i'll buy that

Sometimes the adverts are the best things on the TV, clever advertising is definitely a skill and one that can make huge money for the mind that creates the concepts as well as the thing it's trying to sell.

But I am getting increasingly fed up with the charity adverts that try to play with the emotions of the viewer. If you've seen any then you know the ones I'm talking about, I especially hate the way the commenter always stresses the use of the word 'you', as if it is my personal responsibility to save every single rescued donkey and starving child in Africa. I actually think the western world has become rather hardened to the images of malnourished children with flies around them, and as terrible as it might be the footage of dying kids no longer has the ability to shock people into action the way it once did.
I'm not saying that it's wrong to ask for donations - just lose the emotional blackmail/ shock tactics.

This is way more effective. Make people think.

I think all that happens when people turn on the TV and see these images now is rather then being spurred into action to give to charity they either turn off of turn over. Yeah you might want "just" two pounds per month of my hard earned, but so does the donkey sanctuary, the local hospice and all the deaf children just waiting for me to put my hand in my pocket to help them get a hearing aid.
And showing the advert every break over two hours in the afternoon does not help. When I'm watching the pond life unfortunates on Jeremy Kyle (don't judge, it makes me feel good about myself), I do NOT need to be made to feel like it's my fault there's no water in the Sudan.

Perhaps I should get a water butt to catch the endless fucking rain we keep having and send it out there.

The other adverts that annoy me are the ones for sanitary towels that seem to think making their product more "beautiful" with the addition of a fancy coloured stripe will make me buy it.
Do women care about how they look ? I don't think so, we're more concerned with it NOT being visible.
It's not like we go around showing our friends as if it's a new hairdo or outfit.
". . does my minge look big in this . .? "

I bet the advertisers wish they'd though of this . . . 

What we want to know about is leakage and absorption functionality, we don't care what it looks like. Used sanitary towels are a bit like penis's - with a few rare exceptions if you've seen one you've pretty much seen them all. Except I've seen a few knobs that made me laugh, whereas I can't recall ever laughing at . . .well. . .you get the idea. Although once or twice I've cried when it looked like the impending monthly visitor wasn't going to put in an appearance.
My blogger friend Lily has written a very funny post about a SIMILAR SUBJECT- go and have a read, I can wait.

. . . or this ?

Great idea ! But you best hope you're not involved in an accident.

(Pic stolen borrowed from Dr Heckle).

A couple of years ago I bought a new sofa, and I spent ages looking online trying to find the right one. I got very fed up with the way every single picture seemed to show either a happy smoochy couple snuggled up or a smiling family with a couple of cute kids. The reality of kids + sofa is sticky patches and nasty stains and lego stuffed down the side.

Not once did I see a picture of a lone ageing woman with a fag in her hand and a laptop.

Welcome to my world.

Of course you can have well intentioned advertising that falls foul of fate.
No doubt the company that sponsored this competition paid a lot of money for their front page under headline banner ad, and well in advance of the day on which it was published so no way of knowing what the front page story was likely to be on that day. They were probably hoping for a doom and gloom story about the economy and the state of the country - the kind of thing that makes people want to get away.
What happened was this :

Yeah, let's enter and hope it's a cruise.

Or how about this :

I'm sure there's a pun in this that relates to Sanitary towels, 

but I'm not gonna let my brain run with it.

It always amuses me when things go wrong like this, it makes me feel better about the calamities that follow me around. I heard a guy singing along to his music player on the train yesterday, it wasn't his voice that amused me, it wasn't actually too bad, but he was singing a song that Son listens to a lot and so I knew he kept getting the words wrong.

Other peoples mistakes are way more entertaining then my own.

Luckily due to his headphones he couldn't hear me laughing. Whenever anyone does that it always reminds me of a friend from years ago who used to sing along to Bob Marleys Exodus. . . "whose that bunch of people".

But what if you got the words right, just the wrong interpretation. . . 

It's easily done, the English language can be very confusing at times. For all I know the same applies to other languages too, it's not like I can speak any. Other then jibberish and total bollocks after one too many. Actually I don't even need a drink to do it, I quite often intend to say one thing and something totally different comes out of my mouth. It's as if my brain and my mouth have had an argument and refuse to work together. The other day I caught a bus to a friends, where she lives is on the outskirts of the town so the bus will stop wherever you ask. I got up and meant to say to the driver "anywhere up here is fine. What I actually said was "anyup's fine", I'm not sure whether he understood me or just wanted to get the obviously mental tired women off the bus but he stopped anyway.

I do it when I'm typing too, I often look at the screen and what I see is not what I intended to write. I guess my fingers are also not in my brains good books, although a friend once told me that can be a sign of a stroke. 

Good job I don't work in advertising.

That explains it then, because I am constantly getting bothered by a cat that wants 

stroking when I am trying to type.

fairy godmother

Today I spotted this in my friends house.

Note the unicef logo all over it . . . the makers promise that for every pack bought they will donate funds to provide one vaccination for a child in a third world country.

Great idea.
Whilst you are waiting for your next load to emerge from the washing machine you can feel good about yourself with the knowledge that a poor starving African baby is not going to get some horrible disease.
Wash your pants and save a life.

But (yeah it's me, you knew there was going to be a but) have the makers of household products given up trying to convince us to buy their products because they are better then the rivals, and instead resorted to emotionally blackmailing us to do so ?
It's no longer buy Fairy because it's kind to your skin, the environment and can remove blood, shit and tears in cold water.
Oh no, now it's if you don't buy our product you are depriving a child of an injection.

Is there some unicef funded doctor in darkest Peru who has a queue of anxious mothers and sick babies hoping that he will get a text from Asda informing him that three more boxes have been sold so he can vaccinate three more children ?

If whoever makes these products can afford to fund vaccinations (which lets face it probably cost no more then a couple of quid each) why the fuck don't they just do it ?
The products that carry these kind of promotions don't cost anymore when they run them - so the money is coming out of their (probably huge) profits anyway - and charity donations are tax deductible, which lets face it is the real reason they do it.

I actually think it's quite disgusting that instead of just giving the charities the money they feel the need to turn it into a marketing opportunity as well. No doubt the 'brains' behind these schemes will justify it by saying that it enables their customers to feel as if they are helping needy children, but most people that want to help those less fortunate will make donations to charities anyway.
And Fairy - as you can see from the picture on the packet - has always used a baby as it's logo, and markets it's washing powder as being safe to use for baby clothes. The other product that I have recently seen use a similar idea was disposable nappies (diapers for all you across the pond).

Seems to me that that is trying to tug on the hormonal heartstrings of parents with babies.

You're walking round the supermarket and you like the smell of the detergent in the yellow box and that brand of nappies work better and are cheaper but hang on . . . . if you buy the ones you really want then a child in India might die. . .

Yup. Disgusting marketing ploy.

Just put your hands in your deep corporate pockets and give them the vaccines.
You can brag about it on your packaging if you want but don't try to use poverty stricken kids to make people buy your fucking overpriced product.