More drivel polluting the airwaves

I'm not sure why, but radio seems to be uppermost in my mind recently. Perhaps it's because I'm hearing so many ads, but so few voices.

It's not any one ad specifically, but a sort of genre, let's call it the "I'm a small business owner and I'm just like you..." style of advertising.

Sometimes the voices are supposed to be speaking "local", that is, pukka S'effricun, but they just don't crack it. We just know these are pro voices, and because we know, a bit of believability goes down the drain.

Fleet Steel springs to mind. Not only a naff script, but not great acting, either. Worse, today I heard one for Outsurance. This company was running some quite good testimonial ads recently. Clearly however they are battling to get business owners to extol their virtue as they've now reverted to carefully scripted and obviously acted spots.

The one I heard today revolves around a woman who owns a nail bar and whose greatest sense of achievement comes when she creates a perfect French nail. Outsurance then tell us that they are as passionate about insurance as you are about your business.

Poppycock.

Outsurance used to have a real point of difference but as they days go by they are beginning to sound like everyone else.

Their recent TV ad stretches credulity to breaking point as a family, depressed by the current state of the world (demonstrated by newspaper headlines on street poles) is suddenly cheered up by the sight of an Outsurance billboard advertising that one in every two Outsurance clients is happy with their insurance rates.

One in every two? That's only 50%. I don't know about you, but I don't find much to cheer about in that statistic. It doesn't say much about their premiums, that's for sure.

Instead of trying to foist dull advertising on us, Outsurance should be trying to come up with great, innovative products. Then great advertising would follow.

Nonsense from Nedbank

Another spot I heard today from Nedbank touts their business credit card. The bank claims that they really do understand your business needs and their card reflects this understanding. How? By giving you 55 days free credit.

In other words, it's the same as any other credit card. What's so special about that? Nothing. It's just more meaningless puffery.

If they really did understand business, especially small/medium business maybe they'd offer 90 or 120 days free credit. THAT would be something.

Saving Electricity...Really?

An ad currently running on radio urges us to explore ways to reduce our electricity consumption.

Nothing new there, except the voice in this one tells us that no electricity was used in the making of the ad - it was recorded on a cellphone.

No electricity, huh? Okay, so how was the cell phone recharged?

A CAR FOR DICKHEADS

According to a frequently flighted radio commercial here's where you should buy your next car:

Auto-al penis-rings BMW.

A very strange name for a business.

Didn't anyone listen to this commercial in the recording studio and ask if this is, indeed, the way the client wants to be known? Can't the client hear how stoopid this sounds?

Wouldn't it be better to say: "Auto Alpina BMW, Springs"? After all, most people would be more inclined to look for penis rings at their friendly neighbourhood sex shop. Why confuse 'em?

THERE ARE THOSE...

who write very dull, pretentious copy
There are those who think this is very creative
There are those who's ads are uninspired, unmotivating, uninvolving
There are those who decide we should hear this irritating "advertising" over and over again
There are those who waste huge amounts of money flighting this crap
There are those who could be using this money to give something worthwhile to their customers
There are those who earn enormous amounts of money flighting this crap
There are those who just don't get it.

More Pretentious Nonsense

The banks are at it again.

This time it's Standard Bank. Why, oh why, do they really think anyone will believe the things they say, or imply, about themselves.

Do we really think they operate in an environment of "free thinking"? Are they revolutionary visionaries who are enable global competitiveness?

Do we really, really believe that at the end of the day they sit down, maybe over a glass of Black Label, and ask themselves "What next?"

Yes, it's another interminably dull, droning Standard Bank corporate ad for their business banking arm...I think. I'm not sure about that because I can't recall staying awake long enough to see the end of the commercial.

And when, oh when, are copywriters going to learn that vague generalities are no substitute for hard-nosed specifics? I'm probably being unfair. In all likelihood the bank probably never supplied the creative team with any specifics. Did anyone think to ask?

Does this latest offering for Standard Bank make us believe they are inspired, motivated or involved (whatever all that means)?

I hate seeing so much money wasted on so little.

Power Crazy

Surely the worst-managed crisis in South Africa since the notorious "Info Scandal" of the 70s. Yep, that's the current electricity situation.

Though no fault of our own, Eskom is making us pay, and pay dearly, for their gross incompetence. But what really galls is their attempt to lay the blame at our door.

A few weeks back the electricity company began running ads extolling their valiant efforts at solving the problem. Buying in huge coal supplies (which should never have been allowed to run so low in the first place), commissioning new power stations (which should have been commissioned at least 10 years ago) are among the solutions they told us about in radio ads that polluted the airwaves only a little less than a coal-fired power station going full blast.

Of course, we're not as stupid as Eskom would like to believe and I doubt anyone was fooled by their pathetic attempt at damage control.

Now we are told that because we couldn't, collectively, reduce our electricity consumption by 10%, Eskom is left with no choice but to carry out its threat of enforced "load-shedding" (black-outs/power failures). And once again they are polluting the airwaves with their message, this time to induce a sense of guilt in you and me, their customers. The gist of the ad is "listen assholes, you didn't cut your electricity consumption so we'll do it for you. If you suffer blackouts it's your fault. Don't blame us."

Screw 'em. I won't feel guilty. I won't turn off my geyser. I won't switch off my lights. I'll leave my computer on all night. I won't do anything to help this arrogant government-controlled beurocracy haul itself out of the dung which it landed in with absolutely no help from me. They can take their fat, undeserved performance bonuses and shove 'em where it hurts.

I don't think Eskom realizes the damage this little crisis is doing South Africa.

Eskom sucks. Their radio ads suck just as much.

If this is the Apex, I'd hate to see the base.

Last night my "insider" connection attended the APEX awards, held at Emperor's Palace on the east Rand (methinks the Ekurhuleni municipality is fighting a losing battle to foist this ridiculous name on us).

According to my source, the food was fine, the entertainment was so-so, and the entries were dismal.

Of course the usual gang of idiots (I mean that in a loving kind of way) were all represented; Jupiter, Network, Ogilvy... (surprising by their absence, at least among the APEX recipients, was Hunt Lascaris , although I'm reliably informed they did have some people there).

Organized by the Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA), The APEX Awards are supposed to be about effective advertising. There are only three categories:

• Launch - Brands or services which are new, or have no significant history of advertising.
• Change - New campaigns from previously advertised brands, which resulted in significant short term effects on sales and/or behaviour.
• Sustain - Advertising campaigns which benefited a business by maintaining or strengthening a brand over a long period.

These definitions come direct from the ACA website ( ACA is the organisation that runs APEX).

As you'll quickly fathom out, these are pretty hazy criteria for judging the effectiveness of any advertising. Nothing here about increased sales - except the somewhat vague, weasel-worded "significant short term effects on sales and/or behavior" - or about anything else that really constitutes effective advertising. Perhaps it's escaped the attention of whoever laid out these criteria that a "significant short term effects on sales" could cut both ways. So if my ad actually causes a significant sales slump, would that make me eligible for and APEX?

Because no-one actually has to prove anything, the usual suspects collect the gongs and can now trumpet about how "effective" their creative ads are.

Let me be absolutely clear here; I don't say creative advertising doesn't work. What I do say is that if your efforts are focused on awards then they are not focused on sales. Advertising that is sales focused looks very different to advertising designed to impress awards judges.

No matter how much lip service is paid by the creative agencies whose names crop up with such regular monotony at the black tie, mutual back-slapping sessions, they really have no way of proving anything.

So, the APEX, who won what? My contact can't remember. What the heck, does it matter anyway?

Sorry, I don't believe in fairies.

The net is home to all sorts of strange people. People like "Fairy Child", who lives and breathes for art and poetry. Of course, like many creative people, she has her vices, too.

Cocaine?

No, speed. But not of the illicit narcotic variety. You see, Fairy Child is into fast cars, Formula One. Wow! That's a pretty evil vice. You can, according to the TV commercial, find Fairy (Faerie?) Child at Polka.co.za.

Clearly Polka is struggling to get people to sign up. How can we know this? Simple - this is the second or third ad style they've gone through in just a couple of years.

First off we had the vignettes of colourful local characters explaining to friends about their new Polka internet connections. They were hilarious. Everybody was talking about them. If they didn't win creative awards they should have. If they didn't sign up customers in droves, it's not surprising. Would anyone looking for an Internet connection really want to associated with these amusing societal misfits? Ah well, at least they made us smile.

Next up was a straight hard sell. Get a Polka connection from R79 per month and some goodies thrown in with it. Trouble is, R79 per month is hardly an earth-shattering offer. The competition easily match, or beat it. So maybe the customers stayed away.

Now we have Fairy Child. Unconvincing and pedestrian. We don't really care about her or her obviously bland existence. Still no reason to sign up.

Polka's real problem doesn't lie with the advertising (although it's not helping). They are a Johnny-come-lately in what is a highly competitive and, possibly, highly over-traded market. If they want customers to switch, they'd better offer some compelling reasons to do so.

Maybe Fairy Child could ask Mikey to set her up with a blog.

Proof That The Ad Community Really Is Backwards. Or Are They Just Physical Jerks?

If you're going to use a technique in a TV ad you should have a good reason for it. It strengthens the concept, it is the concept, it makes the commercial more understandable...

Two commercials (or one TV campaign and one stand-alone commercial) demonstrate what happens when technique-for-the-sake-of-technique is foisted on a public saturated with irrelevant advertising puffery. Worse, the commercials, which I'll name in a moment, don't even use a modern, fresh technique. They trot out a tired old cliché from the 1950s or earlier.

The campaign is the series of ads which flight every holiday season from Engen. It features a basic plot line of tracing events back to a visit to an Engen garage. All the action is reversed. Why the backwards travelling people and objects, you might ask?

A very good question. And one you won't be able to answer by watching any of the boring commercials. We are left wondering, but ultimately, we don't wonder for long. We just remove our attention and ignore the message. Perhaps the creative people responsible had a really good reason to use this technique. But my guess is that after reviewing the ad in normal, forward motion, everyone realised they had some completely dull commercials on their hands. Then some bright young thing at the production house said, somewhat tongue in cheek, "What if we run them backwards?"

Voilà! All that's left to do is explain it to client which, obviously they did quite well. Or maybe the client just didn't feel like wasting the money they'd already spent. Too late. The money was wasted the day they bought the concept in the first place - dull commercials can't be rescued by video trickery.

The stand alone commercial, currently getting its second or third airing is for Virgin Active. Actually there are two techniques used here: the first is the use of quirky music from the "olden days". An odd choice considering Virgin's modern, progressive ethos, and the edgy, daring persona of the founder of the global conglomerate.

We are never given any clue as what this music represents as an attractive blonde runs through the woods encountering groups of people engaged in various forms of what we used to call "physical jerks"?

It's never explained and, in my opinion, it's a waste of a piece of music which could, with the right concept, be quite effective. But here's the kicker...as said blonde runs through the landscape we see that some of the jerkists are actually doing it backwards. Why? I dunno.

Who thinks of this stuff?