Christmas is a time of giving and it’s also a time for making so much money that to view it all packed into one room would melt the mind of anyone from the working classes while simultaneously?destabilising?the economic security of a developing African country.
Of course, anyone with 70 pence and a reasonable idea of how to sell a Twix to a starving man can turn a profit in this world and if you keep scaling things up then eventually you’ll be left with enough money to buy Greece, pump it full of fake snow and turn it into a Winter Wonderland theme park in time for next Christmas but that doesn’t mean that Christmas is all about clawing at cash.
EVEN THOUGH IT IS.
Some things at Christmas are more traditional like made up folk tales designed to force children to stop behaving like entitled little shits. No, not Santa. You’ll find that the Nativity story’s a pretty good moralising tale if you’re looking to instill the magic of ridiculous claptrap into impressionable youngsters from the moment they’re old enough to whimper the word “materialism”. If you don’t instill the wonder and merriment of Christmas into their soft-spots then they might turn out to be dribbling morons with less chance of interfering with the genitalia of the opposite sex than George Michael has of seeing in the new year with a glass of Asti Spumante in a public lavatory.
You know- like these people:
I had always assumed that it was the prerogative of retail companies to make their staff out to be the last bastions of good taste and intelligence. No doubt because retail workers are so often portrayed as being affected, surly neer-do-wells with all the wit and charm of a rim job from Piers Morgan.
Or at least they are in the sitcom I co-wrote which starts on Channel Whimsydoo on Monday at quarter-past-fucking-never.
Anyway, the point is that it’s very rare to see a retailer portray their staff as dead-behind-the-eyes shut-ins as opposed to the informed, sensible and professional dickheads that you catch thwarting Darth Vader in PC World adverts. Which is why the Christmas offering from The Range is so bloody surprising.
Their staff are apparently all lobotomy patients while it appears that their advertising team necked back a couple of bottles of vodka before declaring an entire country hilarious. You see, if you’re going to “reverse market” (don’t look it up, it’s not a real thing) then you could do worse than actually picking a product that doesn’t imply you sell spadeloads of tripe but that this particular national stereotype is a step too low even for barrel-scrapers like yourselves.
The Range claim that they sell pretty much everything you could ever need. I will wait with bated breath to see the reaction when someone nips in for some anti-venom to treat a particularly hideous cobra bite. Although, putting semantics aside for a moment, coupling your stores policy of selling everything ever invented along with staff that look like the forgotten victims of genocide and a racist megaphone that imparts the same wisdom as a Tickle Me Ku Klux Klan toy is a sure-fire way to find yourself being picked on by a keyboard bully with an outlet and bloodied stumps where his fingers used to be.
That’s me in this scenario.
The worst part of it is that this isn’t even the worst part of the advert. Two minutes of what I laughingly call research taught me that this dancing berk, who depicts- with alarming accuracy- the childish excitement of every retail manager I’ve ever come across, actually has a name and a back story.
You don’t believe me? This is on The Range’s Facebook.
Well HAR DEE BLOODY HAR. What a loveable nerd created almost entirely by committee to be a hideous amalgam of every character from The Office. Aren’t The Range a clever bunch for creating such a memorable and thundering cock to be the figurehead of their campaign. There’s even a video on Youtube where you too can learn to dance like Malcolm in an attempt to become as ironically cockish as he is. I’m not going to link to it because it doesn’t deserve any more hits. It’s had one too many. One.
So aside from cultural references to Star Trek and the fantasy genre as well as, for some inexplicable reason, reggae what is it about Malcolm that’s so wrong? Is it the fact that he’s closer to the image of an everyman that he almost becomes real and therefore comes out from the television until he’s tugging at your flacid genitals like some kind of penile necromancer? No!
It’s because the whole thing is so forced and foetid that it’s like being a fly on the wall in Chris Moyles’ studio. Not only the humour but the whole idea of the ‘viral character’. Remember the insufferable arsepiece that spouted the word ‘Wonga’ in a mockney accent before returning to his Hackney Cab? He wasn’t supposed to turn into the must have merkin attachment that he did, it just happened. Advertising companies are now trying to force these personalities down our throats until we’re left spewing up name badges and crying out for the end of days.
It’s become clear while writing this that although The Range’s campaign might not seem that bad on the face of it, it’s one of those ones that actually becomes significantly worse if you try to apply a little logical thought to it. Is The Range’s Christmas campaign one of the worst of all time? Probably not but it’s trying really hard and you have to give it some credit for trying to be so offensively crap that it might drive someone to suicide.
Probably me.