Advertizing, Lawnmowers and Debt

This is advertland, so you know that all the people are going to be grossly over acted caricatures of real people.

Weak-chinned father is trying to mow the rather small lawn with a rather small, but quite adequate, mower – except that he’s not bothered to mow the lawn for the last 6 months, and so every few feet the mower jams, making the task seem impossible. The lawn grows to appear as if he must hack through a couple of acres of over-grown jungle. The rest of weak-chinned father’s family huddle miserably in the doorway, waiting for the day father returns from his expedition, so they may, once again, enjoy the garden. Thankfully, croons the voiceover, there is another way. Take out a massive loan, consolidate all your debts (and the implication is that there must be many, or weak-chinned dad would not have neglected the garden for so long), have only 1 monthly payment, lower than all the other amounts you were paying put together. Cut to a tableau of weak-chinned dad now sitting upon a totally inappropriate lawn mower, more suited to the aforementioned 2 acres, happily finishing off his handkerchief sized lawn. Weak-chinned dad’s children are happily playing on same lawn (risking death by lawn mower, because the lawn is so small.) A shiny, new car sits smugly in the drive. And to add serious insult to injury, simpering mum is weeding, while casting suggestive looks towards weak-chinned dad – “Oooh! He’s such a hunk now he’s got that massive lawn mower.” Clearly size matters.

So, today’s diatribe – are we going to talk about the size of lawn mowers, the fact that Britain used to be at the forefront of world advertising, producing some of the most astoundingly inventive and original adverts, or are we going to talk about Debt?

Yep – advertising. Obviously I’d like to go into lawn mowers, but since I, too, have a handkerchief-sized lawn, I’ve little experience, save to say that a larger mower is actually more difficult to use when cutting something small. I did have a go on a sit-down mower while in France this summer (maybe I’ll tell you about that later), which I found quite difficult to handle, even on the huge patch of lawn I’d promised to mow. I was going to go into debt, but it made me sound pompous, and I wouldn't want that, now, would I?

You have to remember some of your favourite adverts over the years (actually, the one I remember at the moment was shown in Cinemas – the Kia Ora advert – “I’ll be your dog!”). And there are still some hugely inventive ads being created now, which makes all the more perplexing the hideous, mis-conceived and downright lazy ads around right now. And those foreign ads, over-dubbed into English (with completely laughable voices for the people!) – that’s laziness taken to a whole new level. I’ve got to hand it to the makers of the Cilit Bang ads – you win the Prize for the Laziest Advert in 2007.

But for those of you who feel as I do, that Britain was once great in the world of Advertising, here's a reminder...

Now, I'd better get out there and mow my lawn, before it becomes a wasteland of overgrown jungle.