‘Dingdong’
Door creaking.
Woman’s voice: “Ahh, you must be the pizza delivery man. Let me get my wallet.”
Man’s voice: “Actually I’m here to deliver your AXA insurance courtesy car.”
This has to be one of the worst radio commercials ever. Ever. I don’t listen to radio much, and this commercial reminded me why. It’s not just unwitty and unprofessionally voiced-over by obnoxious dilettantes. No, the premise, if you can call it one, is mind bogglingly stupid in its complete and utter improbability.
I imagine the copywriter at work, racking his puny little brain for a plot (assuming the guys in Media City actually use plots):
------------------------------
You ordered pizza. The door bell rings. You open. Outside, a man in some sort of uniform. Let’s assume this is the pizza guy!! Harhar, but it’s really the car guy!! Funny twist, that!
Dammit, what about the pizza. Y’know, guy with imbecile smile holding a flat soggy carton in your face, grunting. Pizza guy with pizza. But it’s the car guy, he’s holding no pizza. What to do?Never mind, he could have lost the pizza, right?
Whoopsy, deadline’s here. Cut. Let’s flow with it. Job’s a goodn, off to Scarlett's for drinks!
-----------------------------
The whole ‘skit’ hinges on the woman’s wrongful assumption. But that could only work if the man was at least holding a pizza carton. Or the woman was blind, in which case she wouldn’t need a car, not even for free. Without pizza, there’s not a chance in a million that The Most Stupid **** On Earth could mistake anyone for a pizza guy. So it’s not just any old assumption. It’s assuming that a totally unrealistic assumption can be made to work as radio commercial if you just try hard enough to ignore intelligence.
As my old risk management professor used to say: to ASSUME is to make an ‘ASS’ out of ‘U’ and ‘ME’.
In this case Mr. Copywriter in Dubai just makes an arse out of himself and his entire “profession” and insults our intellect.
15 October, 2008
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11 comments:
Uncensored version on TRN's own site.
Hi Keefieboy, calm down and have a lie down, it's the vapid and inane world of advertising after all. A tacky little business designed to make fools part with their money staffed by buffoons with a massive sense of self-importance and delusions of imagination. Well, that was my esxperience of it many years ago and if anything it gets worse. Turn off the blathering radio and put on some good music instead. :)
The quality of the radios here are mediocre, so are the local magazines, there are few well written local articles, the rest is just copied and pasted from american magazines.
It is very, very bad but that's par for the course of radio ads, it's really no worse than many others. Not only the basic concept or the copywriting but the delivery - the usual thing is people who are supposedly having a conversation simply read from the script. Acting? Forget it.
And my recent pet hate, Marks & Spencer of all people telling us the sale of lingerie was 'available 'til stocks last'. I thought we'd heard the last of that mistake but obviously not.
The industry really needs to take a long hard look at itself instead of telling the world we produce great creative advertising here.
...same goes for the English language TV dana, most mediocre common denominator I reckon. I'd love to know if I am missing anything not knowing anything but substandard substandard Arabic or any of the other languages predominating here...
.....and hernia!
Forget about the commercial being stupid and pointless, there have been tons on most radio stations.
What I'd like to know us how good this insurance really is? Someone once wrote to GN saying that they did not bother to call back after he was stranded on a highway following an accident.
Mr DTP: Hi Keefieboy, calm down and have a lie down, it's the vapid and inane world of advertising after all.
Eh?
Hi Keefieboy - you hit the button with the 'assume' bit, it's cack radio and cheap advertising they deserve each other...unless it's the publicly funded BBC of course. No ads there and huge listener figures in relation to the ad infested alternatives.
Cheers
DtP
First off, if this was done by a Media City copywriter (or group), they would be heading to Mai Tai for drinks and not Scarlett's.. that's too far.
Secondly, the pizza guy is known to be the pizza guy by the way he rings the bell. It always goes 'Ding dong!'..
And finally, since when did radio ads become good to single out one of them? They all suck. Advertising agencies don't place their best on it because clients don't want to pay for them.
It's not really hard to understand why they suck.
Am I the only one here who can't name any radio stations?
DE lol, u must order a lot of pizza to be able to recognise the style of "bell ring" - hehe!
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