Newsgush - Total Recall

In our irregular, slightly unpopular news item we take a little look at Marketing magazine’s Adwatch feature, this time dated 15th October. And what a cracker it is this time around.

So - if you’ll do us the honour of casting your mind back – you’ll remember Adwatch gathers information from those rotten swines, the general public. Then -using computers - it figures out which ads are more easily recalled in the empty, addled and simple minds of the unwashed masses (that’s us).

Let’s have a look at the Top 5. At this point, please imagine ‘The Wizard’ by Paul Hardcastle playing in the background. Or click here if your imagination is feeble. 

5.) Greggs
I don’t actually remember ever seeing an ad for Greggs appear on my TV. I’m finding it difficult to believe they actually advertise, as the Greggs near my manor is essentially a doss-house for crackheads and ageing ladies of the night. Every time I walk past, it’s scattered with the flaking imagery of the Hackney undead. Perhaps they’re attracted by the delicious cream horns.

4.) Subway
Balls to Subway and their revolting food. Have you ever been in one?
It’s ridiculous. You stand in a queue and go along on a meet-and-greet with the chain-gang employees (no doubt being paid tiny peanuts) trying not to be pernickety about how many kernels of corn you want in your ridiculously elongated bap. If you ask for steak and cheese, they put a small tray containing a mass of what genuinely resembles bum-pickings into a microwave. It’s deeply unappetising. I can’t recall the advert.

3.) Hovis
Again – this one’s gone straight over my head – if I’ve ever seen it. Do people really buy bread based on an advert? I can’t say I’ve ever seen a loaf on TV and made a mental note to purchase one the next day at dawn. There are too many other thoughts banging around my brain like ‘if I don’t do some work in the office tomorrow I will get fired‘, ‘they should, one day, make a gameshow with a skyscraper made out of jenga blocks‘ and of course, the perpetual repeat-playing of the question ’have I got a terminal disease?‘.

2.) Marks & Spencer
That’s more like it! Of course I remember this. M&S have pulled off the trick of putting a piece of crumpet in their advert, running around in her underwear again. The fact they do this every single time means this is a successful campaign. I like the fact that, in the new one, she’s running around a fairground in her smalls. If she’d tried that in any of the travelling fairs I attended as a child she’d have promptly been dragged off to a dark area behind a lorry by the feral-looking monster who ran the waltzers. Someone should have a word with that naughty French siren - and I’m volunteering.

1.) Confused.com

ARGH. AAAAARGH. AAAAAAAAARGH!
This advert makes me want to kill, maim and die. dot com. Lobotomised spectres walk around a white nothingness.com, containing only badly rendered cardboard-cutouts.com painted by children.com. It makes me confused.com and I can’t bear it. (dot com)

So there we have it. Once again, we see that the adverts we remember are, on the whole, the ones that…

a.) make us want to kill, or
b.) show us perfect-looking ladies running around in their pants.

About these ads

Tags: ads, Advertisement, Advertising, Commerce, Confused, Confused dot com, Crack, Greggs, Hovis, Marks & Spencer, Myleene Klass, Noemie Lenoir, Subway, Television, TV