"You've got a frieeeeennnnd!" muses a friendly-looking bearded chap at the end of the AA's advertisement showing their legion of yellow-coated engineers around the country engaging in Krypton Factor-esque treks to solve car problems. The main bloke's got a good voice too. The advert's a little weird, but largely bearable. What's the problem with it, then?
I have no problem with the AA's adverts - no problem, that is, if they had them without that idiot with the icicles on his beard. He looks like he just doesn't care. It's physically impossible to get icicles on your beard. I certainly wouldn't like a Yeti lookalike servicing my car should it break down. I hate him - irrational, I know - but I hope you look at the image below, or on your screens, and repeat the exact phrase on said image as I do every time I see his miserable icy face. He's an idiot, and winds me up no end.
1 comment:
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait a second! Icicly-bearded twat the only thing wrong with that advert? I think not.
That advert is a disgrace to Britain's musical heritage.
...Although it's not quite as bad as Howard from the Halifax and his bastardly ilk, who rejoice in the belief that if they can just take a song that people have heard before, and crowbar in lyrics relevant to whatever they're selling, that people (that's you and me alike, folks) will want to buy into their product.
“Oh, look! Mabel! It's that nice Howard man—you know, from the Halifax. The Halifax, dear! Yes, the one with the silky voice and strange spectacles, dear. Do you remember the song? ‘Get an account with the Halifax or I'll murder your nephews,’ he crooned, didn't he, dear? Yes, to the tune of ‘Grace Kelly’ by Mika. We shall have to open an account there, won't we, dear?”
...It's not quite that bad—and that's why it's so infuriating. It sounds like they've drafted in a Year 8 music class to perform the song—not because of poor singing (most of the participants would probably manage the third round of The X -Factor) but because they skip over the rests. Every last fucking one.
Each and every time someone isn't singing, the clever bastards at the AA have swung their gratuitous-edit axe for the sake of saving about three seconds in each advert.
“But, Ma'am, we need those extra beats to maintain the song's rhythm. Otherwise we'll have a bar with 7 beats, followed by one with 6, followed by a few with 8 and then another with 7 again. It'll break the musical rhythm and sound jarring and weird.”
“No-one will even notice those superfluous beats are missing, Jenkins! Moreover, they're costing us ten million pounds per advert. Million! Musical integrity be damned—after all, we're using the song to flog the A-fucking-A!”
Bastard hypothetical AA bigwig's right. No-one notices that they've butchered the (otherwise fairly decent) song by ripping out all the gaps—which, of course, the composer was too stupid to remove in the first place—because that's how every bastard on The X-Factor sings everything.
Post a Comment