Ads that SUCK / badvertising

Adverts are usually rubbish.

You know the sort - Jamie Oliver gurning away about how Sainsburys is the best thing in the world, or brundlefly-with-tits Jordan urging you to buy this week's News Of The World as you can read all about how she's shat out another mewling halfwit baby or something.

They're cack, make no mistake about it. Yet sometimes an advert comes along that is so sensationally bad it literally redefines the very concept of awfulness, possibly doing a full 360 degrees and coming out the other side as 'legendary.' Until now hecklerspray had considered shouty cleaning-fluid seller Barry Scott as the king of that particular castle - until we saw this commercial for the 'Montgomery Flea Market.'

And couldn't believe our fucking eyes.

Or ears. 

Of all the chocolate bars, Snickers never really enjoyed the same ultra-gay reputation as counterparts like Mars Delight and the gone but not forgotten Secret bar - but thanks to a Snickers Super Bowl advert about two blokes snogging, that could change.

Or at least it would change, if only squadrons of gay activists hadn't called for the gay Snickers Super Bowl commercial to be banned forever for being offensive to homosexuals. In the Snickers advert - which we've got for you after the jump - two burly mechanics share an accidental gay Lady And The Tramp-style kiss while sharing a Snickers bar, then attempt to make up for it by yanking out clumps of their own chest hair - and that just isn't acceptable in today's cosmopolitan society, say gay rights organisations. In real life they'd have probably done a bit a rimming first or something.

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There are good and bad sides to every situation.

Take Nicole Richie's predicament, for example. She may have a debilitating eating disorder… but at least she'll fit into that summer bikini just fine. And - hey - just think about good old Michael Barrymore. True, certain allegations may have effectively destroyed his career… but we just bet those pool-cleaning bills are a fraction of what they used to be.

Jack White is also going through a similar ambivalent streak. On the plus side, he's just received a nice shiny cheque for his hard work scoring the latest Coca-Cola commercial… Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a scene we’ve all grown aware of: Ben Affleck - complete with all three of his facial expressions - going about his day getting all kinds of female attention, to be trumped by a lift attendant who smells like a schoolboy.

We’d almost forgotten how much the Lynx ad annoyed us until we saw it at the movies, on a big, inescapable screen. There he is, the smarmy looking guy with his all American good looks, wearing a gooberish smile on his face as he gleefully counts each attractive woman’s curious glance on his clicker.

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Ever noticed how it’s always the most preposterous people that have the worst sense of humour?

Slipknot (CDs), a metal band made up of rockers in frightmasks whose stage antics include inhaling the fumes of a liquefied dead bird in a jar until they vomit, are apparently outraged that Burger King might have stolen their image for a series of American commercials.

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Lately, the advert industry appears to have started saying that bad manners are OK. First, there was the cripplingly bad KFC ’singing with your mouth full’ campaign that attracted a record number of complaints for saying that stuffing your fat cheeks full of Zinger Burger and howling a tune was OK.

And now, a Fanta advert that shows lots of people spitting had received 272 complaints.

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Marks & Spencer have been trying for years to shed their image as purveyors of dowdy yet practical products.  They’ve updated their clothing range and switched to free trade foodstuff, but the way in which they’ve finally succeeded in injecting some sex into the brand is through their current TV advertising campaign - a downright erotic promotion of their food range.

The sexy Marks & Spencer advert shows us some chicken. Then the husky female narrator sultrily explains to us that it’s not just chicken. Following a dramatic pause - during which you wonder if it’s also 20% rusk and 10% water - we’re told that it’s actually farm-reared, organic, golden, Wiltshire farm chicken.

That may be, but technically it is still just chicken. It’s not going to solve the problem of world debt and you can’t drive it to Milton Keynes to visit your parents.

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If there ever was a luxury car company in need of a serious image overhaul it’s got to be Jaguar (Books).

After introducing an estate model of their furiously popular with the nouveau riche X-Type, the ailing big cats only need to bring out a new over-sixties mobility range and they’ll be less cool than buying a box of Frosties just so you can get the little lightsaber.

During the 60s and 70s Jaguar were a car company synonymous with everything that was fly about polluting the atmosphere. Their cars were big, edgy, looked bloody cool being shot at in gangster films, and most importantly parents hated them. They had the youth factor. You wanted to own an E-Type because it was baddass.

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People hate KFC. Really, really hate it. Why? Because their treatment of chickens is exceptionally cruel, with workers in one American plant ripping beaks off live animals and then twisting their heads off? No. Because Mike Skinner tells us to hate them? No. Because their coleslaw is rubbish? No.

The reason most people hate KFC is because of that dreadful advert where people sing with their mouths full of chicken.

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‘Distinctive’-voiced MOR teeny warbler Joss Stone may lose her multi-millon dollar Gap contract after shacking up with an older boyfriend.

Joss - only 17, the poor lamb - faces trouble after reportedly moving in with 25-year-old music producer Beau Dozier.

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Sneaker giant Reebok has a new campaign dubbed “I am what I am”, starring hecklerspray’s favourite bullet-proof rapper 50 Cent.

And here’s a surprise: it’s received complaints from UK anti-gun charities. They accuse Reebok of glorifying gun crime. For the unaware, let us pop an information cap in yo’ ass…

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Sometimes the only reason to mention something is that annoys the crap out of you. Case in point: the Diet Coke tortoise advert.

Coca-Cola has been responsible for some real whiffy-ones as far as advertising on TV is concerned. From the ‘hands of love’ guff across the prairie fields in the seventies, to their ‘Just for Taste of it’ bile in the eighties, right up to this current slab of commercial hell-on-earth…

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