Campaign Magazine have published a list of the ten worst television commercials of 2008. Except, because it's December, they've called the article "Campaign's top 10 turkeys of 2008", the chumps. Most of the choices make sense, some of them don't, and there's one glaring cock-up. Here's the list in full. You'll note that they've missed out the godawful one with CGI germs being voiced by Rik Mayall (doing his 'Young Ones' voice, badly) and Tony Robinson (doing his 'Baldrick' voice, really badly).
1 Gillette
Federer, Woods and Henry chew up the furniture. But then, that's what all sports stars do when asked to do an advert, anyway. More notable would be the choice of bringing in Thierry Henry, being promoted using old footage of him playing for Arsenal at Highbury about four years ago. We suspect it's going to be a similar situation with the FIFA games, and Henry is replaced with Landon Donovan in the US campaign, the Hungarian version stars Balázs Dzsudzsák, and so on.
2 Specsavers
Edith Piaf sings about cheap eyeglasses. This advert reminds us of the sketch in The All-New Alexei Sayle Show, where 'Lex, dressed as Piaf, performs a version of the song about such laments as "I should never have bought that horrible Arsenal away shirt, the one with the yellow splotches all over it", so it's clearly not the second worst one of the year.
3 Renault
Woeful dubbed couple in a showroom. We could go off on one here, about one of our pet theories. Dubbed adverts. You want our money? And yet you can't be bothered spending a couple of grand re-filming three people from the country you're trying to sell to? Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
4 Warburtons
That stock advertising character Foreign Businessman In Britain trotted out for the first time in several years. Not even remotely racist or anything, or notable in any other way. And Warburtons still insist on not putting their bread in plastic bags, meaning it goes stale ten minutes after you get home from the shops. Boo.
5 Country Life
The John Lydon one. Which is meant to be terrible, surely? That's the point. Of course, we'll bet hardly anyone who saw it can remember what the actual brand of butter being promoted.
6 Kellogg
With Dame Kelly Holmes, and which we haven't ever seen. We know we could just click on the YouTube link on the Campaign page, but we've managed to contain our excitement.
7 Orangina
Disturbingly 'erotic' dancing CGI animals. The idea for which the creative director at top agency Burble, Burble and Twatt came up with by visiting furry groups in Second Life when he should have been getting a proper job.
8 Premier Inn
Lenny Henry pisses on the memories of everyone who liked him as Delbert Wilkins. The sad demise of the man who popularised the term "well 'ard" long before the Walford-based alsatian.
9 Samsung
Some Chelsea players doing a really shit advert, but one which crucially can be put out in Dubai without being redubbed, so Sumsung will be happy enough.
10 DFS
The Nickelback one that can give you both ear and eye cancer. This is where Campaign have really messed up. This isn't just the tenth worst advert of 2008. It's the worst thing ever broadcast in the name of marketing in the history of ever. Trying to pretend your sofas are somehow 'cool': a stupid idea. Trying to pretend your sofas are somehow 'cool' by having some gits from a talent agency doing air guitar: a really stupid idea. Trying to pretend your sofas are somehow 'cool' by having some gits from a talent agency doing air guitar to Nickelback's "Rock Star": Well. Take Mike Smith and Dick Rowe passing on signing The Beatles to Decca. Multiply that by ABC turning down The Cosby Show because they thought no-one would want to see the antics of a wealthy black family. Multiply the sum of that by ITV Digital and New Coke combined. You are now one-tenth of the way to the level of sheer and spectacular stupidity shown by the 'creative' who came up with this idea.
Really, it's so bad, we're just not going to make bloody sure we never buy a sofa from DFS, we actually spend every Tuesday afternoon going to our local branch with a tape recorder and performing the most revolting of dirty protests in the shop doorway to make bloody sure no-one else feels like buying one from there either. There's nothing like seeing us writhing around on a pavement in just our pants, rubbing ourselves with our own mess to the tune of "Rock Star" to make you consider that Furniture Village might be a better option.
While it's a long-standing tradition of BrokenTV to avoid naming companies responsible for terrible adverts, in this case we're going to post a load of links to the DFS website, in the hope we show up in the web stats. With an ounce of luck, they'll click on the link to this page and see what we think of them, what their actions have made a once-proud blog resort to, and then do the decent thing and fold the company, just in time to prevent their 2009 campaign, which is exactly the same, only they're using "Rock Star" by fucking Pink.
1 Gillette
Federer, Woods and Henry chew up the furniture. But then, that's what all sports stars do when asked to do an advert, anyway. More notable would be the choice of bringing in Thierry Henry, being promoted using old footage of him playing for Arsenal at Highbury about four years ago. We suspect it's going to be a similar situation with the FIFA games, and Henry is replaced with Landon Donovan in the US campaign, the Hungarian version stars Balázs Dzsudzsák, and so on.
2 Specsavers
Edith Piaf sings about cheap eyeglasses. This advert reminds us of the sketch in The All-New Alexei Sayle Show, where 'Lex, dressed as Piaf, performs a version of the song about such laments as "I should never have bought that horrible Arsenal away shirt, the one with the yellow splotches all over it", so it's clearly not the second worst one of the year.
3 Renault
Woeful dubbed couple in a showroom. We could go off on one here, about one of our pet theories. Dubbed adverts. You want our money? And yet you can't be bothered spending a couple of grand re-filming three people from the country you're trying to sell to? Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
4 Warburtons
That stock advertising character Foreign Businessman In Britain trotted out for the first time in several years. Not even remotely racist or anything, or notable in any other way. And Warburtons still insist on not putting their bread in plastic bags, meaning it goes stale ten minutes after you get home from the shops. Boo.
5 Country Life
The John Lydon one. Which is meant to be terrible, surely? That's the point. Of course, we'll bet hardly anyone who saw it can remember what the actual brand of butter being promoted.
6 Kellogg
With Dame Kelly Holmes, and which we haven't ever seen. We know we could just click on the YouTube link on the Campaign page, but we've managed to contain our excitement.
7 Orangina
Disturbingly 'erotic' dancing CGI animals. The idea for which the creative director at top agency Burble, Burble and Twatt came up with by visiting furry groups in Second Life when he should have been getting a proper job.
8 Premier Inn
Lenny Henry pisses on the memories of everyone who liked him as Delbert Wilkins. The sad demise of the man who popularised the term "well 'ard" long before the Walford-based alsatian.
9 Samsung
Some Chelsea players doing a really shit advert, but one which crucially can be put out in Dubai without being redubbed, so Sumsung will be happy enough.
10 DFS
The Nickelback one that can give you both ear and eye cancer. This is where Campaign have really messed up. This isn't just the tenth worst advert of 2008. It's the worst thing ever broadcast in the name of marketing in the history of ever. Trying to pretend your sofas are somehow 'cool': a stupid idea. Trying to pretend your sofas are somehow 'cool' by having some gits from a talent agency doing air guitar: a really stupid idea. Trying to pretend your sofas are somehow 'cool' by having some gits from a talent agency doing air guitar to Nickelback's "Rock Star": Well. Take Mike Smith and Dick Rowe passing on signing The Beatles to Decca. Multiply that by ABC turning down The Cosby Show because they thought no-one would want to see the antics of a wealthy black family. Multiply the sum of that by ITV Digital and New Coke combined. You are now one-tenth of the way to the level of sheer and spectacular stupidity shown by the 'creative' who came up with this idea.
Really, it's so bad, we're just not going to make bloody sure we never buy a sofa from DFS, we actually spend every Tuesday afternoon going to our local branch with a tape recorder and performing the most revolting of dirty protests in the shop doorway to make bloody sure no-one else feels like buying one from there either. There's nothing like seeing us writhing around on a pavement in just our pants, rubbing ourselves with our own mess to the tune of "Rock Star" to make you consider that Furniture Village might be a better option.
While it's a long-standing tradition of BrokenTV to avoid naming companies responsible for terrible adverts, in this case we're going to post a load of links to the DFS website, in the hope we show up in the web stats. With an ounce of luck, they'll click on the link to this page and see what we think of them, what their actions have made a once-proud blog resort to, and then do the decent thing and fold the company, just in time to prevent their 2009 campaign, which is exactly the same, only they're using "Rock Star" by fucking Pink.
5 .:
Delbert Wilkins! Aka the last time Lenny Henry was funny, and we've had nearly a quarter of a century of unbroken shite since.
And the best bit is, the campaign's a blatant lie. Dawn doesn't trust him to stay away from home, apparently, so he has to make the journey back after each show.
Also, the DFS ads got canned recently, because they used visual trickery to make the sofas look bigger than they were, or something.
Interesting note re Samsung that hardly anybody, Campaign inclusive, noticed - the woman in it may look like a Fisher-Price My First Winslet but is in fact Donna Air, once of lad mag aided ubiquity and now taking non-speaking side roles in adverts.
You have to see that Kelloggs advert if only to marvel at exactly how bad Kelly Holmes is at reading a cue card.
I've got Abbey Life and the Gateway Rap which says DFS stays off the bottom of the "ever" list.
There is also the Berocca advert which shamelessly apes That OK Go Video From Off Of YouTube, and tries to get away with it, only to be hamstrung by not being any bloody good. In a way, I wish I hadn't edited the adverts out of everything I've taped this year. It could have led to a wonderful The 100 Worst Adverts Of 2008 listing.
(Of course, you're probably reading the above and trying to remember what sort of product Berocca is, thereby signifying that the creatives have FAILED. Ha.)
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