Benefits Street
Posted: Mon 13 January, 2014 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Daily Mail, Stupidity, Television, Thoughts Leave a comment »At the moment, Channel 4 has a documentary series called “Benefits Street”, based around one road in Birmingham where the majority of its inhabitants are – yes! – on benefits.
It’s pretty standard C4 documentary fare, and follows on from others in similar vein, including “Skint” (families in Scunthorpe who are – yes! – on benefits) and so on. And as with the other similar ones, it got Twitter, Facebook, and the media in general up in arms. The fact that all this makes for great free advertising for the programme (because people want to watch it and see what everyone else is talking about) is of course purely coincidental.
No, of course Channel4 aren’t trolling media and social media in order to boost their own viewing figures. Of course not. *cough*
I didn’t bother with it – I know pretty much what it’ll show, they’ll focus on “human interest” stories within the street, edit it to within an inch of its life, show all the stereotypes, the ‘boss’ of the street, people shoplifting, drug-growing/dealing ‘to make ends meet’ and all the rest of it.
The thing that annoyed me the most about the entire hysteria though was that people started a petition to stop Channel 4 from showing the rest of the series. Which is inherently pointless. The programme’s been made, it’s all over and done with. Hiding it away is effectively no different to hiding away the issues of people who are on benefits. More importantly, it’ll make it into more of a talking point, and boost viewing figures.
If you don’t like this kind of programme, there’s a simple answer. Don’t watch it. Don’t promote it. Don’t talk about it, don’t link to it. Don’t bitch about it. But most importantly – don’t watch it. There’s plenty of other channels and programmes. Channel4 is funded by its advertisers – by the people who want to promote their goods/products within the programme and the ad breaks. The more a programme is viewed, the more Channel4 can charge those advertisers.
If you don’t watch the programme, it doesn’t get viewers. And Channel4 won’t bother making more of a set of programmes that lose money, that don’t have viewers, and they’ll do something else instead.
It really is that simple.
Remember The Name
Posted: Tue 7 January, 2014 Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, Geeky, Marketing, Media, Television, Thoughts Leave a comment »Over the Christmas Break, I watched more ‘live TV’ (i.e. not stuff recorded on my PVR, and not ‘delayed’ so I could skip adverts) than I usually do, and thus saw more adverts than normal. Advertising is something that interests me for a lot of reasons, mostly having worked for/with a number of agencies over the years, and also being interested in the psychology and manipulation behind them.
As always, “Brand Recognition” is one of my bug-bears, because for a lot of the time it seems that advertisers don’t care about much else, so long as you remember the brand-name. However, in my experience a lot of the time I remember the brands just so I can be sure to never, ever give them any money. This happens particularly when an advert (or set thereof) are
- insanely annoying (Insurance Comparison sites, EE, and the like) or
- paying money to people I can’t abide, and/or hypocrites (an example covering both those is when Knorr were using Marco Pierre White to advertise their stock-cubes – a product he wouldn’t touch in a month of Sundays)
I’ve written before about how adverts for certain industries are changing – usually for the better – but it’s interested me to see how GoCompare in particular have continued that change.
When they started, GoCompare had one of the most insanely irritating advertising “characters” (that bloody opera singer) known to man. I won’t link to anything, because it’ll just cause brain-damage and broken monitors. (Apparently it was also voted “most irritating advert” for 2009 and 2010 – quite the achievement) GoCompare then had ads of various celebrities killing the character in a variety of ways, and over the last year or so it’s been about the same character trying to get back into the adverts, and various ‘wacky’ schemes to advertise the company.
Now, though, they’ve changed again, and the same character appears to have become a driver or guide on coach tours. (Although I did like the reference to Blakey from ‘On the Buses‘, but that’s probably just a sign that I’m old) I have no idea where they plan to go with this set of adverts – although at least now they’re just weird and self-referential, rather than being actively violence-inducing.
I still wouldn’t ever hand over money to GoCompare – that memory of the dire branding will last a long time – but it’s been interesting to see how their stuff has altered over the last couple of years, in some sort of recognition that people hated the original concept.
[Updated and reposted on 7/1/14] – The Drum posted up this article about the ads, saying…
“We know that people will be keen to see what happens to Gio next. The new campaign will firmly position him as the legend that we all know him to be, but will also see the introduction of new characters enabling us to convey aspects of the Gocompare.com service that differentiate the brand still further.”
Although my favourite line (and I’m sure it means something other than what I’m choosing to read it as meaning) comes at the end of the article…
A series of executions are set to appear throughout the year.
Captive Audience – Anti-Piracy Ads (Updated)
Posted: Sat 4 January, 2014 Filed under: Advertising, Cinema, Customer Services, Cynicism, Films, Thoughts Leave a comment »Back in October 2012 – fucking hell, is it really over a year since I wrote it? – I wrote about cinema adverts for anti-piracy, which really annoyed me. Basically, the ads are aimed at stopping film/video piracy, but were only being seen by people who’d already paid for a ticket, and were thus – um – unlikely to be pirates in the first place.
The even greater irony being that, of course, pirated films don’t have the anti-piracy adverts on them. (Which I can only see as a plus point for pirated films, to be fair)
Anyway, it occurred to me this week that actually, I haven’t seen one of those adverts in a few months – which is no bad thing.
Maybe all the complaints I made to Cineworld about them have paid off. And if that’s the case, maybe it’s time I start complaining about the bloody awful ones for EE, starring Kevin Bacon. After all, all they do is add EE to the list of people I will never, ever give my money to.
All Done
Posted: Thu 2 January, 2014 Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, Marketing, Media Leave a comment »You can tell that we’re now completely done with Christmas 2013. How? Well…
- The TV Adverts are all for
- Diet plans
- Holidays
- Sales – primarily for Furniture, Kitchens, and other ‘big ticket’ items
- Stopping smoking
- Internet Dating (Because don’t forget, it’s only six weeks ’til Valentine’s Day)
- Selling off unwanted christmas presents
- Cold cures
- Checking your credit score
- Cadbury’s Creme Eggs and Mini Eggs are in the shops for Easter (and it won’t be long ’til proper Easter Eggs are on sale – I’ve already seen Hot Cross Buns!)
- The news is full of ridiculous twaddle, because there’s sod-all of import going on
Still, at least we won’t see another bloody perfume advert until the run-up to Mother’s Day.
Equal Opportunities
Posted: Thu 26 December, 2013 Filed under: Advertising Leave a comment »I’d forgotten to write about this previously, but I think that this advert by Guinsess is one of the best ones this year.
I love the portrayal of integration and acceptance it shows – just think it’s a brilliant ad.
Marketing/Branding Bollocks
Posted: Fri 13 December, 2013 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Charm School, Creativity, Cynicism, Design, Marketing, Sweary, Thoughts, Work-related Leave a comment »According to this article, Pantone (they’re ‘the colour people, don’t’cha know?) have decreed that this purple is “the colour of 2014”. (And fuck off, Americans, it’s ‘colour’, not bloody ‘color’)
Now, I like purple as much as the next person – I’d go so far as to say it’s probably my favourite colour. But
- This is not proper purple. It’s a kind of wanky lilac, at best. Hell, they’ve not even called it Purple – it’s “Radiant Orchid”, which might as well be a name made up by Dulux.
- You know, there are people who get paid for coming up with this kind of shit
- And there are people whose job it is to come up with names for paints. I truly hope they feel fulfilled and happy in their work. I’d want to be killing people.
- How the blue, blazing, fiddly fuck do you have a “colour of the year”, for shit’s sake?
All told it’s just marketing bollocks of the highest order.
Festerous
Posted: Thu 21 November, 2013 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Charm School, D4D™, Festering Season, Marketing, People, Shopping, Thoughts Leave a comment »
This year I’m trying hard to not get ranty about the Festering Season – which is no mean feat, I can assure you. (I’ve also just discovered that I’ve not used that Scrooge image for nearly three years in a Festering Season post, so welcome back owd fella)
After all, my local Tesco Tosspots had Christmas Cards on sale at the end of September, for fuck’s sake. They’ve had mince pies since August, but I didn’t even bother getting any photos of those.
Since then, it’s just been going on and on. Their tree went up (fully decorated) before Hallowe’en was done. The foodstuffs have been in since November 1st.
I know shops need to have the time to sell all their festive shit. I suspect that they’re also stretching out the season ‘because of the financial climate’, allowing their customers to spread the cost of the Festering Season over greater time, rather than being crippled in December. I get that, and I don’t mind. (Too much)
It still narks me that everything is so obsessed with materialism, gifts, and the social-status inferred therein. I can’t help it. I don’t like seeing it in the shops for three damn months, or hearing poxy bastard carols on shop sound systems for two months. But it’s pretty much unavoidable – I try to limit my exposure to it all, but there still has to be some, sadly.
But I’m trying hard to not be too ranty about it. For now. That may change over the next few weeks – after all, there’s still a month to go…