AdTurds – Adverts That Are Shit Bad adverts. Badverts

30Mar/1010

Halifax adverts keywords

Halifax's message to customers and potential customers, at the moment, seems to be 'If you thought we were annoying before, you ain't seen nothing yet'.

I can't watch the Halifax adverts anymore, I simply turn over or leave the room completely. I'm virtually programmed to hate most adverts, but a lot of AdTurds readers seem to find a strange kind of equanimity when faced with drivel like this. Quite a few people actually like stuff like Go Compare, BMW Joy and Samsung Fucking Jet - the bloody idiots.

But no-one likes the new Halifax ads, the Google Analytics keywords prove it. Just about every keyword phrase is expressing total hatred for anyone involved in the ads. In fact, I've had to dispose of several comments because they're too alarming.

So, much as I did with the Duffy coke ad keywords, I've reproduced the search engine phrases for the new Halifax ads, they say it all really.

halifax adverts are shit
halifax adverts awful
bad halifax adverts
halifax shit adverts
halifax worst advert ever
halifax adverts crap
shit halifax ads
why are halifax adverts so bad?
why are halifax adverts so shit
ad turds halifax
annoying adverts halifax isa isa
annoying halifax advert
another crap halifax advert
appaling halifax adverts
awful halifax ad
awful halifax adverts
awful new halifax adverts
bad advert halifax
ban any halifax advert
bloody halifax adverts
crap halifax ad for isa
crap halifax advert
dancing in halifax advert
fucking awful halifax ads
fucking halifax advert
fucking halifax adverts
fucking shit halifax advert
fucking sick of halifax adverts
halifax ads annoying
halifax ads are awful
halifax ads are bad
halifax advert 2010 billboard
halifax advert awful
halifax advert hate mail
halifax advert is shit
halifax advert shit
halifax advert terrible
halifax adverts 2010 crap
halifax adverts are bad
halifax adverts horrible
halifax adverts shit
halifax adverts terrible
halifax adverts worst ever
halifax and barclays are the worst advertisements ever
halifax crap advert
halifax is shit
halifax isa advert weird
halifax isa isa baby shit
halifax make shit advert
halifax shit ad
halifax stop making bad adverts
halifax tv ads crap
halifax worst advert
hate halifax adverts
hate the new isa halifax adverts
how crap are the halifax ads on tv
how shit ar ethe new halifax adverts
i despise halifax adverts
i want to kill the people in the halifax advert
most hated advert halifax isa
new halifax ads are shit
new halifax ads how bad are they
hbos are shite

Tagged as: 10 Comments
27Mar/101

Banned policing pledge UK advert

This advert for the policing pledge has been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority for being misleading.

As it goes, I think this is a good advert, and thought the ASA's ruling fairly hair-splitting in its judgement - in that I thought the advert fundamentally correct.

The basis premise of the ad is that 80 per cent of the time of neighbourhood police is spent doing work visible to the public - this is actually true, but the ASA thought that people were too stupid to work this out for themselves.

What this does all show is that it's pretty difficult to present government pledges that are sufficiently divorced from political party pledges - where does one end and the other begin.

Anyway, a lot of fuss over very little in my opinion, but that's par for the course in the current politics of outrage pushed by the media.

Personally, I'd like to see another of these adverts, where a couple of cops from the Met stop a black guy for looking funny and then give him a good hiding. Misleading? Well, that would be for the ASA to decide.

24Mar/104

What are the most annoying advert characters?

Lists are very popular these days, in exactly the same way that advert aren't, so it should come as no surprise that I found an article titled The 13 Most Annoying Advert Characters of all Time today on my trawl around teh interwebs.

Lists like this are designed to capture the fleeting attentions of WILFers and other browsers, whose attention spans are probably shorter than those of people watching Go Compare adverts, so they have to reel you in.

This list is a good result: easily understandable concept; lots of images; very short excerpts; nice clean layout; 10,000 other 'article you may be interested in' links at the bottom among a dozen other calls-to-action.

It works in pretty much the same way that adverts do, ironically enough. They don't want you to buy anything (probably) but a few extra hits, a click on the ads and some capture of your data in the shape of emails wouldn't go amiss.

Anyway, the list in question is all US-based, so means nothing to me, apart from sighting the Pillsbury Doughboy, who looks rather like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man to me.

This site think a guy called The Noid was the most annoying ad character. Not as annoying as Barry Scott mate.

• What other annoying ad characters are out there? Is Tony The Tiger a twat? Were the Monster Munch monsters a bunch of dicks? Is the Nesquik Rabbit a complete and total ****? Let us know.

22Mar/101

Nestle should give up on PR – and become a corporate Millwall

You may have heard about something called palm oil recently. Palm oil is a first-generation biofuel -and-crop whose environmental impact per litre is roughly similar to about 50 atom bombs going off on the Galapagos islands.

The reason? It's pretty useful, and therefore in high demand from a number of sources, and therefore a very popular crop if you're a skint Indonesian farmer. Clear a few acres of virgin rainforest and you're away, selling your palm oil to people like Nestle, Unilever, Kraft, Colgate-Palmolive, L'Oreal and Cadbury - for use in chocolate, margarine and soap.

It's only just becoming obvious how devastating the uptake of palm oil, and several other crops used as food sources and biofuels, is. As a result palm oil has become a touchstone for growing biofuel and new-crop concern, with Orang Utans the poster boy for these movements, much in the same way that a drowning polar bear is used to raise awareness of climate change.

The result is this advert, featuring a bored office drone opening a Kit-Kat wrapper and chomping on a primate's digit. It's not subtle, and I'm in two minds about this sort of stuff.

On one hand it probably beats down the many layers of shielding and protection with which most people surround their brains, so as not to be exposed to the uncomfortable realities of their everyday lives.

On the other, it's easy for people to get inured to this sort of thing, and it turns people off from the message. It's depressing that people need to be 'turned on' to ecological catastrophes, but there you go.

Social media has picked up this ball and run with it, attacking Nestle's Facebook page. (As an aside, why does Nestle have a Facebook page? They've been one of the most hated brands going for as long as I can remember. What's next? A Facebook page for Chernobyl?)

Will it work? Well, maybe. Drag these companies into the spotlight and they tend to act with a little more vigour. There's some sort of palm oil round table that aims to take palm oil from certified sustainable sources. Greenpeace says nestle is dragging its feet.

On the flip side, maybe Nestle should just accept that it's always going to be the Child Catcher of multinationals and revel in it - like a corporate Millwall.

That bird in the logo could have a crossbow bolt through its eye; the Smarties slogan could be changed to 'Only Smarties have the answer, dumbass'; and five lucky Kit Kat eaters could win a trip to a palm oil plantation if they discover a dismembered Orang Utan finger in their mid-morning snack.

• See more here: http://vimeo.com/10236827