AdTurds – Adverts That Are Shit Bad adverts. Badverts

29Feb/1210

The worst TV adverts ever

AdTurds was three recently, so I thought I'd better mark the occasion. I thought about mocking up an award of an actual turd - yer genuine Dirty Fido - and sticking it on a plinth, then going to the headquarters of not just the creative agencies but the companies in question and presenting them there.

Then I realised I didn't have the time, money, inclination or Channel 4 camera crew - to follow me around filming me failing to gain access to even the lift of those outfits before being ejected by security - to make such an endeavour worthwhile.

So I created an overview of the worst adverts that have been on the television since AdTurds hit the web. The ones that infuriate me; the ones I think are kinda despicable; the ones I simply think are total shit.

These are they. Feel free to add any you think I've missed. But they must be the absolute nadir. The ones that have you reaching for the remote, for ear plugs, for that loaded Smith and Wesson you just know is in your desk upstairs, next to the half-empty bottle of scotch...

Confused.com

The motherload. A series of adverts pulling every trick out of the bag - including what appears to be sexual molestation in its most recent ad - to make you sad, angry or possibly even dead.

The CIA used to blast horrible noises - rabbits being tortured and the like - at South American socialists; understanding that hideous, repetitive noises can be useful in driving people legitimately out of their minds.

It revived that trick when torturing Guantanamo detainees, using a mindless nursery rhyme to send prisoners round the bend until they started babbling a load of made-up nonsense just to make it stop.

That's what Confused.com does with its adverts. Only there is no end to it. If you use their service the adverts do not stop. Imagine being tortured. Imagine that, in an effort to make the torture stop you complied with the wishes of those inflicting pain on you. And then imagine that they keep torturing you anyway.

That's what Confused.com does with its adverts. They may be non-lethal weapons. But have you ever taken a Taser hit? They're non-lethal too.

Read the collected Confused.com AdTurds


Cillit Bang

The original in the mind-drilling adverts that have exploded over the last ten years. Barry Scott. What a cunt.

Read the original Cillit Bang AdTurds


We Buy Any Car

Needless to say, this is an advert on a parallel with a binbag full of festering food remains and cat litter tray content bursting all over your freshly hoovered and washed kitchen floor. Then you fall over in the shit, get some in your eyes and mouth; stand up; slip on it again; bash your head on the corner of a work surface and die.

It's all of that. But I think it's how awful WeBuyAnyCar is in other respects that elevates it so:

Knowledge is power.

Read the original WeBuyAnyCar AdTurd


Duffy Coke ad

An advert so ill-conceived, so smug, so meaningless and so utterly dire that it killed Duffy's career stone dead.

In fact it was so bad that the fallout also killed Keith Duffy's career stone dead - and he had nothing to do with it.

Read the original Duffy Coke AdTurd


Haribo

Try-hard stupidity tooth-rot misadventure.

Read the original Haribo AdTurd and the post on Haribo winning the public vote to be crowned worst advert of 2011.


BMW

BMW has a little bit of a brand problem - the public think they're cars bought by dicks. And while that may not be true it's not something you want to court. Why, then, show off two people who seem photo-fit descriptions of the word 'dick', smugging on about their brilliant lives?

A quite astonishing brand misfire.

Read the original BMW Lunds AdTurd


Iceland

Bad for a long, long time now - but who was your least favourite front person? Katona? Biggins? Donovan? Or Stacey Solomabs (as she's know by several AdTurds readers)?

For me Donovan was the front-man for the most offensive of the lot - an insane trip-fuelled odyssey through a nightmarish Lynchian world that provided an insight into what it might be like to experience a particularly vicious acid-induced mania. Genuinely hellish.

Read the original Iceland / Donovan AdTurd


BT

Kris Marshall never seemed a particularly charming feller to me - before the BT adverts he was chiefly known as a man who played an absolute bell-end in vile sitcom My Family. So, what better person to front your new, decades-long TV ad campaign?

Not only is the unlovely Marshall fronting these ads - he's pitched into a baffling, awkward step-family situation that someone at an ad agency obviously thought would be a neat reaction to the decline of the nuclear family. The end result is an advert that even nuns despise.

Read the original BT AdTurd


Wonga.com

This is another company that I have a beef with, for what it does as well as how awful its adverts are. Hyper superannuated LOL! puppets playing techno and saying stupid things go some way to highlighting Wonga's target demographic.

Depressing all round.

Read the original Wonga.com AdTurd


British Airways

Fuck off you knob-ends.

Read the original British Airways AdTurds


Gillette

Has anyone, anywhere ever welcomed someone noisily and aggressively interrupting a quiet moment that requires some level of concentration? The shock itself of a sudden loud noise, coupled with a group of people rushing towards you is enough to drive one to unthinking violence. But then it gets far worse - a little turd starts patronising you about your grooming rituals.

I'd like to see other private moments interrupted in this way in adverts. Perhaps someone on the bog, cracking one out in a shower - or balls deep in the missus perhaps?

"Woo! Hello buddy - how's your sex? Have you heard of Yorkshire Tea?"

Read the original Gillette Proglide AdTurd


Barclays

It might be because Barclays spends so much time on making its rich clients even richer by locating arcane and unlikely tax loopholes that mean these people - people who have so much cash they literally shit it - can avoid paying taxes. Taxes spent on things like, oh, the NHS, schools and Portcullis House fig trees.

But it could also be these adverts, voiced by Stephen Merchant, that have been making people groan with the sort of nausea one associates with a migraine. The unwelcome, undeserved smugness of someone who doesn't know everyone hates them - precisely for being smug.

Read the original Barclays / Merchant AdTurd


Safestyle

The mullet, the shouting, the grin. Someone is going to Hell for this - with any luck the bloke in the adverts.

Read the original Safestyle AdTurd


VanCompare

Cut almost from the same cloth is VanCompare's pitiful effort from a couple of years ago - the original write-up of which resulted in a torrent of hilarious abuse from idiot Sweet fans.

I made it up with VanCompare's CEO in the end - but this effort featuring The Sweet's Andy Scott remains possibly the most inept advert to grace TV screens for some decades.

Read the original VanCompare AdTurd


Halifax

Halifax has been annoying you for at least ten years now, first with its idiotic staff karaoke, then with its quite hideous radio station series.

Halifax has dialled it back to a mere ten from that high point, but its choir adverts remain a thorn in the side of any sane TV viewers.

NB. This advert - of all the adverts on this site - is the one most frequently associated with the word 'kill' in comments and search queries.

Read the original Halifax Isa Isa Baby AdTurd


Boots

In the same way that air-raid sirens once signalled imminent disaster, the rat-a-tat-tat beat of Here Come The Girls now heralds one of the most debilitating series of adverts to ever grace television. Stick on a tin hat, head down to the Anderson shelter and await faceless death from above.

Watch the original Boots AdTurd


Littlewoods

Killing Santa and replacing him with a credit card. Genuinely nasty.

Now give me your worst adverts of all time

9May/110

April 2011 keywords – They’re us, that’s all

Another month, another spreadsheet of fear, ignorance and hatred in another instalment of which AdTurds keywords have amused me this time around.

What can we glean from this month's queries? Well, that people think Shane Richie is sporting a wig, or a hair transplant. That Paul Whitehouse is really dead - eh? - and that people think the actors who play the couple in the BT adverts are a couple in real life.

And who's getting it in the neck? Well, banks and price comparison websites, predictably. But the 'Here Come the Girls' meme seems to be really upsetting people: 54 people searched for the term '"here come the girls" fuck off'.

Elsewhere, people seem to share my opinions on the Cadbury's Creme Egg adverts; people seem to think Butlins is racist, Halifax seems to have a thriving MILF economy; the chaps from the Jacamo adverts are described in less than complimentary terms; and Cheryl Baker 'would get cock'.

All told, just another tiny window into the lives of these strange, angry, horny people. But you know the worst thing about these weirdos, these losers, these freaks...?

"They're us, that's all, when there's no more room in hell..."

April 2011 AdTurds keywords

"here come the girls" fuck off - 54 queries
paul whitehouse dead
why do halifax keep making those shit adverts
cadbury goo sex
rant about confused.com advert
that fucking halifax isa isa advert
bill steele tyne tees
butlins ethnic minorities
jacamo fat bastards
masturbating onto a digestive biscuit
what's happened to ian wright tv career
why armpits make women look hot
"cillit bang" "clit bang"
"fucking" "wearing" "slippers"
118 118 adverts well annoying
advert bemused chopped in corner shop
advert for tit cream
am i the only one fucking sick of adverts??
anyone remember the piano music from cadburys advert 80s
are butlins racist
are the people off the bt advert actually married?
barclays advert justin lee collins squirrel
bouncing breasts on confused.com advert
cadbury creme egg looks like cum dripping down face after eating a girl out
cheryl baker would get cock
chickswithdicks
chris kamara idiot
cock comparison website
confused.com advert... she pulls a laptop out of her vag??
confused.com horrible brand
davina mccall vagina hair
diana ross fucking
does everest institute intentionally choose annoying people for their ads?
fuck lloyds ts
fuck off bt
fuck off nat west
fuck you tsb
gillette fusion challenge advert guy is an idiot
gooing all over your mouth
granny fucking in halifax uk
halifax advert i want it to die
i want to run a website that is similar to confused.com
is paul whitehouse dead?
is peter kay nice?
is ray parker jr. homosexual?
is that lionel richie in the walkers adverts?
jacamo for fat bastards
jj burnel talks about having sex with steve strange - funnily enough I read an interview where this discussion takes place recently
lionel richie walkers advert is he real?
mature fucking in halifax uk
music dating site queen advert
nat west helpful banking fuck off
paul merton smug
proud sponsor of mums arrogance
shane richie hair transplant
shane ritchie wig
the inside of a creme egg is like the devils sperm
the new kimberley advert is one of the three girls a man?
the racist walkers advert
three babes pissing on citroen
bum and bum together.com

12Jan/110

Top ten AdTurds of 2010

Here are the top ten AdTurds of 2010, by traffic. They don't really reveal how searched-for the ads were - the VanCompare advert is only so high because several outraged Sweet fan forums linked to the site, urging other Sweet fans to attack me - but as a good rule of thumb, these ads must have stood out from the crowd.

That may be because people loved them, hated them or just wanted the chance to see them again. Either way, with certain caveats, these ads made an impression. Make of that what you will.

1. VanCompare.com

2. Bing adverts

3. Mars - John Barnes rap

4. Halifax adverts

5. BT - Adam and Jane 'What Happened Next' results

6. WeBuyAnyCar

7. Carlsberg's World Cup advert

8. John Lewis advert

9. Nike: Wayne Rooney - Caravan

10. Sainsburys: Jamie Oliver - Sausages

9Dec/109

The worst adverts of 2010

It's been a fruitful year for the AdTurds, with much more material that could be covered in the end. The Suggest an AdTurd feature is brimming like one of those huge tanks in the American midwest that's full of boiling, gaseous pig shit.

Go Compare ran away with this one in 2009 and like Cliff Richard, he's a very good bet for this year's gong too, despite stiff competition from Confused.com, WeBuyAnyCar, BT and Halifax.

There are dark horses too. Who saw the VanCompare advert coming? Or Bing's heroic attempt to take on Google with some monkey noises? Or the total horror of Jamie and Louise Rednkapp 'laaaahvin iiii...'?

And what about Spotify? That came from nowhere eh? But how many people who heard Jack Davenport's infuriating Alfa Romeo MiTo advert will ever forget it?

What has emerged is the likelihood that a genuinely hated ad is likely to find its way back on your box again and again. If people dislike it, they probably remember it; if the remember it, it's probably on the screens all the time; if it's on the screens all the time it's probably disliked. Hence your most hated ad is back on the telly again and again. QED.

That's unfortunate if you're driven to twitching fury by such adverts, but it seems increasingly clear that it's how ad agencies work. Bad adverts are, if you like, a necessary evil. But this is concentrated evil. One drop of that could turn you all into hermit crabs.

Read on! Weep! Vote! Smash yourself in the face with an iron! Watch again! It's the most annoying, most shit, most terrible adverts of 2010!

Halifax adverts

Effortlessly the worst series of adverts since, well, the last lot of Halifax adverts. While truly appalling, these adverts don't quite make me fear for the human race. They're like the Mumford and Sons, Tesco or Microsoft of bad adverts. Always there, always disliked, always shit (or mediocre at any rate).

But there are, to my mind, worse evils in the world. AdTurds readers seem to disagree, so expect this to go straight in at number one in the poll below.

Full disclosure: AdTurds has a bit of a thing for the blonde in the Lucky You advert.

Read the original entry: new Halifax adverts and Isa Isa Baby adverts.

Confused.com - Somebody to Love

After several failed attempt, Confused.com finally hit upon a character of its own designed to annoy the shit out of people everywhere. Only this isn't just annoying, it's also inept. A confused (ahem) message only serves to leave a bemused WTF rattling off the walls.

Imagine Confused.com's squiggly drawing thing being rather indelicately spitroasted by Gio Compario and Aleksandr Orlov and you have a pretty good metaphor for how their respective campaigns have panned out.

Read the original entry: Confused.com Somebody to Love

Marks & Spencer's Xmas Turd

Hard to believe now, but there was once something vaguely canny about these M&S adverts, before they fell in love with themselves so massively it's a surprise they don't simply have the cast frotting themselves on cashmere jumpers and gift packs of bubble bath.

This festive effort swith Peter Kay, Twiggy, Danni Minogue and some other people too dreary to mention is so smug that Piers Morgan thinks it's a bit much.

Read the original entry: Marks & Spencer Christmas advert

Thomas Cook Redknapp horror intersection

AdTurds has some inside information on this effort from Thomas Cook that suggests that it was responsible for more complaints than anything else the travel company has ever done.

That may or may not be true, but what is true is that Thomas Cook has a huge effigy of the gruesome Redknapps (who seem to exist purely in advertising these days) in its reception, no doubt now defaced by people driven to violence by Louise and Jamie's vile, whiny estuary voices.

Read the original entry: Redknapp Thomas Cook adverts

Bing clutch bags

Tasked with apparent no-win scenario of designing an ad campaign to humble Google, ad agency JWT struck a canny line with the 'information overload' line but went on to present it in the most annoying way possible.

I always thought it would have been better to have the information overload people spouting a load of gibberish about hot Asian babes too.

It's also problematic because the Bing engine isn't any better in displaying relevant information that Google, Yahoo, Ask or any other search engine in the entire world.

Read the original entry: Bing adverts

Dell treats Lollipop

On the face of there was nothing too annoying about this advert for Dell's laptops first off. But the sheer carpet-bombing ubiquity of the first few bars of the Chordettes track - particularly when it invaded Spotify - rendered it simply unbearable; and almost certainly used as a torture device in Guantanamo Bay.

Lollipop Lollipop Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli Lollipop....

Read the original entry: Dell treats advert

Josh T-Mobile

Pity poor Josh. Basically used and abused by a massive multinational in their doomed marketing campaign like a Thai ladyboy by a second-hand car salesman from Romford on his annual sex holiday.

Awful music, crap idea, poor chinless Josh. A powerful mixture of pity and contempt.

Read the original entry: John T-Mobile advert

Citroen DS3 John Lennon

The Citroen DS3 might have been the most enjoyable car AdTurds thrashed this year, but this ad featuring Lennon pondering the shitness of nostalgia and retro - in an advert that was all about nostalgia and retro for a car that was all about nostalgia and retro - was one of the least enjoyable ads.

Bonus turds for the affected out-of-synch footage too.

Read the original entry: John Lennon Citroen DS3 advert

VanCompare advert

The post that provoked nothing less than death threats, legal action threats and the infinite wrath of seemingly every Sweet fan on the face of the Earth.

All of that ended in a détente with the actual chairman of VanCompare and a message of good wishes to Andy Scott, believe it or not.

Still, this is possibly the most inept advert every to grace a television. Sweeeeet!

Read the original entry: VanCompare advert

BT family adverts

Perhaps the most unloved TV couple since Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood, Adam and Jane seemed to reach a climax this year in the 'is she or isn't she?' interactive campaign. Sadly the options didn't involve death or divorce, but whether Jane was pregnant or not (AdTurds readers suggested their own ending).

In the most stultifying spot of television ever, the answer was revealed as yes and somewhere in Scotland came the noise of John Logie Baird and Alexander Graham Bell softly weeping.

Read the original entry: BT advert - what happens next?

Go Compare adverts

AdTurds can't really find it in his granite heart to hate Go Compare. Annoying, yes, but no more than any Little & Large sketch from the 1987.

To complain of the rampant repetition; the sheer inescapability of Go Compare ads would be to complain about the ubiquity of grass, water, why the very air itself.

Still, a guaranteed big hitter in this year's poll - and maybe they'll finish it off with Gio exploding in gas, fat and hair after one 'whaffer thin mint' too many.

Read the original entry: Go Compare advert

Ladbrokes World Cup ads

Two of the most annoying people on television gibbering and gurning like idiots; an appalling campaign; distasteful subject matter; a soundtrack used in at least two different ads over the last couple of years.

Without Wright and Kamara is would be awful. With the charmless pundits it enters a new circle of Hell.

Read the original entry: Ladbrokes World Cup adverts

We Buy Any Car advert

Few adverts are genuinely hateful, but We Buy Any Car managed it this year with the advertising equivalent of having Fern Cotton blast an air horn into your face for 60 seconds several times a day.

Pretty much the nearest thing to a sonic weapon - a non-lethal weapon designed to disable victims by provoking vomiting or 'uncontrolled' defecation - that you'll ever see on television.

Read the original entry: WeBuyAnyCar advert

Alfa Romeo Spotify advert

Sadly, or fortunately, I've been unable to track down the audio of this bad, bad ad. Suffice it to say that this advert on Spotfiy was generating hundreds of tweets a day on Twitter, and none were positive.

Actually drove me to a Spotify Premium account. I've yet to work out whether this is sheer genius on the part of Spotify; sheer idiocy on the part of Alfa Romeo; a combination of both; or simple ineptitude. Either way it's abysmal.

Read the original entry: Alfa Romeo Spotify advert

Iceland 201 Christmas adverts

It was an oversight of massive proportions that Iceland's 2010 Christmas adverts, featuring Jason Donovan, were not originally included in this list, but an ad break that featured four or five versions of this ad recently convinced me of the error.

There's something genuinely unsettling about all of this. The insistence of it, the repetition and noise and the fact that the food all looks so horrible.

This isn't just an annoying advert. It;s an advert to give you nightmares.

• Read the original entry: Iceland 2010 Christmas advert

Vote for the worst advert of 2010!

Vote for your most hated ad of 2010 and we'll go an pelt the ad agency who wins with rotten fruit. And very hard stones.