{"id":10871,"date":"2025-05-13T13:21:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-13T13:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=10871"},"modified":"2025-05-13T13:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T13:21:10","slug":"wonders-in-adland-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=10871","title":{"rendered":"Wonders in Adland 3"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I\u2019ve had a surfeit of candidates for this column \u2013 a sure sign that ads are getting more and more bonkers. They\u2019re certainly getting more and more hyperactive: I\u2019m grateful to friend of Damesnet Ellen for pointing out how many ads feature dancing. The mere mention of insurance or selling your car, for example, seems to result in the participants \u2018wriggling their guts; it drives me absolutely nuts\u2019, to quote Noel Coward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By contrast, my first ad is peddling calm. This is the ad for Twining\u2019s soothing tea. In it a young woman lolls on the bonnet of her car parked up on the beach, drinking a mug of tea while a mellifluous voice-over promises a \u2018moment of calm\u2019: I doubt it. She is lounging in the kind of position that is guaranteed to make your collar bones ache, she\u2019s still got the tea bag in her mug and the bonnet of the car must be roasting in all that sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questions arise: how did she come by the hot water? She doesn\u2019t look like the type to own a Primus stove, still less to carry a Thermos. How is she going to get the car off the beach? Surely the minute she puts it into gear the wheels will just spin round in the sand and dig her in deeper. If I were ever to find myself in her situation, I would be feeling very far from calm\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n

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Next we go nuts again. In an advertisement for The Grape Tree, purveyor of health foods and wellness products, we find telly\u2019s Dr Ranj Singh in a curiously helpless state. Despite being an NHS clinician, he is all at sea in the Grape Tree store and needs to approach the shop assistant for advice on natural products that will improve his bone health, balance his cholesterol, and address fatigue. Clearly the assistant\u2019s pharmaceutical knowledge surpasses his, and she is able to point him in the right direction (pumpkin seeds, walnuts and cashew nuts respectively, since you ask). Give the woman her own pharmacy, say I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally it\u2019s the turn of Smarty Mobile (an off-putting name, if ever there was one, conjuring up smart alecs and smart arses). In this ad a bride who has just nipped out of her wedding reception (to go to the loo, perhaps) is being denied re-entry to it by an officious hotel clerk as she can\u2019t produce an invitation. Cue the voice-over: \u2018What a load of malarkey! Smarty keeps things simple: less malarkey, more smarty.\u2019 What is the connection between the two? What does the pig-headedness of the clerk have to do with the apparent simplicity of using Smarty Mobile? Could there be a bigger non-sequitur?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Programme for International Student Assessment has found weaker critical thinking in young people, with many attributing this to the rise in the use of AI.  On the evidence, this is certainly true of today\u2019s crop of (m)admen (and women?). Where are the witty, subtle – and logical! – ads of yesteryear, such as those for Hamlet cigars, Cinzano and Heat Electric (the ones with the Aardman animations)?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Ranj Singh is in a curiously helpless state<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":10876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[592,63,56,307,334,72],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10871"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10871"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10889,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10871\/revisions\/10889"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}