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Here is the overlook ; One large furniture store made it big with stupid TV advertising for more than 30 years here. You see the kind of low quality spots with unprofessional actors and plots tailor made for Beavis and Butt-Head type audience. You think, OK they succeeded with this market segment, the formula works dont change anything, good for them.
Then comes competitor 'X' with scrips written by someone who clearly had to many lobotomies. You think, OK competitor 'X' aims at the same market segment. Sad for the rest of us suffering twice the garbage in the crossfire.
What is the sector of activity using comparable TV advertising standards in your country?
Fortunately, TiVo spares me most of that.
However during the night many private channels show all kinds of poorly dubbed US-infomercial shows where they don't even try to match the spoken words with the mouth movements of the actors.
I'm always wondering who these idiots are that buy all this useless stuff... ;-)
Then he retired and his daughter took over. The commercials are much more toned down these days.
[edited by: lawman at 9:33 pm (utc) on Oct. 30, 2004]
[edit reason] No Specifics Please [/edit]
Furniture will be part of a living space for a long time, what can motivate people to buy it from spokepersons wearing rainbow wigs?
They are not the worst ads on TV, though. I think that locally, they are beaten by the ads for a certain well-known Canadian chain of donut vendors, whose French-language ads feature two of the most moronic "characters" I've ever seen. The two professional actors, who have somehow managed to build a career on the back of their donut ads, push the barrier of imbecility to new levels. As with the furniture ads, I have been put off going to the advertised restaurants precisely because of their terrible advertising.
The absolute worst of TV ads in my opinion are the "clever" ones who use reverse sexism as a selling point. Impress the female audience by representing the male of the species as a neanderthal. Two ads come to mind: one for a car company which shows a father incapable of closing a stroller whilst his partner manipulates expertly all the combinations of seat layout in their minivan.
The second (and the one that wins the prize as the worst ad ever made) is a French-language ad for a large US-based store chain (with the name beginning with W) where two "associates" in the baby department discuss their customers. One of them says, "it's funny when the new fathers come in, they don't have the slightest clue. But we know what they want" (laughing). As a full-time father working from home, it doesn't get more insulting than this - it is not just poor, it's deeply offensive. Imagine an advert for an auto-repair workshop where two mechanics use exactly the same words, but talking about women, and you'll get the idea.
"We'll beat anyones advertised price or your matress is FREE!"
I can just see it now....
"oh sorry sir, we can't beat that price, so here, take the mattress for free instead."
Somehow these commercials must be effective because they play them over and over and over
As encyclo has pointed out all the worst ones in north America /Canada are in French language ....and where do you guess they breed this stuff ...bien sure ....."metro France"...
The very first time I watched French TV ( ads or programming ) ..I thought I was watching satire on how not to make TV ...I couldn't understand the language and was just watching the technique ..Now I'm fluent and can understand all the regional accents and cultural nuances and spot the appallingly bad newsreaders grammar and stumbles ..it's worse!
Even "les guignols des info's" ( here considered to be world beating )..is just a very third rate ,watered down saccharined ,sycophantic pale copy of "spitting image" ...20 years late!
The TV News ..dont make me laugh ..I'll cry ..!
Documentaries .." exposés " withe every face and document or identifying sign "blurred out" ..all the voices changed and all the names etc "bleeped" ....Worry no "crooks", "scam artists" or "corrupt politicians" ...
Every 2nd prog is an excuse to sell some book by some politicians ex dog walker etc ...or do who is doing what to whom in the jacuzzi at 6pm prime time ..
And half the journalists are married to or living with the politicians that they are supposed to "hard interview" ....
Makes someone who once worked in real TV and radio want to rip their own head off ...
First thing I did was bought me a motorised satelite dish ( which BTW is illegal here as we are not technically allowed to watch programmes in France which haven't been cleared by the government first for broadcasting..or which are "Crypted" ..IE "in a foreign language" ..like English ;)..the local "live" debate ones slide by as they are just so innocuous that they worry no-one...and anyhow usually "interveiwer" and "interviewee" ..are part of the same group of 100 or so self promoting "parigo" pseudointello's ...Yukkk!...
Oh yeah ..and the worst of the rest of the worlds "reality" TV ..but 5 years later than you ...and supposedly "original invented en France " ....
Our ads come from either "Nestle" or "Danone" or "Areva" ( the French nuclear industry )..or one of their thousands of subsiduary companies ....and comparative advertisng is "illegal" ( to "protect consumers" ROTFALOL ..as is mentioning prices ...( for the same reason ) ..but they are allowed white on white high speed scrolled get out small print at the bottom of the screen ...OI!
American "tele-achat" would actually be step up in quality ...
Give me strength ...!
Can't help you on this one. We have no local programming. Only ads we get are nationwide.
again i have to prepare set of question for the same seo company whom i met last time..
any suggations?
What no ads for hair shirts and S and M stuff ..;)?
Heh. Well, not for the hair shirts. Now I wouldn't want to bet on whether the polygs have there own local sorts of S/M etc. ads out in Short Creek (that, btw, is pronounced "shart crick" - I kid you not! So. Utah has it's own vernacular, I just can't remember what they call it right now but it's similar to "boontling", originally stemming from German/Swiss immigrants to this area....)
Anyway, you may believe me when I say I'm absolutely thrilled that when Layne has the tv on, the only ads I hear are nat'l ones, and considering his prefs in programming, it's mostly beer and trucks....
this sounds kinda scary! Care to elaborate?
I don't think the Belgians have yet discovered the power of ultimate bonehead furniture advertising. They're pretty big consumers of The Bold and the Beautiful, though I read that most non-US countries are, and they digged The Jerry Springer Show so much a few years ago that it was, iirc, showing twice a day. The only problem was that many Belgians took this program to display a rather normal segment of society. Perhaps theraputic for some to see a freak-show overseas and think that we're truly all very mentally healthy over here. Public tv shows pretty good stuff.
His attempt at low budget zany adverts drove me mad, BOGOFF (buy one get one free), what did say to me bogoff... YADA YADA YADA.
If I ever see him, he'll need surgery to remove his french door.
we have this one mattress ad that comes on all the time...and at the very end the spokesperson/owner says (in a really annoying voice):"We'll beat anyones advertised price or your matress is FREE!"
I can just see it now....
"oh sorry sir, we can't beat that price, so here, take the mattress for free instead."
Somehow these commercials must be effective because they play them over and over and over
And you didn't think to start a mattress company and start advertising?!
Once you've got a few free you can just sell them again to people who respond to your ads! ;)
