Welcome, chowhounds, to Adwatch, Word of Mouth"s strange laterally peek (a peek is all we can bear, dear reader) at the stream state of TV food advertising. This month, as ever, we find most that is tough to swallow.
Now, and I don"t contend this ironically, I love Greggs. I grew up on the tuna subs, cheese "n" onion pasties and apple "n" thickk cream turnovers, and at that time the north easterly formed sequence was peerless in the capability to broach hot, fatty, salty, starchy joy food to Britain"s high streets at prices you couldn"t oppose with. Even if you were signing on. Back then, Greggs was simple, unobtrusive and, somehow, deeply reassuring.Increasingly, however, it has started to put on airs. Nutritional leaflets (!) have appeared instore, as have fancily-wrapped muffins suggestive of those sole at Newcastle"s chi-chi Cafe Royal. There are plans to open upmarket "concept stores" in the south of England, and right away we have this agonizing strain "n" dance ad.
In it, genuine Greggs" employees perform a Busby Berkeley slight in the bread section, that contingency deny all sorts of health and reserve regulations. I cannot think of anything less deputy of the shopfloor at an industrial food unit. Where is the conveyer leather belt drudgery? The blokes sweating cobs - atonement the joke - in the bakery? Where"s the infuriating stroke of machinery? The banter? The boredom? For a food writer presumably in balance with the operative category assembly this is usually garbage. I gamble the usually time Greggs workers see that happy is when they"re streaming out opposite the car-park 32 seconds after their change has ended.
The Smirnoff ad.Still, I would still rather do a month on nights at Greggs Enfield bakery than outlay five mins at this party. I know it"s been around for a whilst now, but I saw it again not long ago and, well ... usually see at them, the spoilt, crazy Oxbridge idiots, drunk, not on Smirnoff vodka, but on their own clarity of entitlement. "Everybody! Look at Pandora"s Pierrot outfit. Isn"t it AH-MAY-ZING!". You usually know that all of these people opinion Tory. Even those that aren"t closely associated to a part of the shade cabinet.
Incidentally, how do Brewdog tumble tainted of the Portman Group for presumably compelling drug by job a splash Speedball when this Smirnoff Be There ad front but comment? In all the trippy, Mad Hatter, hippy-arthouse awfulness, it"s about as obvious an try to proportion ethanol with "altered states of consciousness" as you"re ever expected to see. It"s misleading, too, as vodka offers zero in the approach of enlightenment. The usually discernment you will take from it - as you mount there puking in to a grid carrying trite the 2 for 1 doubles at your internal discotheque ("chart and dance hits ... all night!") - is, in future, to hang to lager.
Just as unbelievable, for utterly opposite reasons, is this "dinner party" ad for McLelland Seriously Strong cheddar. Now, alternative writers of this bishopric have bridled at the "smug middle-class cosiness" of the setting, but this being Word of Mouth, we have opposite concerns. Me, I can"t assistance but meditative ... what? No ... seriously? You call that a cheese board?
Some grapes, a bit of celery and a big hunk of sweaty, plastic-wrapped supermarket cheddar do not an considerable cheese march make. Sorry, but that hasn"t upheld pattern as a wise finish to a cooking celebration given about 1986. If these people were genuine food bores - the sort of people who, if taken by surpise by a cheese would essentially stop mid-sentence in awed consternation - afterwards you can gamble that cheese house would enclose five workman cheeses, breads, biscuits, ripened offspring cake, apples, celery, various chutneys and positively no McLelland Seriously Strong cheddar. On suffering of amicable death.
The McCain"s ad.But is it Word of Mouth that"s out of touch? Could McLelland unequivocally be "serious about cheese"? Increasingly it seems that provenance is in the eye of the beholder. Where once "provenance" was a make a difference of normal skills, clarity and peculiarity right away it"s whatever vital corporations wish it to be.
Personally, I"m loose about the actuality that that McCain"s potato products enclose stabiliser E464, Disodium Diphosphate and - tuck in! - emulsifier E472e, but I do have a maybe genuine and revolting conflict to being treated with colour similar to a finish idiot. Which is because I find the Good Unlimited ads so nauseating. Potatoes being tickled, potatoes being hugged with garlic, potatoes being kindly sprinkled with herb confetti. It"s all good, demand McCain"s. It"s all infantile nonsense, contend I. And, yet, people appear to love it. It"s usually soooooo cute.
The Marmite ad.However, don"t desert all goal for the peculiarity of open discourse, usually yet. Not when there are, still, small moments of might similar to Marmite"s Love and Hate Party "political broadcasts" to behold.
A debate that owes as most to Chris Morris as it does customary consumer advertising, it takes not usually the BNP but a total worried British convention of intolerance, fright and scaremongering insanity and renders it, well, ridiculous. How most this will stroke in the ad mangle during Corrie is a indecisive point, but at the really slightest someone is perplexing (something amusing). The usually problem, as one Faustino B points out, of Marmite"s wider travesty choosing is: "What if the haters win? Won"t this be the misfortune debate ever?"
What do you think? Can a yeast-based sandwich widespread be a utilitarian arms in the quarrel opposite fascism? Has Gregg"s sole out? Would you offer McLelland cheddar? And how most vodka would you have to splash prior to you could suffer one of Smirnoff"s "parties"?
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