Vodaphone advert: A ‘touching story’
What a selfish little bitch!
Wait until tomorrow, when your Dad's finally closed what's obviously the most important deal of his entire fricking life, a life he's probably devoted to bringing up his spoilt brat of a kid, lavishing undeserved attention and praise on you while you groom your fucking horse and get treated badly by blokes, because the weird relationship you have with your father has comprehensively fucked you up when it comes to the opposite sex.
And you, Dad, grow some fucking bollocks. I'm sure your special little girl has half a dozen clones she can discuss SATC, Glee and how shit men are with.
But mainly you, you snivelling little Daddy's Girl. Of course he left you; you have some disturbing electra-complex relationship with your old man.
Welcome to a life of disappointment, ruined relationships and co-dependency issues, concluded by an unhappy marriage to a man 30 years your senior.
• Ways to improve this advert: He drives to her car, slaps her around the face, tells her to grow up and goes back to his meeting. I bet there's not a person alive who believes that's not a better ending
Wayne Rooney’s caravan – Nike advert
We've had a shit world cup advert already, but Nike has come along with a good one to balance things out a bit.
There's a full three-minute superstargasm version of Write The Future that's a bit hard to swallow, and the 'making of' vid is like a parody of art-advert wank, but this little 30-second spot about a parallel universe version of Wayne Rooney is brilliant.
While the ad's director can think of only 'street-wise' by way of praise for Rooney - and the making-of vid shows Rooney's sole observation on the making of the ad to be that it was so cold he had to wear a coat - the sight of a hugely-bearded, down-at-heel Rooney genuinely amused me.
And the recollections of two trailer-park types on Wayne obsessively practicing the fateful move that resulted in his downfall over and over again, and the day Rooney emerged from his caravan to be faced with a huge picture of Franck Ribery, his nemesis in the ad, are spot-on too.
So, all very good. But rather similar to Reebok's 'Other careers' spots well over a decade ago.
Those ads uncovered the hiterto undetected deadpan talents of Andy Cole, who might have turned out as a chip-shop attendant if he's bought a packet of fireworks instead of a pair of Reebok footy boots.
Talent borrows etc.
NB. If anyone can locate a version of the Andy Cole ad I'd love to see it again. It really was very funny.
Cadbury’s Crunchie Rocks advert
'That Friday Feeling' is a phrase that's passed into the vernacular - transcending the advertising medium to make the leap into the everyday.
Crunchie, despite being sickly-sweet and horribly sticky, is synonymous with the sensation of fun that only an oncoming weekend can truly bring - or at least the saying is. 'Thank Crunchie it's Friday', we used to say.
Think of those great 80s Crunchie ads, that still get an airing from time-to-time. They are, in a way, timeless and now bring with them a healthy dose of pleasant nostalgia.
It shouldn't be too difficult to update that meme, to make it relevant for new age. But how to communicate that sense of helpless excitement that a Friday Feeling should truly inspire?
Ad agency Fallon, which recently won the Crunchie brief, think that this is best done by a bloke doing some of that shit, ironic karaoke that's currently fashionable to the tune of Tina Turner's We Don't Need Another Hero. It's funny, see?
Is it actually bad? I dunno, but I can't even summon up the energy to have at it; it's simply so boring. It's a kind of been-there-done-that ad that's so tried-and-tested it summons up nothing more than the ennui of a Sunday afternoon, hungover and mindlessly watching shit TV on Channel 4, waiting for Monday to inevitably roll around.
And, frankly, I kinda doubt that's the kind of vibe that Cadbury's was aiming for.
Crunchie Rocks advert
• Compare and contrast with this delirious 30 seconds of animated brilliance from two decades ago.
Classic Cadbury's Crunchie advert