Time to fire the ASA

After reading an article that listed  the Top 10 most controversial ads, I’m even more convinced in my belief that the Advertising Standards Authority ranks amongst the most useless of organisations, and is chaired by a bunch of old women with nothing better to do, and no grasp of reality.

The top complaint (774 complaints) was about anti-smoking ad, of which we are told: “Many of those who complained said the adverts were offensive, frightening and distressing. The largest group of complaints related to the poster ads and the effect they could have on children.”

That sounds to me like the very reasons for creating and showing the ads, it was (or would have done) what it was supposed to do if the old women at the ASA hadn’t been around to interfere, and they proved they have no grasp of reality, when they upheld the complaint instead of laughing it out of the room.

There’s a time for “glove’s on” and there’s a time for “glove’s off”, and this was clearly  a time for “off”!

2. TRIDENT GUM - 519 COMPLAINTS

Upheld on basis of unintentionally offending a significant minority.

3. RUSTLERS - 219 COMPLAINTS

Partly Upheld as it was shown during a children’s film.

4. MFI - 217 COMPLAINTS

Upheld for showing actual domestic violence.

5. QUORN - 181 COMPLAINTS

Not upheld.

6. COCA COLA GREAT BRITAIN - 180 COMPLAINTS

Not upheld.

7. BRITISH HEART FOUNDATION - 122 COMPLAINTS

Not upheld.

8. JOHN WYETH & BROTHER LTD - SMA NUTRITION - 109 COMPLAINTS

Not upheld.

9. PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ANIMALS (PETA) - 68 COMPLAINTS

Not upheld.

10. NEWS GROUP NEWSPAPERS LTD - THE SUN - 56 COMPLAINTS

Not upheld.

I’m not wasting time repeating the finding, you can read the original article for that, but look at the spread of numbers: 774 for the top item, down to 56 for number 10.

Given the population of the UK, isn’t it ridiculous that the old women at the ASA can influence ads, with only a literal handful of complaints? And just who are the complainers, individuals with nothing better to do than watch adverts (hell, there’s so many now I feel I’m having to work hard to avoid them) or is it groups with agenda’s, and reasons to make these complaints and have the ads pulled?

As I intimated at the start, the ASA’s little more than a joke, with no real purpose and doing nothing to maintain any sort of standards in advertising.

Witness the dreadful USwitch advert that typecast a black Gospel choir with a a bunch of black people miming (badly) to the words - I can’t believe that rubbish hadn’t generated more complaints than the above.

Then there’s the mobile phone and texting adverts that areclearly little more then procurement services for prostitution or sexual services. Near naked teenage girls filmed in extreme close-up with husky voice-overs encouraging the viewer to text and chat and meet etc etc, or to receive videos. If you are an insomniac, then you get bombarded with this  trash all night. Item 10 above, the Sun ad, is laughable by comparison.

As for standards, if the ASA was really maintaining any sort of standards within the industry then they’d do something about the sponsor tags that are repeated incessantly between the programme breaks and the actual adverts. On long programmes or films, these are little short of brainwashing, being repeated 12 or more times in a single hour when a particularly popular programme is broadcast.

The ASA should do a proper job, or shut its doors and stop being paid to do very little of any value.

F1 on ITV - advertsing gone daft

F1 on ITV has to rank as the one of the worst slaves to advertisers, possibly coming second only to all the crime/drama programmes ruined by the endless AXA sponsor tags that ITV sold its soul to.

Qualifying has been mode boring enough by the change to this daft multi-session format produced to supposedly make it more ‘interesting’ (for which read ’short sessions to allow adverts to be jammed in without having to find a gap in all that inconvenient qualifying stuff that is getting in the way of the ad breaks’), and what used to be a programme that took little more than the old ‘Qualifying Hour’ has now grown into a 2 hour plus grind of  tittle tattle about the drivers, teams, managers, and the sport (and of course, the ad-breaks).

Selling out to money-mad Sony as sponsors was never going to be good, and we now have the pleasure of eac ad-break being punctuated with a plug at each end for ITV, F1, some driver’s face, Sony, and some crappy piece of music they’ve chosen, which appropriately features the word ‘Madness’ in its interminably repeated showings.

The programme segments aren’t even worth staying still long enough to watch in some cases. I made the mistake of getting up to investigate a noise at my door just as one part of the qualifying programmed began after the blasted Sony music - I only had to wander to the door, check there was nobody there, or anything suspicious happening, and wander back to my seat - I don’t own a mansion, but in the time it took to do that, when I sat down again, all I was treated to was the blasted Sony ‘Madness’ score yet again, and another batch of adverts.

Why bother squeezing in a programme section of a minute or two? Just make it all adverts and at least we’d know we had time to go make tea or coffee, or write War & Peace, while the ads were on!

Bionic tat

“Bionic Woman,” an updating of the 1970s show featuring Lindsay Wagner, first appeared on NBC in the fall. It was approved by something called the Family Friendly Programming Forum, a flock of 40 advertisers seeking more “family-friendly” programming.

In confidential casting information, the producers, seeking to add fresh concepts to a three-decade-old idea, had been searching for an actress to play the important role of Becca Sommers, teenage sister to the star (Michelle Ryan, pictured). Among the requirements: Caucasian and sexy.

That is, we guess, one description of “family friendly” - given it was decreed by advertisers, some of us might say something else.

For my part, there’s little on the small screen (or is that big widescreen nowadays?) that bothers or offends me, but the choice of a star that appears semi-naked in publicity shots would be something I’d expect a body called the Family Friendly Programming Forum to use as reason to cross her programmes off their list, unless their real agenda is something else, driven by dollars, and (shhhh) s**-appeal.

Formulaic Rubbish

One of the notable things about ‘new’ TV series, such as the aferementioned Bionic Woman, that marks the noughties is that it all seems to follow the same formula, presumably laid down by the marketing teams that want to catch the sponsor’s eyes and ensure they get their client’s a slice of the current round of funding.

I should be enjoying this series, and Blade: The Series, and The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but all seem to have been produced by the same mincing machine, and all I feel is that each subjects me to the same 50 minutes of shouting, screaming, fighting, arguing, and false moralising by ‘The Hero’, which varies only by the character. Close your eyes, and there’s little to distinguish them.

The other thing that’s noticeable is the desperate attempt by the writers to make their female leads ’strong’.

The end result is more like a 1950’s B movie, based on typecast concepts of male/female role reversal, where rather than simply swap around the male/female dominance of the time, the scriptwriters created a dystopian society ruled by women, and enforced by thuggery. The modern equivalent with the New Bionic Woman and Sarah Connors gives is the same thing packaged up in character that refuses to be lead, and takes the lead ‘with attitude’, not interested in listening to anyone else, because they have decided to make a stand, and ‘Be Strong’, and if a man should dare to advise her otherwise, he’d better watch out, as he’s likely to get a thick lip, or smashed through a door and thrown out for his trouble. Our heroine is ‘Strong’, and doesn’t need anybody’s help, especially a man’s.

Maybe all these ‘formula writers’ and ’sponsor whores’ will have died by the tens or twenties, and we might get some decent TV programmes again - if we don’t die waiting.

The sixties and seventies

This was brought home recently, when ITV started to show original series from the 1960s and 1970s, in between their adverts. The writers I refer to above mock these programmes because they weren’t produced on anything like the budgets they have, and without the technology (neither of which improve a rubbish concept incidentally). In reality, by not having more ‘Bang for Their Buck’, writers of that time had to get their sponsorship by providing an interesting theme.

Whereas programmes of that time had “A Beginning, A Middle, and An End”, a plot, characters, storyline, and theme that the viwwer had to make at least a token effort to follow, most modern series bow to the great god of the ‘Three Minute Culture’, and one can land anywhere in any programme and start to follow the (non-existent) plot, as there will be a noisy fight, argument, or special effect scene along in a few minutes, as these programmes are often little more than an excuse to string these events together.

Don’t believe me? Try it with the Blade TV series. I’ve been ‘watching’ this for weeks, since it started, and only with my one bad eye. The reason being the good one is busy working on some some software. I haven’t watched an episode properly, yet the plot is so shallow I’m still up to speed on the whole thing and its characters, even though I’ve barely watched more than 10 minutes of any episode.

Try doing that with vintage TV, written by proper writers, rather than sponsor magnets.

Fire the chauffeur

The punchline from one of the ads shown below for the 928 says it all…

Interesting to note (in my opinion) that Porsche’s American adverts are currently long and imaginative productions, but as inspiring as Death Warmed Up, amounting to some 3 minutes of aspiration, and no inspiration.

They don’t even bother with adverts on UK TV now. A waste of time in a country where the motorist is demonised as the Spawn of Satan, and has no money left after the Government has slapped them down with punitive fuel and vehicle taxation, and taken every opportunity to issue fines with automated camera systems.

Who really wants to drive on Britain’s roads nowadays? Especially after a certain Chief Police Officer recently let the cat out of the bag and quashed the lie that speed cameras are used as deterrents, and not revenue raisers, after calling for the installation of hidden cameras. What a plonker, out to undo the work of those that have promoted the worthy safety camera campaigns. He’s the sort of idiot that should be forced to resign for making thoughtless and stupid comments in public.

Far safer just to fire up the online video, and wallow in the past.

New Jag XF TV ad hits the spot

Reminiscent in some ways of the classic jeans adverts of many years ago, which provided something along the lines of entertainment, instead of the thinly veiled mindwarping, brainwashing tat that the likes of McGrotnalds and their kin sponsor, the advert being run to introduce the new shape Jaguar XF is almost refreshing in that it is a pleasure both see and hear.

And I don’t say that simply because it’s a Jag ad. While past offerings have been acceptable, they’re also a but boring, and don’t really rate a second look. Nor is it because it’s a car ad - I’m thoroughly unimpressed when Mazda’s more than tiresome, whispered Zoom-Zoom line makes yet another irritating appeatance, and Seat’s Auto-emicion clicky ads are less than inviting either, while Honda’s inspired, but tiresome a capella effort (where a group of ’singers’ attempt to reproduce the sounds of a car journey) looks inspired the first time it is seen, but becomes increasingly corny and poor the more often it is repeated.

I haven’t managed to add a Jag to the stable, but I have been fortunate enough to get my hand on some for a while. I can’t get away from a certain favouritism for the XJ series, simply due to its appearance/shape, and the leather interior meant seat belts were compulsory, especially for those in the rear. More than once I had a pile of occupants in the rear (this was the time before wearing seat belts was compulsory) when powering round bends or roundabouts. Although I never had the chance to drive it outside the city centre, I also had hands on an XJ-S V12 6.0 litre, but never found a street where the ‘loud’ pedal could be pressed - such is life sometimes.

I don’t mind not having placed one in the stable, even second hand, the depreciation remains an atrocious cost of ownership. They’re still nice though.

Take your pick…

TV is Dead?

TV is Dead? is the title of a series which began a run on Channel 4 this  morning with the observation that less people are watching each TV programme than ever before, and that the marketing people for each channel are working harder and harder to make viewers watch their channel - they say they are ‘Guiding the viewer’. Unfortunately, it also seems to be made by them, and is being broadcast in school hours - looks to me like they’re just grooming the kids to move into the industry promoting more TV promotion over content.

They seem to be too stupid to realise that they are alienating the very people they are ‘guiding’, and can’t grasp basic arithmetic - if they spew out hundreds of programmes, there is still just the same number of viewers to watch them.

These idiots are putting more and more effort into presenting their channel idents in the belief that viewers won’t see them as adverts. WRONG! They’re just adverts, waste millions, and waste everyone’s time and money (except the maker’s pay packet), and they ruin them themselves, with their interminable voice-overs. They call it ‘Brilliant Design’ - they can’t understand the concept that viewers just think it’s an irritating nuisance.

Then they fall back on ‘Talent’ - as if the only way they can get people to watch their programmes by fronting them with so-called ‘talented’ presenters, and for some reason gave a couple of pathetic examples like Ant & Dec, and Graham Norton. Why, both make me sick and I’d never watch (or ever have watched) a programme they were seen in. I wonder of the audiences would watch as happily if the channels were obliged to put a display on the screen that showed how much their ‘talented’ presenters were raking in from them while they were on screen. For example, the BBC is swelling Jonathon Ross’s bank account to the tune of £18 million over three years. Is this wally really worth £6 million a year of our TV License money? I actually have no idea how long he appears on screen, but estimate that each hour would see the little counter spinning around to accumulate between £100,000 and £130,000 for each of them. I’m sure the number’s wrong, but even if it’s out by a factor of 10, that’s still £10 k per hour - I’d like some that, thank you very much. And bear in mind he’ll be coining it in as a (spit) ‘Celebrity’, collecting  thousands of pounds simply for turning up somewhere, and letting the little people see them.

TV is Dead? would probably be a good series - if it wasn’t being made by the TV people themselves!

It’s on Channel 4, but if you watch it, you’ll see they come to the conclusion that the despite the millions and millions they spend on more and more intrusive channel idents, the viewer doesn’t give a damn which channel a programme’s on, as long as they can see the one they want. Shame that that result won’t stop them spending more and more on idents etc, and we’ll carry on until we reach the crazy position where we have 50 minutes of ident, interrupted and interfered with by 10 minutes of TV programme ‘getting in their way’!

(Remarkable, I managed to put that together without using the word ’scum’ while referring to advertisers and celebrities… OOPS! damn!)

Rubbish Telly II

After commenting on  Quality Telly, it seems only fair to comment on Rubbish Telly, again. It’s too easy to do, since most of the content can be placed into this category without too much effort, but I think it’s justified in this case since the opportunity arises from the spoiling of the subject of the Quality Telly comment, namely Secret Army.

Although Secret Army is being provided by UKTV History, the commercial side of the BBC, and we might reasonably have expected that pedigree to have spared is from the worst vices of the advertising whores, as typified by those at providers like ITV, this has failed to be the case, particularly as the third and final season of Secret Army airs. Demonstrating more interest in selling what they perceive as peak advertising space to their sponsors than maintaining the quality of the material they are broadcasting, UKTV History has all but ruined the conclusion of every episode of the final season.

Instead of wasting the programme in the usual way, by breaking it up with three or four (or five or six if you’re ITV) ad breaks in the hour, and subjecting us to the now obligatory channels ident tags glued into them as well, AND the ads that usually appear between the programmes too, they’ve chosen to completely destroy any atmosphere and tension that the closing minutes of the episode may have built up by inserting an ad break just as the episode reaches its conclusion, a matter of only a few minutes from the rolling of the closing credits.

Worse still in this particular case, and something that the even ITV has not been seen to do (yet?), the stupid voice-over that seems to have become obligatory over the closing credits, and which tells us we can see the next episode tomorrow, also tells that the next programme will be along immediately, without and ad break.

This means that they have not only chosen to spoil the closing minutes of the current programme, but that they didn’t even have to, as they haven’t sold the advertising space between it and the programmed immediately following it. They could have inserted the ads between the programmes if they had wanted to, but actually chose to break up its last few minutes for an unnecessary and unwanted, irrelevant interruption, purely placed so they could make a few more pennies.

All you can do is vote with your feet as it were, and simply not buy any of the products advertised, however this option doesn’t work for me at least, since apart from making efforts to avoid even seeing the ads, I tend not to by any of the junk products that need TV advertising, and I certainly don’t need any of the services advertised, since I manage to live my live without needing loans or accident lawyers.

How can I put it subtly?

Advertisers - scum of the earth.

Seems pretty close - not needed, and you pay for and finance them every time you buy something whether or not you want to. And they operate purely by blackmail, turning up at their client’s doors with dire warning of “If you don’t advertise, your competitors will, and you’ll lose sales - you can’t afford NOT to keep using us”! So, instead of being fired, they walk out with an even bigger contract, and prices go up again.

Supermarket psychology

Watching a recent BBC documentary on supermarkets, it was fairly shocking to see that an independent analysis of shopper’s behaviour showed that a whopping 95% of them were Brain-dead Drones that responded in almost precisely the way the supermarket’s shelf and offer organisers wanted them to!

By laying out the product in particular locations, down to the height of the shelf they appeared on, using selected combinations of labelling, colouring and packaging, setting the price levels of certain similar products, placing offers in amongst regularly priced items, and many other similar tweaks, they aim to program the customer into making purchase in such a way that they are steered unconsciously towards the products and brands the supermarket wants them to, rather than the product of their choice. And that includes purchases of what they THINK they are selecting freely.

To use one of the emotional descriptions, watching the analysis of the shoppers the programme followed, and matching that to the intended behaviour the supermarket wanted, was frightening. The Drones basically ‘did as they were told’.

The worrying aspect was that they seemed to simply switch their brains OFF once they were underway, and simply grazed from item to item, filling their trolley with little concern for the price, packaging, or need, as they picked items they didn’t actually need, and just picked as they saw it. It’s simply incredible to learn that 95% of the folk wandering around the shop are substantially the same.

I wouldn’t have believed that if I hadn’t seen it myself, but you can’t argue with what you see for yourself, and just watching your fellow shoppers any day will confirm this, even down to the Pester Power of kids, forcing tired parent to buy what they want, just for peace. The amount of money they are wasting on stuff that will go in the bin unsused, and the uncecessary waste resulting is just ridiculous. They deserve to lose the money it costs them, but we end up paying for the waste (new taxes etc.) and the supermarket are rolling in their squandered cash.

Oh, and a small mention for the 5% of us that don’t comply, and buy what we want, as we want it, and actually look at the prices to see if the stuff represents value, and that included the Special Offers, that don’t always offer the value they claim to - compare the same stuff from other suppliers or shelves. You may be surprised.

I’m quite happy to be a member of a surprisingly small group that the supermarketeers must hate - I actually look at what I’m buying, and the price, AND if it’s something I actually use/need/will use (i.e. not put in the bin because I bought too much without considering how long it will last)

Guess I finally get to use the Sales & Marketing skills I was forced to take along with my chosen studies all those years ago.

I still find it difficult to believe that folk are so easily taken in but, on the other hand, looking at the way recent generations are taken in by Celebrity Worship, maybe I’m not too surprised either. Thinking for oneself seems to be becoming a thing of the past.

Bye-bye big Mac (and its mutant friends)

In a seldom seen move, in a sector where money usually talks louder than sense, an announcement banning of junk food ads came as a surprise today:

Ofcom has announced a total ban on junk food advertising around all children’s programming, on all children’s channels and around all programmes that have a “particular appeal” to under 16-year-olds. The surprise is that Ofcom has chosen to extend the restrictions to any programme any time of the day that has an “above-average” audience of under 16-year-olds. This brings into the ban a range of programmes previously considered to be unaffected by the likely proposals such as music channels and shows, many awards ceremonies and early evening general entertainment programmes.

The biggest laugh was the squealing and ‘crocodile tears’ as claims of up to £140 million in lost revenue were made. How stupid do these people think we are? Are the junk food merchants the only ones after the advertising slots available at those times? Like Hell they are! There’ll be long queue of big businesses at the door, only too keen to take over the same slots and target the parents of the poor little children who will now be denied their visual ‘food fix’. These slots already carry ads for targetted at parents, for clothes, cosmetics, toiletries and accessories ‘needed’ by busy and doting parents as they get their beloved offspring ready for the next day, pampered and groomed in readiness for their coming hard day at school (or nursery), looking better, and equipped with newer fashion accessories than the Jones’s kids.

Is Channel 4 run so marginally that its comment on the news was that they could “Run into financial difficulties”. From restrictions on ONE advertising segment (that is freed to allow other ads to be run)? Others are claiming that the “Qualityof their programmes” may suffer as a result of the lost finance. Quality? That has to be marginal at best, as most of it is managed along the lines of a Bond film, and aimed at product placement and merchandising.

While the interview was running, one mother summed up the problem that people like McD*n*ld’s try and brainwash their opponents into missing. Her daughter saw the current  McD*n*ld’s ad (loud, colourful and featuring the latest ‘must have’ fad) and that was all she talked about seeing afterwards.

Actually, it will be interesting to watch the run up to the arrival of the full ban by 2008, to see which of them battle it out for the released ad slots.

Boring

It’s 2006.

I don’t care if someone’s managed to dredge up some “unseen” footage of John Lennon and more raking over the coals of Vietnam from 35 years ago.

IT’S OVER!

MOVE ON!

And who is Yoko Ono?

(Other than the person that keeps fanning those coals).