Ads All Folks!

Much to my delight, the old Milky Way advert appeared on my TV screen today!! Well I’m guessing it appeared on a lot of people’s TV screens, or I hope it did because it’s a very strange thing to have visions or illusions about!

As I sung along to “The red car and the blue car had a race…” I thought how fantastic it was to see this classic ad making an appearance once more on the small screen. It’s safe to say they don’t make them like that anymore. I’m a bit of a retrospect or nostalgic or something about the past that describes people like me, so when I saw this classic piece of advertising on TV I was overjoyed.

What sets apart a great advert from a good advert from a terrible advert? I’m not in advertising nor do I claim to know very much about it but as a consumer I know what I like. Chances are I won’t rush out and buy the product anyway, but since we’re constantly spammed with advertising for everything under the sun at every opportunity, they could at least be entertaining or educational or both.

Songs with a catchy tune, or include a sample of a song are particularly good at drawing me in but not something that has me dum di dum dum-ing for the rest of the day and giving me nightmares or some such atrocity because of it becoming irrevocably etched to my brain. I’m happy to say the Milky Way advert does not fit this category.

As great as it would be for all adverts to be fun, light-hearted and or educational, without being boring, annoying or cringe-worthy, without leaving your mouth taste like soap or making you want to gouge your eyes out with whatever product is being drilled into your brain, then let’s face it, you stand a better chance of winning the lottery. If you already won the lottery, well congratulations and then I’d say the odds of my idea are slimmer than you winning the lottery AGAIN. If you’ve won the lottery twice, then you probably have enough money to have one of those fantastical magical TV sets that automatically removes adverts or a servant superbly well trained in the art of changing the channel at the perfect moment.

Until then I’ll settle for muting and changing the channel for the boring ads and will keep singing along to the tuneful ones with hungry cars and comical lyrics.

I may write more on this in the future so watch this space.