Adverts – Dirty Feed

Memory Poisoning

Published 28th October 2024

One of my favourite games when I was a kid was The Seventh Star, a text adventure for the BBC Micro. Not that I was any good at text adventures. Or any games full stop, really. The number of games from the time I actually completed can be counted on one hand.¹

So I never even came close to finishing it. Nor did my older sister. Which is why it’s slightly sobering to find this playthrough on YouTube. If I’d known what to type, a game which I failed to complete over years… could have been over in less than 20 minutes.

And yet there was something disturbing, as I watched that video recently. Because as I did, I was aware of part of my brain self-destructing.

As the locations of the game flitted past – some of which I remembered, some of which I definitely didn’t manage to get to at the time – I knew I could never quite remember the game as I did as a kid ever again. The memory of seeing the game completed in 2024 instantly squashed many of my memories of the late 80s and early 90s. The memories of which of the locations I managed to actually see then, and which were brand new to me in 2024, is already fading in a jumble of confusion.

* * *

If there’s one thing men of my age are very good at, it’s watching old adverts from their childhood on YouTube. Which is why I was surprised a few months ago, when I randomly came across this Monster Munch advert… and was pretty sure I really hadn’t seen it since the 80s. I was instantly dragged back through the decades.

And yet watching it again, right now… I simply can’t capture quite the same feeling. As with The Seventh Star, as soon as I saw it in 2024, it instantly pasted itself across my memory afresh. I’m not so much dragged back through the decades, as just dragged back a few months, when I first came across the advert afresh.

That feeling can never quite be recaptured. I can’t drag my brain back to the point before I reexperienced these things. And there is an ever-dwindling source of material which I a) still remember well enough as a kid, b) had a huge gap between watching them as a kid and as an adult, and c) haven’t already gone back and killed my old memories by watching them again.

Surely neither The Seventh Star or Monster Munch were really designed to induce this much melancholy.

I think The Devil’s Domain was the first game I ever finished. ↩

“I Don’t Need a Brolly, You Wally!”

Published 20th September 2022

Adverts

The greatest crossover event of all time? There’s clearly no contest. It’s Star Trek and Hi-de-Hi!, of course.

This early 90s advert for National Power and Powergen – specifically, for the sale of shares as part of the privatisation of the UK electricity market – exists in a weird hinterland for me. I don’t remember it from the time; I only really got into Star Trek in the mid-nineties.¹ So who knows when I first saw it properly. All I know is that once I finally saw it on YouTube, it hung around in my head, ready to drop into conversation at a moment’s notice.

Even if you’re not keen on the main body swap gag – which is still more tasteful than “Turnabout Intruder” – there’s still plenty to enjoy. I’m a particular fan of Scotty’s paper aeroplane. The ad justifies its existence with Simon Cadell’s “Good afternoon” alone. But as I watched it recently for the 1,585th time, I started to wonder something. Exactly when was this advert shot?

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Blame my Dad wanting to see the 6 O’Clock News on BBC1, instead of me being allowed to watch BBC2. ↩

The only post on the internet which uses McDonald’s to talk about the intricacies of television playout

Published 17th May 2017

Adverts / TV Presentation

McDonald's logo on black

Let’s take one of this site’s brief excursions into something which is actually a current news story.

“McDonald’s has decided to withdraw its latest TV advert, which was criticised for exploiting childhood bereavement.

The fast food giant had already apologised for “upset” caused by the advert, first aired on 12 May.

It features a boy who struggles to find something in common with his dead father until he goes to McDonald’s.

A spokeswoman for McDonald’s said the British advert will be removed from all media this week and it will review its creative process to avoid a repeat.”

I don’t really want to get into whether the advert is offensive or not; there are plenty of places elsewhere where you can get into that kind of debate. I want to pull my usual trick and pick out one sentence in the story and talk about something entirely different instead.

Today, that sentence is the following:

“Due to the lead-times required by some broadcasters, the last advert will air on Wednesday 17 May.”

My response: what the fuck?

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#DancePonyDance

Published 9th February 2017

Adverts / Internet

Welcome to a secret post. I mean, as secret as any post can get which is blatantly published on the front page of this site. But I won’t be linking to this on Twitter, and that’s where the majority of my hits come from these days. I want this to fly at least a little under the radar.

Back in 2013, mobile company Three produced a very silly advert. An advert which by all accounts should have irritated the hell out of me. A CGI moonwalking Shetland pony, painfully asking to go viral, with the slogan “Keep on internetting”? And yet… man, something about the ad just made me love it regardless. Maybe the choice of song, maybe the quality of the animation… or maybe the other slogan: “Silly stuff. It matters.” I almost want to nick that slogan for Dirty Feed.

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Wonga.com: “No Hidden Charges”

Published 29th September 2013

Adverts

I’m sure nobody reading this needs a rant about what a dreadful company Wonga is. You can get that better elsewhere, and it’s not my speciality.

I do feel moved to comment on one of the ads in their latest campaign, though. Our three heroes (Betty, Earl and Joyce) have recently gone CGI, and had a bit of a personality revamp; Betty in particular has gone from being a bit of a grouch to being sweet and lovely, thereby taking away the single interesting thing about her in previous campaigns. But I digress.

The big idea in this ad is that Earl is pretending to do a magic trick: the phrase NO HIDDEN CHARGES fails to disappear. As Joyce irritatingly points out, that’s supposed to be the point – that Wonga aren’t hiding anything to do with their charges. A fairly tedious idea for an ad, but I suppose it gets the job done.

Except that they can’t quite stop with the idea of a failed magic trick. They need to add a bit of extra visual pizazz. So in the last few seconds, despite the point of the advert being that Wonga don’t hide anything, Earl manages to create a hidden rabbit from his hat. At the exact point where Joyce is saying the selling point of Wonga is that “there are no surprises”.

Not only does it ruin the their message, it actually manages to put across the exact opposite of the intended idea. The ad is now saying that Wonga will tell you that they don’t intend to give you any hidden charges, right up until the last minute – and then will land you with a big surprise right at the very end. The exact idea about the company that the ad was supposed to counter.

Brilliant Wonga, well done!

BEST. ADVERT. EVER.

Published 21st January 2013

Adverts

I have posted this on Twitter. I have posted this on Tumblr. But I will not rest until I have forced as many people as possible to watch this.

Stay right to the very end for the best bit.

Best Ad Placement Ever

Published 12th January 2012

Adverts

From Channel 4 tonight, around 18:45 (via @bohaynowell):

Someone very clever is working in Aldi’s marketing department.

Question: exactly how much will this kind of thing piss off Kellogg’s? Their no doubt relatively expensive slot is completely undermined…

UPDATE (18/01/12): Well done How-Do, for doing what I failed to do and getting proper quotes from McCann (Aldi’s advertising agency), and Kellogg’s. Apparently all a big coincidence. Ah well.