Adverts

[daibhidc]

Are adverts getting stupider, or am I getting less tolerant of them? While watching Jonathan Creek last night I saw three in a row that deeply irritated me.

1. Volvic, the bottled water that gives you intense hydration because it's filtered through layers of volcanic rock. No, it hydrates you because it's water.

2. Cow & Gate toddler milk. Apparently toddlers need the equivilent of 20 litres of cow's milk every day. You have to wonder how the human race survived long enough for this to be invented, since every child until now must have been severely malnourished.

3. Sensodyne toothpaste has a revolutionary new formula, but were remarkably cagy about what it actually does that the old Sensodyne doesn't. But there were lots of scenes of men in white coats, so it must be very scientific.

I dunno, maybe I'm getting more irritated by this stuff since I started reading Bad Science. Now I don't see them has harmless nonsense, but as a symptom of the public misunderstanding of science that leads to the stuff Ben reports.

Comments

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

My study of the history of advertisement indicates that it's more that your filters have dropped than that advertising has changed. Advertising is pernicious.

[julesjones]

One of the nice things about moving back to the UK was moving away from American advertising. UK advertising is still annoying and pervasive, but not *nearly* as annoying and pervasive as US advertising. And frequently more intelligent. (Not that this is difficult.)

[cat63.livejournal.com]

3. Sensodyne toothpaste has a revolutionary new formula, but were remarkably cagy about what it actually does that the old Sensodyne doesn't. But there were lots of scenes of men in white coats, so it must be very scientific.

Reminds me of the Garfield cartoon where he's watching a cat food ad that screams "NEW AND IMPROVED! NEW AND IMPROVED!" and his reaction is "To think, all this time I've been eating old and inferior..."

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

I just read an article in one of the composition readers I get free from the publishers about "weasel words" in advertising. It was very illuminating.

I gave it to Jim, or I'd quote you a bit of it. But the toothpaste's new formula may be that they've changed the color a bit. A very small bit.

[sloopjonb.livejournal.com]

But are not shampoo and moisturiser adverts the funniest thing on the TV? Collagen biospheres! Oxygen globules inserted into your skin! Hyposcientific quasiology! But best of all, those wonderful, wonderful detergents that, when applied to human hair, revitalise dead tissue! (Lazarite! It's what Jesus used!)

[rhiannon-s.livejournal.com]

They've got cleverer with catchy jingles and songs too, they've realised that it doesn't have to pleasurable, just memorable. The new Honda ads and that bloody 118 247 ads stuck in my mind even as I wanted to vomit in disgust.