Daytime TV Advertising

As part of the wonderful stupor of being a new dad I’ve ended up watching too much daytime TV. And as a result seeing too many daytime TV ads.

I have learned much.

National Geographic have whored themselves out to co-brand some air fresheners. Bloody disgraceful.

There’s this horrific BUY ONE GET ONE FREE advert for windows – I can’t find the actual ad online. But Safestyle UK does have a bunch of promotional videos on their YouTube channel. And you can glimpse the ad at the start and end of this clip. It’s real brain-rape stuff that would shake you out of your deepest pastel-coloured ‘This Morning’ haze.

The fact that this company has a YouTube channel and a blog and all that stuff makes me feel really queer inside.

Here’s another ad that makes me feel like renouncing everything I believed in. It makes me want to tell everyone that integrated campaigns are a product of a sick and twisted satanic messenger.

I’m just bursting with a whole bunch of confessions about bread. What on earth are they expecting? If you’re dying to let your sandwich secrets out, head to kingsmillconfessions.com. Actually, you know that bit in American Pie, how about a ‘British Butty’ remake?

Oh and there’s a Dettol ad that makes you believe that you ought to spray every surface in your house with chemicals or you and your children will die of flu within 48 hours. Thankfully that doesn’t seem to exist on the Internet.

Strangely I was rescued by a McDonald’s ad. Jesus, things must be low, or I’ve tired myself into full-scale brain damage. Seriously though, I actually really like these ads. I love the fact they’ve got proper writing in them. The voiceover is nice. The music works. The observations are sweet. And it feels appropriate, yet different enough.

And thankfully I don’t have to visit the ‘passing-by-o-matic’ to upload my buttocks onto a McDonald’s chair and become poem-a-lized.

Walk On The Wild Side

On Saturday evenings at roundabout 6pm on BBC is my favourite new TV show. It’s called Walk on the Wild Side. The premise is very very simple. It’s people doing funny voiceovers on top of lovely nature footage.

It’s the shorter simpler ones that work best for me I feel like some of the longer, more involved ones just unravel a bit sometimes.

Perhaps I love it because it reminds me of Animal Magic from my childhood:

Or maybe I love it because it’s just bloody brilliant.

Aside from “Alan” the other sketch that has me in stitches are the scratching badgers (if you’ve not seen it that will mean nothing).

Man vs Cartoon

Could this be the most brilliant TV show ever conceived?

Recreate Wile E. Coyote’s contraptions for catching the Road Runner in real life. What a joy.

And they’ve even got a professor called Don Weincoff (sp?).

For more info head here.

Photos of TV

Donut

A brilliant collection of strange moments on TV screens.

Found via a new blog in my repertoire: Spinning Around Seventy Seven (or it might be Seventy Seven Spinning Around). Anyway you can find it here: http://t4w.blogs.com/spinningaround/

Mad Men = Awesome

Having said recently that I don’t watch much good TV. I ended up watching Mad Men on BBC4 on Sunday night thanks to a recommendation from mum.

Truly great.

From the team that brung the world the Sopranos it’s a beautifully crafted drama about New York ad men in the 60s. It’s available on BBC iPlayer for now. I really recommend checking it out. I’d not heard about it at all, but it appears to be the best new TV show of last year in the US – just shows how unglobal I am.

The world is different now, but only a bit.