AdvertTime

When I worked for a large organisation and we planned a TV advertising campaign there was a lot of work and time spent to get it right. We had to decide what was the exact message we intended to advertise. Was it the company name and its good standing as a business, or a particular product we made? Who are we aiming the advert to: teenagers, young married couples with family, older couples, middle-class relatively affluent people, richer people with more disposable income ... and so on.

We then prepared the advert on large pieces of cardboard just like a cartoon sequence. Scene one, man enters from left. Scene two man says to woman blah blah blah. Scene three ... and so on. So we could visualise the whole advert scene by scene as a cartoon script and discuss changes or improvements.

Then we hired the film crew, actors, did the filming, editing and so on.

An advert lasting a couple of minutes on your TV screen would take us perhaps six months of planning a good successful campaign.

These days I pay more attention to the TV adverts than the programs which intersperse them. And I ask who are the idiots who make these adverts these days?

Some adverts are so incomprehensible you don't know what the product or service is, because they failed to tell you often enough in big letters. Other adverts just repeat a word, like "Victor", and expect you to know that "Victor" is a brand of men's after-shave lotion, or perhaps a new computer program, or a new washing machine or whatever. If you don't know what "Victor" is from the long advert with incomprehensible singing  and dancing girls and cars, and various sceneries and so on; then they expect you to Google it. As if many people would really bother.

I've decided to stop buying a product, or do business with a company, whose adverts I dislike. So far there is a very limited number of foods I can eat. If I continue with my self-imposed boycott I will soon be eating the carpet and table leg.

Meanwhile, here are some good honest adverts which I would have made in times gone by:

OUR HUGGING DRESSES WILL ACCENTUATE YOUR CONTOURS

AND DRAW ATTENTION TO YOUR AMPLE FEATURES

FIT YOUR PET WITH VICTOR GPS NAVIGATION SYSTEM

AND YOU'LL NEVER LOSE HIM AGAIN

(UNLESS YOU LOSE THE REMOTE CONTROL!)

VICTOR MEN'S CLOTHING

YOU'LL BE A SEX SYMBOL

FOR THE WOMAN WHO DOESN'T CARE

PREPARE FOR YOUR INTERVIEW

BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE

EVERY ADVERT MUST HAVE GOOD MUSIC