Television Advertising

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I wrote yesterday about do-gooders in government and other agencies who tinker with people’s minds and lives.

Perhaps I was too quick to criticise, though possibly not in some cases.

The thought came to me this morning when I realised there has been a tremendous increase in the number of television advertisements publicising online gambling sites and others inviting people to sell their unwanted gold and jewellery.

All these advertisements show smiling, happy people waving their bingo winnings or the wads of cash they have received for their jewellery.

They do not show the misery suffered by some of the poor souls who have logged on to gambling sites and lost their housekeeping money, or the folk who realise to their great regret that they have parted with treasured jewellery in return for a short-term gain at possibly less than the true value of the items sold.

While I am against the sort of ‘nannying’ this government has indulged in since it came into power, perhaps we do need to be protected from ourselves sometimes. And these sort of advertisements are a case in point where, like cigarettes and alcohol, maybe they ought to be accompanied by appropriate warnings.
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The Effectiveness Of 'Meerkat' Advertising

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Relaxing in front of the idiot-box last night, two things struck me.

The first was that many satellite channels seem to be showing more and more trailers for upcoming features in their commercial breaks. This, I assume, is due to the recession and a fall in advertising.

The second was that how many advertisements are wholly ineffective. Your eyes glaze over the pretty young women extolling the virtue of this or that and the many strange advertisements that don’t seem to relate much to the product being advertised. Indeed in many cases once the advert has finished, you are left wondering what it was all about.

Can you remember what the opera singer who floats up into the air is supposed to be selling? Or the woman wandering the park with her dog? Or the television sets that spring to life and move around town? There are many such instances where the advertising agencies have persuaded companies to invest in expensive adverts that achieve, in my view at any rate, nothing at all.

Contrast these with the ‘classic’ advertisements such as, for example, the Hovis bread boy or the ‘Bisto Kids’.

Or, much more recently, the hilarious meerkats fighting to protect their website from being invaded by people looking for cheap car insurance. How many people I wonder actually look up comparethemeerkat.com before moving on to buy insurance?

This latter shows how television advertisements can be both amusing and highly successful. And, sadly, often more entertaining than the programmes themselves!
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