is told, ‘You might want to try some toothpaste love.’ Possibly the most irritating woman in currents ads.
davebigpicture says
Don’t read this too close to a meal. Number 2 on this post ewww!
https://www.boredpanda.com/never-thought-would-have-to-say-grown-adults-health-care/
Slug says
I feel ill now. For yoghurt fans, there is one further down which helpfully points out that ‘Probiotics are different from antibiotics. Probiotics do not cure syphilis.’
Moose the Mooche says
Natural yoghurt’s a decent thrush treatment, though.
Beezer says
On the gob crockery front, there’s an ad that runs frequently on Talking Pictures TV (a freeview channel for old fillums) for denture fixative.
In it a lady of no great age (in her 50’s?) uses said fixative to unsurprisingly joyful effect. The last scene shows her late at night in a posh evening frock – eating an apple. She’s out on the razz with the good gear on. And she’s having an apple?
How often does that happen in real life?
moseleymoles says
More medical: pills and suppositaries to ‘get you moving’ will feature a (usually) thirties/forties woman who puts her cup of coffee down, picks up her bag and keys and saunters out the door to do some professionalising confident that ‘things are moving’
IanP says
As noted below, there is now much better representation of black and Asian people in advertising – even if it’s because companies have finally realised these people also have money to spend.
An exception to this seems to be personal hygiene products like toothpaste and shampoo where the person in the ad brushing her teeth is always white.
Slug says
In TV ad world , at least one out of every three couples are a mixed race couple.
As part of a mixed race relationship myself for 22 years, I suppose I should welcome this current trend but part of me feels it doesn’t actually reflect the real world. Yes, you see loads of mixed race couples in London, but mostly elsewhere we are still a rarity.
Mrs Slug, who is of Indian origin, used to jokingly refer to other mixed race couples as “aliens” because we would so often get stared at as if we’d just arrived from Mars. Not abused, just stared at. That rarely happens much these days, so maybe I have advertising to thank for that.
davebigpicture says
I’ve noticed that too. On our last visit to the US, I’m pretty sure I saw plenty of non white couples in advertising, not so many mixed race although I’d welcome confirmation or otherwise from the other side of the pond. Here, it’s as though advertisers are desperate to show every combination of race in families.
Gatz says
And thinks that’s the reason. Plenty of below the line commenters in the right wing press see this as a symptom of PC gone mad, but it’s really just trying to cover as many target markets as possible with a small cast in a 30 second ad.
Slug says
I suspect mixed race relationships are a much, much bigger deal politically in the US than in the UK.
In Blighty I think it’s kind of seen as ‘modern’ and enlightened (dare I say “cool” ? Perhaps that’s why we are flavour of the month with advertising companies) but in the States the issue of race is just so central to recent American history that it has become just that, an ‘issue’ on which one is expected to have an opinion.
Carl says
In group scenes featuring young people, whether they be single gender or mixed, everyone will be smiling or laughing, looking at each other, but no-one ever speaks.
Possibly dancing with arms held aloft, whether in a city, at a beach, in the countryside.
Moose the Mooche says
….or in the lounge of an enormous house that they have patently broken into.
Black Celebration says
I like TV ads that do something different. I am wondering if this is a UK ad with an Auckland scene at the end.
MC Escher says
In all ads fearuring couples the woman will be a couple of leagues above the man in attractiveness. There are NO exceptions.
fatima Xberg says
Virtually no-one is carrying (or using) a mobile phone.
Black Celebration says
Apart from ads about them, perhaps.
Jackthebiscuit says
Invariably teenagers are better at cooking than hapless fathers.
Twats.
Black Celebration says
Also one for us down here in NZ, Large corporations airing Australian-market ads cos that’ll do.
MC Escher says
Same goes for Euro market ads here. There is minimal screen time of anyone speaking, and if they do it’s a very short phrase. The lazier ones don’t even bother to hide the bad dubbing. It’s like they are contemptuous of our intelligence or something!
Sniffity says
Or else they don’t have anyone speaking, and dub a new voiceover tailored for the country it’s screening in.
davebigpicture says
I used to do some work for Unilever. All those fabric conditioner ads with the felt characters are used all over the world with different soundtracks.
illuminatus says
One word: CALGON
GCU Grey Area says
Car numberplates.
These often appear in a non-specific style and format, not pinning the car down to one country. Also, the characters chosen on these plates are such that the numberplate would read o.k as a mirror image. Such as MVM 181 on a right hand drive car, which would be 181 MVM and left hand drive if flipped horizontally. I suspect some print adverts do this.
count jim moriarty says
As noted by JQW earlier in the thread…
Beezer says
Men of all ages, young through old, always wear superbly co-ordinated colourful clothes.
Not the usual combinations that can either terrify livestock or fill you with impending dread at what you’ll probably look like in 25 years.
moseleymoles says
The loft studio flat lifestyle first seen in the ‘eeasy like Sunday morrrn’ Halifax ad is still going strong – adverts for betting apps, takeaway pizza, lager etc feature a flat with precisely this in:
Sofa facing an
Enormous TV
Coffee table (to put pizza box on)
Our gang of lads vault over the sofa before bantz over pizza slices/number of corners etc ensue.
er…that’s about it. Stripped wooden floors, bare brick walls with perhaps a bland large print. Where are the Billy bookshelves full of silver age Marvel and white cubes full of vinyl we ask ourselves.
Moose the Mooche says
…and no sign of the grown-ups who have presumably paid for it all.
Black Celebration says
Yes – watching sport on TV ad land involves being decked out in full replica kit and scarf – with face paint. All in neutral, non-specific team colours. They bounce around with smiley excitement as they sit down to watch the game. No, no, no.
Moose the Mooche says
Watching football always involves drinking lager from a can, as if that’s something anyone who isn’t homeless would choose to do.
NigelT says
Apparently all cider comes from lovely little farms with homely names and not from damn great factories as I supposed….
Black Celebration says
Yes! Here in NZ it’s more the craft beers. Hogwash like this appears on just about every beer pack that isn’t Heineken:
“Ken and Dave have been mates from way back. Back from when they worked together as kids on Old Scrots Farm – just down the way, a few paddocks from the milking shed. When they became young men, they developed a liking for the cold, golden stuff at the end of a long day on the farm. One day, Ken said to Dave – “you know what, I think we could bash out something better than this…whaddya reckon?”
I can’t go on. It makes me nauseous.
Moose the Mooche says
“And you know what? They spend almost as much time putting endless hops in this beer as they do messing about with their inevitable fucking beards”
JQW says
I visited one of my regular drinking haunts a few months ago, and came across an empty crisp packet on the bar from some previously unknown but very expensive ‘hipster’ brand. The blurb on the packaging was very similar, but it also included a printed section that named whoever was responsible for both picking the potato and chipping it.
I’ve not been in that pub since.
Sniffity says
Speaking of which, see crisps advertised on the TV, and you can guarantee there are so many in the packet that a small mountain of them are poking out the top.
moseleymoles says
Oh we are broadening out to more general marketing gripes here. Will not buy Innocent smoothies as though millenials may like to be talked to like a 5-year old (sales would suggest they clearly do) I don’t. WHYOHWHY off for my daily cold bath and the Daily Torygraph.
count jim moriarty says
I won’t buy Innocent smoothies because they are ludicrously, disgracefully expensive.
Moose the Mooche says
….have you seen how many friggin’ calories they are? The sugar content? Diabetes don’t come cheap….
MC Escher says
I wouldn’t have bought them because I don’t like them, as well as the mummy-knows-best blurb, but I won’t buy them now because they sold out to Coca Cola.
Mike_H says
Then of course we get into “small plates and cutlery in small hands make the helpings look bigger” territory.
Hamlet says
Adverts for holiday companies exclusively show a couple on the beach – inevitably running through the shallow water with two children: one boy, one girl. There’s never a third one legging it in the other direction.
The female adult in these adverts is always flawlessly thin, in a bikini that most real mothers with two kids wouldn’t entertain.
Slug says
Whilst the male adult, in his late 30s, has a six pack stomach, no moobs, and looks great in shorts.
Gatz says
The third one will be out of shot with his/her face in their phone, messaging their friends about how they never wanted to come on this stupid holiday in the first place.
Carl says
The beach is always deserted of any people other than the joy-filled family.
Pizon-bros says
It is always ten past ten when you sell clocks. The smile is important.
Gatz says
And it’s even true of digital clocks.
Sitheref2409 says
You’ve been reading SOS when it’s just your clock showing 505
(C) Del Amitri
Black Celebration says
Life Insurance – carefree and suspiciously good looking pensioners in linen clothing, laughing – or reclining on a hammock. This from NZ insurer Partners Life is a little more realistic “Being dead is easier when you have life insurance.”
NigelT says
Gambling ads (and I’m glad they seem to have been absent on Sky during the cricket) really wind me up. They seem to fall into two camps – the jokey ones where a comic actor or sports personality pitch up in a supermarket, sports stdium or wherever, thus surprising some unsuspecting members of the public with the latest odds or free bet offer that they would be bonkers to ignore. The others seem to be set in a dark netherworld where you are invited to outsmart those of a similar bent because you know you must be cleverer than the bookies, right? This world can be entered just by using your smartphone app, and then the doors open to riches beyond imagination.
Oh, and please gamble responsibly…..
count jim moriarty says
There has been a “gentleman’s” agreement that gambling ads will not be shown during live sport events.
Nothing to do with the fact that if they hadn’t agreed to do it voluntarily, there would almost certainly have been legislation to do it for them (which my MP, the notorious and loathsome Philip Davies – partner of the equally loathsome Esther McVile – would no doubt have attempted to talk out, him being both an utter arsehole and in the pocket of the bookies).
Black Type says
The back pocket, presumably.
fentonsteve says
When the family enters their hotel room the smiling kids excitedly rush past their beds, out onto the balcony and jump in the pool.
They definitely don’t slump onto their beds, reach for their phones and, without acknowledging anyone or anything present, ask “What’s the WiFi password?”