The Liberal Agenda – 3 worst TV adverts right now

ByMartyn Bradbury

Because I’m an old man with a cynical black splinter of a heart stuck at home during lockdown, I’ve been swamped with TV adverts and I hate most of them.

These are the three that make me want to commit homicide-suicides the most.

 

Spark whale shanty for non binary millennials

A non binary woke millennial falls in love with a whale shanty that goes global and half way through the frenzy, other non binary woke millennials point out it’s a historic whaling song and hilariously they all turn on it and cancel it. It’s like Mao’s cultural Revolution if Mao had been a monopolistic telecommunications corporation. The advert should end with a library on fire.

Westpac Where the Wild Things are knock off/possible pedophile monster

I’m not sure what the fuck this is all about but anytime a NZ advert has higher production values than your average Taika Waititi film, I’m always suspicious. The message here from Westpac is clear, the only way children in NZ ever have of owning a house is if a giant magical Yeti builds it for you. Does anyone else notice that the monster grooms all these children and then once its won them over, lifts them up and steals them into the forest? Shouldn’t someone call the police?

Breast cancer Dalek voice from the pretentious first year art school dimension

Whenever this advert comes on, my cat freaks out and runs out of the lounge. Dogs start howling and milk curdles. The weird alien Dalek voice from the pretentious first year art school dimension grates like broken glass on bone marrow. It reeks of Wellington in a way the Spark whale shanty for non binary millennials advert does. Islamic State terrorists would confess to any crime after just 5minutes of this other world Dalek doom voice advert on loop.

 

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26 Comments

  1. I agree with your first paragraph Frankie however your second could be replaced by Nationals previous election slogan as in ” Building a Brighter Future”. Swallowing down my cup of cold sick whilst that ad was on mute, tasted better.

    2. Funny you should mention dancing Cossacks. I’ve been thinking. I’ve been thinking that with all the doom and gloom in our lives, the breast cancer people could give all the chest people a break, and set up some flash mobs, with wonderful music and singers and dancers and cheer everybody up instead of adding to our woes when we have enough to worry about.

      I still don’t know what the Westpac ad was about – in fact I don’t believe that it is a Westpac ad at all, it’s a trailer for The Wombles totally stuffed up, or one of those gloomy Polish short stories which make us appreciate having KFC.

  2. Agree. And look also how many really naive or better stupid men are in adds compared with their smart, all-knowing and elegant female partners.
    Alexandra

    1. Alexandra. Where you gonna get some good looking men ? Italy? Spain ? Greece ? Set yourself up as an agent and start procuring a few dream boats who don’t look as if they need a shave and a decent haircut and you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank – but clearly, not Westpac in some crummy old dinghy.

  4. The MoH wouldn’t have to be spending taxpayer money on eg the mammogram ad, if the PHO’s were doing their jobs properly. That was the whole point of PHO’s. My GP communicates with patients directly about mammographies, cv smears, cholesterol checks and so on.

    1. Oops – my mistake. It looks like it’s the Breast Cancer Foundation splashing out here, not the MoH. I believe that the Cancer Society has pots of money, so I guess that the Breast Cancer people have as well.

  5. Disagree. “Do do do do something blue” was easily worse than all of them. Combined. Never try to make an advert ‘blokey’. NEVER!

  6. Are there ANY decent ads? They’re all moronic. How anyone paying for them think they increase market share – let alone have a presence – beats me. Or is the world out there really that stupid. The only winners are the agencies who dream up this shit. And the cast. Ok, you gotta make a living in this world. Noticed also how a good many are simply social engineering. Must be some sort of ministry fuck. Yeh, I promise to get out more!

    1. Bozo. Many many years ago, there was a good television commercial commercial. It may have even been my introduction to Yeats. It was for Bremworth Carpets, and it ended, “ tread softly, for you tread on my dreams.”
      The narrator also had a really good speaking voice – like David Delaney who used to do stuff for DNTV-2. After that, it was all downhill. You may have been born too late.

  8. Watching adds these days have made me understand the shit we are in, that they work for the advertisers show just how gullible our population is.

  9. All TV watching requires a significant suspension of disbelief. But I believed in the anti-bullying monster, and you have entirely destroyed that for me, Martyn! Jeez I need a happy pill.

  10. I see practically zero TV ads these days. No terrestrial TV. Only exposed to it when visiting family (hard to do when stuck in Auckland). uBlock Origin on all browsers. AdGuard on my iPhone. Not signed up to any streaming service. Download content via nefarious techniques. Maybe I’m a control freak.

    Only the occasional poorly targeted Youtube ad, or barely noticeable radio ad, gets thru the defenses. Sanity remains intact, albeit fragile.

    1. Good for you roblogic. Maybe self-control freak? I use duck duck go browser, netflix, neon, youtube, adblock if have to use Google, free downloaded torrents and on-demand if desperate. Mute any ads promptly, but still feel violated by them. Advertising and marketing in general including propaganda has always struck me as preying on human weaknesses to to separate you from your money or convince you of something. It’s deviously effective, and oftentimes arguably necessary, unfortunately

  11. I’m a bit suspicious of Westpac’s big advertising campaign, they were threatening to withdraw from the New Zealand market not that long ago and all of a sudden they’re going all out on a big PR move? I’m not sure what’s going on there.

  12. How about focusing on those irresponsible SUV ads? Appealing to unreconstructed macho males who get their identity from the latest gas guzzling, high tech, eco-destructive machinery, these ads should be banned under the directives of the climate emergency. As John Berger famously said, society is mad!

  13. Being on the autistic spectrum one of the few perks is, I have no idea what 90% of adverts are trying to get at. The first two are particularly irritating, luckily I’ve not seen the third.

  14. Reading this post and the related comments brought back to me memory of a picture penned some years ago by the insightful Melbourne cartoonist Micheal Leunig where a father and son in their home were huddled around at television set watching a scene of a sunset whilst over their shoulder and out the window was the very same sunset in glorious real life.

    As Timothy Leary once voiced way back in 1966 “, Turn on, tune in and drop out.”
    Turn on” meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers engaging them. “Tune in” meant interact harmoniously with the world around you—externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. “Drop out” suggested an active, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. “Drop Out” meant self-reliance, a discovery of one’s singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change.

    Still watching television…why?

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