Okay, strap yourselves in, it’s rant o’clock and if you’re up for it, I’m taking you on a journey. Anyway, buckle up, put your feet up and come with me for a ride.
I’m going to have a pop again at the advertising world. There are a number of adverts that are currently getting right up my nose, and I haven’t banged on about these since the last lockdown I don’t think.
Let’s start with McDonald’s. Their current advertising features a very gruff sounding chap, deliberately sounding very working-class, clearly seeking to identify with the people on the street. There’s also one advert where they rope in a man with a Welsh sounding voice. Could be the same bloke. It’s quite a bad sounding parody if I’m being honest. Think Gavin and Stacey, only not funny.
Now I have a couple of issues…
The Welsher leads us to believe that he is enjoying his breakfast. He says “that’s proper good that is”, as I say very much in a fake Barry Island accent.
The gruff, working-class Englishman then comes back and says “what he said”. He then says, and this is the the bit that really gets my goat, “McDonald’s: breakfast done properly”.
Properly? Is it? Really? I don’t think so? I cannot even begin to conceive of a world in which any partially qualified or experience nutritionist would suggest that any McDonald’s food, let alone their breakfast, is being done “properly”. I know they’ve made attempts over the last few years to get a bit healthier, but I beg to differ with you Ronald old chap, this is not a proper breakfast. At all.
Please don’t think I’m being holier than thou, I have been known in years gone by to have a fix of chemical laden junk from McDonald’s. I had one every year on my way back from my annual pilgrimage to V Festival, mainly because I didn’t think I could feel any grubbier, and I needed to soak up two days worth of beer.
When you’re in the mood for it, there’s nothing better, until afterwards when all you have is regret. My issue, and I will be taking this up with the advertising standards authority, is that this is not breakfast “done properly”. Far from it. It’s actually quite the opposite in every conceivable way.
I’m not finished with Ronnie McD yet. The ads also talk about “McDonalds; done your way” as if to suggest there is a huge degree of flexibility in the ‘goods’ served to you. No! There is not. There’s a small number of menu choices and you take one of those. That’s it. If it was done “my way”, it’d be something entirely different that they don’t have on their menu.
Ok, who’s next? ‘Pets in a pickle’ that’s who. I don’t really know much about them but they are a pet insurance company. I’m sure they’re a very nice company and I’m sure they’re full of very nice people, however I have an issue with one phrase in their adverts;
“For pet insurance as unique as they are”. Unique policies? Really? I don’t believe they have more than a handful of insurance policies and options available, yet they purport to have policies as unique as each pet in the world.
According to Statista, PetSecure, Growth from Knowledge, and Simply Insurance, there are 471 million pet dogs worldwide. Across the globe, about 370 million cats are kept as pets. So that’s around 750 million give or take, just in cats and dogs as domestic pets. We haven’t even touched on other species, of which there are many!
So, unless ‘Pets in a pickle’ have many billions of different policies, they are not as unique as your pets are they? So please ‘Pets in a pickle’, stop that, it isn’t right.
I fear that they are kinda going down the same route as McD’s above doing it “your way”. You can both stop it. Now.
Finally today I’m going to lump two companies in together as they are both in the same industry and they both seem to think that their best way of advertising their products right now is to teach us how to say their name. I speak of Skoda and Hyundai.
For years, you and I have quite happily going about our business pronouncing them Skoda and Hyundai when required to do so. I don’t really need to explain how they are pronounced, because you just did it in your head the way that we’ve been doing it for decades. But all of a sudden both manufacturers have decided to focus in on teaching us how to pronounce their vehicles, as opposed to extolling the virtues of their respective brands.
Having lumped them together we will now take them one at a time.
Let’s go with Skoda first of all. The much maligned Czechoslovakian car manufacturer seems to have upped its game considerably over the last number of years with their vehicles, and after all that, they feel that what they need to do is teach us how to pronounce it, which is apparently “Shhhkoder”.
Their adverts don’t actually tell us that they’re going to teach us how to pronounce it, they just seem to talk in normal English, and then jump into this odd sounding voice calling the car a “Shhhkoder”, which simply makes the target audience do a double take as if this person has been suddenly taken over by something from outer space. It just sounds weird that’s all and I’d like them to stop it. Now. Just tell us how good your car is please Skoda.
Now Hyundai. Their method seems to be proactively educating us on how we’ve all been really stupid for so many years. I would imagine this includes all of the Hyundai showrooms up and down our great British land, who have also been staffed entirely with people pronouncing it wrong as well.
They seem to make a joke of it with giving different pronunciations, but what they want us to now focus on is the fact that it’s actually pronounced “Hyoon-day”. Two syllables. Please do not be fooled into thinking that it is a three syllable word pronounced “High-un-die”.
Well done Hyundai. For me you seem to have achieved the accolade of the most patronising and pointless advert currently forcing itself upon my ears as I go about my day.
Anyway I think that’s it, I’m kind of done with today’s rant. I’ll let you know if I hear back from the advertising standards authority regarding McDonald’s and Pets in a pickle.
I mean no ill to any of these companies, I just wish they would think before agreeing to utilise the services of overpaid advertising executives coming up with the tosh that they seem to be feeding them.
Oh, and the featured image at the top? I don’t think it’s crap. This is Oatly with a brilliant ad! Photo by Arno Senoner
“Adverts, done properly”