Whale got a yoghurt deal
In this modern life there are two things we just can't decide on. They unite us and divide us and we just can't make it clear whether we love them or hate them. Is this Marmite based? No, friend, it is adverts and celebrities. There are some celebrities we like and there are some we do not. There are some adverts we like and some we do not. Since the dawn of time/advertising celebrities have been happy to shill products, to be bedfellows with the advertising business. Sometimes in spite of the big fat cheque (or, come on, it's 2013! PayPal payment transfer) you know has seduced the celebrity in to this advert, you can't help but wonder if they aren't getting rather a raw deal. Poor Scarlett Johansson for example, unflatteringly trussed up with the hair of Rich Old Lady #2 in a CSI plot in a misguided bid to echo Anita Ekberg (one assumes) in La Dolce Vita in a D&G ad. Admit it, you had no idea how hard it was to wear black lace until you saw that advert. Plenty of other celebrities have fallen foul of the ad treatment too, here are our picks of celebrity adverts...
| 1. F1 drivers are competitive creatures. They exist to win races and championships, to set fastest laps, and to collect trophy after trophy. And it would appear that the competitiveness extends to securing the most embarrassing endorsement deals. The undoubted winner? Jenson Button, whose 2011 Head and Shoulders ad won industry awards for its toe-curling awfulness. Winning, Jense? Are you sure about that? F1 Kate 2. Celebrity ads are a handy way for products to make us feel instantly like movie/rock/porn stars or basically a hot person with money. Thanks for giving me something to aspire to, your toiletries/make-up/jeans have changed my life forever! They banned celebs in alcohol ads a few years ago. Vinnie Jones was aspirational overload, a footballer/actor, no friggin' way! However, the likes of the pongy perfume and glucosamine are still fair game. What was that last one? It was a Holland & Barrett bloody bargain that's what it was! And it was brought to us by the jean wearing, family having, health conscious former 80s pop star Kim Wilde! While sauntering round the aisle, Kim sounds rather posh but by the end of the ad the bewitching deals have made her giddy and she is back to her rock n' roll South London ways. Kim's all like, "The betta than half price sale, now on at HOLLAND BA-RIT!" This woman sang Kids of America! Awesome electro one-key taping intro and I'm bopping away! Let's get popping those cod liver oil pills! Woah - Oh! Squeamish Nicola 3. Kevin Bacon doesn't know how to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. It was the revelation that shook... No one. Kevin Bacon would never play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. He's too busy being Kevin Bacon, and reminding everyone that he's Kevin Bacon. Still, we've all had our LOLz. We all watched in perverse satisfaction as Kevin Bacon says things he didn't even know were words until he saw the script. It made us feel good for a while. Well done, EE. Well done. But it's been a couple of months now. It's not funny any more. Hollywood wants Kevin Bacon back. And they can bloody well have him. Becky Shepherd 4. Without a doubt the celebrity advert that annoys me more than any other on the TV, probably more than any other advert ever (even that bloody We Buy Any Car advert with the earworm jingle that takes days to shift), is the Go Compare Advert with Professor Stephen Hawking CBE CT FRS ETC in it. Go Compare were already high on my hatred radar before this, as they don’t seem to realise that if you’ve got an unpopular, irritating. and fundamentally unlikeable mascot you don’t need to change the focus of the advert to people attacking him - you can just take him out the back and shoot him (much as Swift Cover did with the increasingly corpse-like Iggy Pop) and start a new advertising campaign. The only bright side I can see is that the | |
advert provides a great visual example of what happens when the government slashes funding to the sciences to the bone. Unless the Coalition change their ways within the year Brian Cox will be hawking soap powder on TV for 50ps to feed the electricity meter next to the Large Hadron Collider. Gareth
| 5. I hate adverts. I'm not keen on celebrities. I hate celebrity culture. So I could probably spend all day listing examples I hate. But really, hasn't Johnny Rotten flogging butter got to be one of the defining examples of the whole sorry genre? Whether or not you think the Sex Pistols were punk, they certainly thought they were. And nothing says 'smash the system' like taking £5million to promote a product made by a company who at the same time are about to make job cuts. It might be hard to make ends meet as an ex-musician, but there have to be better ways of doing it than selling off the tiny bit of integrity you have left. Oh, I'm never going to say it better than the master. Squeamish Louise | |
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