‘Boil-in-a-bag funerals are here at last – I have a few questions’ was the heading on Carol Midgeley’s piece in Times 2 on Wednesday. Midgeley is the Thunderer’s esteemed TV critic and she, like the rest of us, is sick of the crap ads infesting UK TV cahhnels, particularly smaller ones like Daniel Cass’s That’s TV and bigger ones like the ‘U’ group, owned by the BBC.
Once these atrocities were mostly confined to the charity sector – ‘damaged donkey porn’ – and announcements of new coins featuring some royal or other. Now, as Midgeley noticed, there’s a reminder of a new funeral plan every ad break (with some elderly actor), interminable advertorials for some power tool or other an home delivered meals. There’s one for something called Jane Plan which goes on for about ten minutes, as an easily-pleased bunch of idiots rhapsodise about Jane’s shepherds pie (short one below with a funeral horror.)
But they’re all at it. Unilever’s new squadron of influencers emerge from their batcave around 10pm most night to tell us about the virtues of some detergent or other. Makes a change from online casinos but is it really what you want when you’ve been watching the footy?
Who’s to blame? Media agencies clearly, happy to give the heavy lifting to a machine or an algorithm and batter poor consumers into acquiescence, so long as they keep some of the money. Programmatic with its array of mystifying DSPs and SSPs is a particular villain. It all sounds very clever but it really isn’t -it’s crude (glorified automation) and wasteful too.
But those higher up the food chain must accept blame too. Media owners (like the BBC it seems) happy to bend the rules to stuff the airwaves with this bilge so long as someone will pay for it. Representative bodies like the IPA, Advertising Association and ISBA (advertisers) should point out to their members that this stuff gives advertising a bad rap. Simpler by far than spending a small fortune on research purporting to measure trust in advertising. Nobody should trust this stuff even though it’s hiding in plain sight.
The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority decides whether or not ads are legal, decent, honest and truthful and, mostly, is does a good job. There are bodies that assess the acceptability of ads (on a pretty narrow basis) for broadcast. But just as no respectable retailer should sell shoddy goods even if it’s within the law to do so, so advertisers, media owners and agencies should be corralled into doing better.
