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?