In Association With Tiredness, Irritability, And Deep-Seated Resentment.

While fast-forwarding through the ad break of a TV programme I recorded recently, I found myself using the sponsorship ident things as a marker so that I could press the ‘play’ button in time for the next bit of the show.

Personally, I think the Joop Homme ads, which are attached to The Walking Dead like relentless zombies, are the best for this as they’re the same clip of a pissed-looking pair of models, moodily smooching about while some words and pink stuff appears.

As a parent, recorded TV is pretty much all I get to watch, so most of the sponsorship surrounding these shows is wasted on me. In my head I associate Joop (which I’ve clocked is a perfume) with the frustration of a break in my entertainment, and decomposing people.

When I have been lucky enough to watch the show ‘live’ the sponsorship idents annoy me in another way. Because they’re the same film over and over again, they soon become irritating. Eventually, after the 8 millionth viewing, they move past annoying and into the realms of invisibility.

Now some would say that the fact I remember the name and nature of the product is a good thing and I can’t really argue with that, but I would have thought that the association with frustration, irritation and undead people might not be the best use of a product’s marketing budget.

I appreciate how difficult TV sponsorship can be: we’ve done our fair share over the course of our career, and in my experience they’re always tough. For one thing, fitting a message into such short time lengths is always problematic. The simplicity, charm and whit of the Doritos ones from a few years back are a rarely matched.

Doritos embraced the small budget that so often goes hand in hand with these kind of jobs, but often there’s the dilemma of either making lots of spots that look slightly cheap, or making a small number of nice-looking ads which then run the risk of boring the viewer quickly.

God knows why, but the public consistently vote that bit in Only Fools And Horses where Del Boy falls through the bar as “the funniest thing ever.” Yet even that, if it were played constantly during Coronation Street, would get on the nation’s nerves eventually.

Added to this, it seems that more and more the programme you’re asked to sponsor often bears no relation to the product you’re advertising. In the olden days, there seemed to be a desire on the part of the programmer and advertiser to find an ideal fit; either through the product, its end line, or even the shared target market.

Nowadays that feels as if that’s all gone out of the window. Nowadays you wouldn’t bat an eyelid if you saw a pasta sauce linked to a show about embarrassing vaginas.

As an industry we need to try a little harder; increase budgets, avoid repetition, associate with relevant shows, and aim to keep the viewer entertained.

Either that, or do something really useful and just stick a big ‘FAST FORWARD’ or ‘PLAY’ above the logo, so I can perfect my remote control control.

Like If You... Like Liking Things?

In the olden days, the relationships we struck up with brands were simple. Actually, it wasn’t even a ‘relationship’ was it? We just bought the products and used the services we thought we wanted or needed, and that was that.

Nowadays, brands seem to have become incredibly needy. Paranoid and neurotic; forever worried that we’ll run off with a better peanut-filled chocolate bar or fragrant finger wipe, they’re constantly seeking validation: asking us to ‘Like’ them on Facebook, or setting up websites so we might better understand them. Even if all they are is a jam – a particularly tasty jam, but still just a jam nonetheless.

Having a digital presence is obviously important for many, many brands. It’s a brilliant way to speak to a huge portion of your target market and, potentially, an excellent platform to produce exciting, surprising work for agencies and creatives alike.

However, just because a brand can have a digital presence doesn’t necessarily mean it should. Digital is just another channel, and I’m not certain it’s right for everyone.

Boy does this boy like bread! He looks like he's going to warm
it in the microwave, cut a hole in it and then like it a whole lot more.

I have no idea why, but 203 people ‘Like’ Toilet Duck. Two hundred and three living, breathing, presumably sentient beings actually felt the need to share with their friends that they prefer their toilet bowl freshly scented and free from poo.

Another 136 ‘like’ Anusol. I imagine if I had a sore bottom I could conceivably like Anusol too, but I wouldn’t want to share this with friends I haven’t seen since primary school.

Maybe I’m the odd one, and the 365 likers of Vagisil are perfectly normal?

Perhaps I’m unusual for wondering why anyone would want to visit the Jammie Dodger website and discover ‘fun facts’ such as the one about Dr. Who (a pretend person) and the singer Labrinth (???) enjoying them.

Am I mad to expect a brand’s digital presence to be of some use to me? Is it ok for a brand to lazily just want to be liked without really giving me anything actually worth liking in return?

Given all the interesting/weird/funny/embarrassing things we ‘like’ everyday shouldn’t everything a brand expects us to share online be on the same level? If a brand is going to build a Facebook page it should be doing something more creative than just prompting us to, “Like if you’ve flushed your toilet in the last ten minutes!”

Ok, I’m paraphrasing, but only a little.

Call me old fashioned, but I think that the best place for a Jammie Dodger is next to my mug of coffee. I’m perfectly happy with this relationship, and so long as I continue to buy the odd packet of jam-filled biscuits, shouldn’t they?

So I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I won’t ‘Like’ brands simply because they ask me to.

It’s not them, it’s me.

Actually, that’s a lie – it is them.

They are margarine, or a safety match, or a biro, or something else I have no interest in when I’m online.

Going Anywhere Nice This Year?

Let’s face it; as advertisers we’re cynical, calculating bastards.

Mind you, as consumers we deserve nothing else: we’re all pathetic saps, falling for the same scam year in, year out.

The lukewarm sprouts are still being pushed forlornly around our Christmas Dinner plate when the first holiday commercials start spewing into our eyes.

Look at that family on TV: Mum, Dad, Son, Daughter – all ridiculously beautiful and hopelessly drunk on happiness as they skip along empty, sun-kissed beaches. See them ride exciting water slides free from unexciting queues. Watch them dine in quiet restaurants where that bloke who thinks that shouting at the none-English speaking waiters will somehow help them understand him must have just nipped out to the toilet.

Now look away from the TV and back at your real family.

Christ the kids have only just broken up from school and you’ve already started asking when they go back.

You’re not so much human as mutated Iceland Four-Bird Roasts: a onesie, wrapped around pigs in blankets, wrapped around a tin of Quality Street, wrapped around an empty husk of resentment and bitterness. And more Quality Street.

But with no deposit and some numbers said in such a way that they almost don’t sound like money, your family could be that family on your screens. Look at them; now they’re riding bicycles on Endor for crying out loud.

You know it’s all a lie – we all do: an unrealistic, idyllic representation of how your actual holiday will pan out, but that doesn’t matter.

Right now, as you cram yet another tube of Paprika & Balsamic Vinegar Discs into your already bulging face-hole, the thought of being TV Dad, with his absence of belly, crap jokes and greying hair, is utterly irresistible.

You know you’re not really buying the holiday; you’re buying the idea of your holiday. An abstract cloud of happiness that can flit around your brain and bubble up to lift your mood whenever you’re stopped in sidings near Shenfield, or having to break off into “informal groups” during a brainstorm on Gill’s Fragrant Lady Wipes^®, or being asked to make the logo another 10% bigger.

In your advertising-imagined daydream there are always plenty of free loungers around the empty turquoise swimming pool, anyone over a sized 10 (apart from you of course) is detained or shot at Customs, and clouds simply don’t exist. In fact, should one ever appear, the entire Photoshopped, moderately-populated beach would run (beautifully) for their lives (in slow motion), fleeing from what they mistakenly believe to be John Pertwee’s hair come back to wreak havoc on their souls.

Who cares if the reality can never live up to what advertising suggests? We all know the game that's being played and we’re more than happy to carry on going along with it.

So let’s sit back, lap up the dead-crab-free sea gently caressing the un-trampled white sand in our mind’s eye, and leave the horizontal rain, lobster shoulders and food poisoning to our Twitter feeds.

Roll on summer.