AdTurds – Adverts That Are Shit Bad adverts. Badverts

I thought it was a dating site until it reached the end. Confused? I most certainly was.

I think it’s saying that confused.com can find you somebody to love, after comparing a load of other somebodies first. It’s shit.

This ad appears on the TV just like a grey cloud full of rancid piss ready to shed its load on a sunny day at the orphanage. I want to see Cara and her cult covered in petrol and burnt. Please make it stop.

worst review ive ever read

Oh, my poor, sweet…um…confused man. Of course it’s an awful, pititful, hateful and irritating ad by any artistic standard, or by any apparently sane marketing strategy. But then so are the horrendous, unfunny fat-italian-opera-singer ones, and the inexplicable meerkat ones (entertaining?? hey, whatever rocks your boat).

But you’re all COMPLETELY missing the point. The point is to BE as irritating as possible – that way people will remember you. I loathe the gocompare and comparethemarket ones, too, myself. But all three are competing for tastelessness, pointlessness and irritability – the most irritating will be remembered first. When people sit down to find car insurance, say, any price comparison site will do – they all come up with much the same results, there is little brand loyalty involved in this business. So all an ad seeks to do is make their one the first one you think of. It’s exactly the same strategy as the similarly pointless 118 118 ads – confuse and irritate people into remembering THEIR number first. Geddit?

Ouch!

Patronising? This from a man who sets himself and his personal taste up as a fit-to-be-respected (or at least interesting) arbiter of what is good and what is not in the advertising business, yet thinks that phrases like “Incoherent shitheap”, “acting like twats”, “whatever she’s fucking called”, “fucking abysmal advert”, “just what the fuck is all of this about?” add something to what could be an interesting discussion?

It is a good rule of thumb that the more often you use generic terms of abuse, the less effective they are. A hundred thousand websites carry a million posts full of “fuck” this and “shit” that. It’s normally a sign of someone who can’t (or can’t be bothered) to write any more imaginatively. You obviously CAN if you want to, yet choose to dumb down, rather like Emma Thompson or Ben Elton who famously suddenly acquired more street-cred accents in the 80s to show they were young and in touch. If that’s not patronising I don’t know what is. Why not raise the bar? Let the anonymous posters use the lazy, all-purpose (and thus indistinguishable) four-letter adjectives in their one-line posts?

Smug? Your railing against the ad is full of stuff like “all so dire”, “appalling”, “vaguely pitiful”, “utterly hateful”, “stupid website”….in my view, those sound like the words of a man who is very satisfied with the rightness of his opinion. Oh, and for your information, though I hated myself for being so manipulable, I AM adult and I DID cry at the John Lewis ad.

But back to the matter of the confused ad itself. You asked the question “just what the fuck is all of this about?”. I attempted to tell you. It’s not a nice answer, but in an inevitably capitalist society it’s the only one that matters. Confused.com don’t care about brand image, or high-falutin’ taste and industry awards, or whether somebody thinks for a few seconds they are a dating site. All they care about is that you remember their name, for the reasons I’ve explained, and that their website is functional and user-friendly. TV advertising is very expensive, and if it didn’t work, they wouldn’t do it; their figures presumably tell them it does.

It’s sad that is so. I’d much rather a world of high production values and beautiful imagery – or at least a bit of wit and originality, or even brand-image logic. But in the world of the internet, TV advertising is hanging on by its fingernails. What’s left of it can go choose to go down one of several routes – this is the irritating/cheap-and-cheerful pathway, and unhappily it works. Not to bring high-effectiveness and low-cost into the equation (and the discussion) is – as I’ve said – rather to miss the point.

Ads are no longer made to entertain and please the intelligent and thoughtful (if they ever were) – they are made to make money from the less intelligent and less thoughtful. Deal with it.

Good answer, Robin.

Yes, I guess I’m not a blogophile: I can get depressed about the consequences of feeding the beast of simplistic, kneejerk, angry views (even when entertaining). Speaker’s Corner or the Saloon Bar had a physically limited influence – clever blogging can ultimately influence many millions, and that does worry me as a general principle – I’m not talking of this site. But then I am very, very old.

I came here through a google search for the song, strangely, and I should probably have slid out as quietly as I’d slid in. But I guess I like to rant and be heard as much as the next guy.

I’ve much enjoyed the exchange, actually, and as far as I’m concerned you’ve entirely won the argument. In the context I’ve been talking complete bollocks.

Good luck and good blogging.

Ossie

I like it.

So there.

v true – i’d rather nail my head to the floor than use confused.com

Big hairy balls.

what is all this aacidic commentry on this ad ? what is it that everyone hates ?
its just another ad isnt it ? Ive seen worse,alot worse.
some ads are so obscure in their direction,high profile,with twists and turns in their content
one doesn’t know even at the end what it is they’re selling.
this one is a funny attempt at least. The most annoying ads are bloody settees and beds
just how many times do these companies think we gonna but a settee,the sale ends saturday
because we want to start another sale to annoy you all with.
in comparison Conf’.com is mild.

I CANNOT stop laughing! You are comedy genius!

After seeing this and becoming annoyed, my google search directed me here. The other confused ads didn’t annoy me, neither did the “WONGA!” bloke in envirofone adverts.
But this has really pushed me. The stupid hair. The crap singing. The stereotypical soul “sisters” who have swinging bosoms. The latest one is a cover of Chain Reaction. The advert must have lasted for 45 seconds, which was enough time to come here.

Something I’ve noticed recently is, the ‘creatives’ of the UK – (commercial advertising, television programming, film, etc)…are all fucking shit at their jobs. Everything is so lame and uninspired. Turning on T.V is just plain depressing. Bad sitcoms and bizzare adverts, advertising services you’re not looking for. This site’s good though, it’s sobering synacism is very healthy.

AH, this old chestnut. I must say Dara, it’s remarkably insightful to have come up with this ‘it’s annoying therefore it works’ line of thought, a line that I’m sure has never crossed anyone’s mind before in the history of the world.

http://www.adturds.co.uk/2011/03/youre-writing-about-their-adverts-its-what-they-want.html

http://www.adturds.co.uk/2011/04/your-favourite-price-comparison-website-is.html

http://www.adturds.co.uk/2010/12/people-think-confused-com-is-now-a-dating-site.html

For what it’s worth I’ve never met anyone who likes the Confused.com adverts; once spoke to someone who works at Confused.com who told me that everyone at the company hates it, apart from those at the marketing department; and can point to annoying adverts that have not been a success for anyone concerned. 

Still, since you and your mates like it I suppose I must be wrong.

hahha,what you as well! forget the petrol too expensive.but burnt definatley whilst in song

Ultimate irony? My wife is looking for travel insurance and just asked me “What’s the comparison site that uses ‘Somebody to Love’ in the tv ad?’

So, I googled it and found both the Confused.com site and this one. Which means that the ad worked (because, even though I couldn’t remember the name of the website, I could remember enough to google it.) And it also means that I’m here now telling you that, as much as the production values might be non-existent, it worked. Maybe someone at Confused.com had the deep foresight to say ‘Look, it doesnt matter if they remember the website name, they’re online, they can run the song through a search engine.’ (As I did). Maybe they do understand their market and how their potential customers interact with the web.

Just a thought.

What a pile of shite!!!!