Fiction

In which FP gets annoyed by a TV advert

Written by Forest Pines; published at 9:15 pm on June 9th, 2009.
Filed under: Media Addict.

Now, I know I shouldn’t believe advertising. I know I should assume that most people probably don’t believe advertising, and I shouldn’t let myself get worked up about it. But, still, something has been getting my goat lately.

Crisps. One particular brand of crisps, in fact, whose adverts ramble on about some intrepid traveller finding particularly tasty spices overseas, and shipping them home so he could use them to flavour his crisps. And they go on:

That traveller’s name was Phileas Fogg…

No. No, it wasn’t. Phileas Fogg is a fictional character. He’s not real. He was invented by an author, for a book. He’s conveniently old enough to be out-of-copyright, so you can take his name and use it to brand your savoury snacks. So, he didn’t go to Indonesia or wherever and discover tasty spices, because he doesn’t exist. So stop lying to us.

Phileas Fogg: the crisps with the blatant lies in the adverts.

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Keyword noise: advertising, adverts, crisps, falsehoods, lies, marketing, misleading, Phileas Fogg, television, telly, tv, untruth

Presents

In which I rant about lottery advertising

Written by Forest Pines; published at 10:07 am on December 23rd, 2008.
Filed under: Dear Diary.

Today, I suppose, I should really go out and start looking for Christmas presents for people. I have no idea, at all, what anybody wants; no idea what anybody needs; and no idea what I’m going to buy. I know what I’m not going to buy, though.

On the way between our house and the local library, there’s a bus stop,* and as bus stops tend to, it has a space for advertising on the side. And at the moment, the advert is nothing more than: a giant picture of a lottery scratchcard. With a slogan something along the lines of: “The ideal present for Christmas”.

Now. Just wait a minute. No. No, it isn’t. Excuse me for wanting to rant, but a lottery scratchcard is, in so many ways, just about the worst Christmas present imaginable.** Never mind a gambling ethics debate, it’s wrong in so many other ways. It’s small, flat, hardly anything to unwrap, no box to shake, no wrapping paper to tear off with abandon. Its entertainment value lasts for all of, ooh, about 3 seconds. It’s completely thoughtless and says nothing at all about the recipient, the giver, or anybody: it has no emotional or personal value whatsoever. And, finally, the chances are that it’s valueless: a piece of litter. It’s less use as a present than a sheet of wrapping paper. Or a stick. If I was given one as a present, I’d be crossing that person out of my address book straight away. And then hire assassins. Maybe I’m not the target audience for the advert, but there’s no way in hell that a poster is going to persuade me that buying a scratchcard for someone is a good plan as a present for them. What on earth would it say about me, for one thing? That I have so little imagination that I’ve bought them, ooh, a coloured piece of paper with that silver rub-off stuff on it.*** Because a poster said so. Because that’s how brain-dead I am.

So, no. That’s not going to be on the shopping list, at least.

* actually there’s several, but never mind

** if you can think of worse ones, please let me know.

*** What the hell is that stuff, anyway?

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Keyword noise: advertising, Christmas, gambling, gifts, lottery, presents, rant, scratchcard, waste

The Artist’s Dilemma

In which we discuss music and advertising

Written by Forest Pines; published at 9:47 am on December 2nd, 2008.
Filed under: Artistic.

It’s a question that must come to every artist and musician who starts to get successful. Sell out, or not sell out? And what is “selling out” anyway? What about advertising? Do you license your music for use in advertising, knowing you’ll effectively lose control over how it’s presented?¹ Maintain artistic integrity, or go for the money? There are some bands whose oeuvre will, forevermore, be thought of as “oh, it’s that song off that advert, you know, that one for thingy, that stuff.” – the Penguin Cafe Orchestra being a prime example.²

I was rather pleased when I was idly watching late-night telly the other month, and a bouncy Casiolike tune popped up in the ad-break. It was “Summer’s Gone”, an early track by a very good (and little-known) Scottish band, Aberfeldy. if you want to track it down, it’s on their first album, Young Forever, released by Rough Trade.³ Good to hear a little-known band on the telly; good to think they’ll be getting some money for it.

Less good, though, to see that it was being used to advertise an online gambling company. If I was Riley Briggs – the chap who formed the band and wrote the song – I’m not sure I’d be happy about that. I wouldn’t want my music to be used that way. I wouldn’t want to be associated with gambling; the only saving grace being, 99.3%⁴ of the people who see the advert will never have heard of the band.⁵ The song will seep into their memories without them really knowing it, until they hear it again by some offchance on the radio and think: hang on, don’t I know this from somewhere. It’s a hard call. Do you take the money and the airplay, or do you take the high moral stance? I’m glad it’s not a question I’ve had to face yet in life. What would you do?

1: Or, for that matter, for TV. Belle and Sebastian, another of my favourite bands, have been used many times over the years as TV and soundtrack filler material; most famously, the title track from their third album The Boy With The Arab Strap was used, without lyrics, as the theme music of the Bristol-set comedy-drama series Teachers. I’m sure I recall, when the band were asked, saying that they weren’t able to say yes or no to that or any other specific TV use of the music; they’d granted a blanket license and that was that. On the other hand, unsurprisingly for a band with a socialist and Presbyterian background, they don’t (I think) let their music be used in advertising.

2: PCO might have been helped slightly by the death of MFI, who used their well-known “Music For A Found Harmonium”; I doubt, though, that anyone now who hears their best-known track “Telephone And Rubber Band” thinks of the band first. The Jesus And Mary Chain might be heading this way – we’ve heard “Just Like Honey” an awful lot on TV lately, most strangely as incidental music on Hollyoaks.

3: and it must have come out a long, long time ago now, going by where I lived when I bought it. For that matter, their second album – released just before Rough Trade dropped them – must also be a few years old, because I picked it up in Avalanche Records on my last trip to Glasgow.

4: If there’s one thing I learned from the vegetarian food roadshow we went to, it’s to use invented and ridiculously precise statistics with panache and confidence.

5: According to that famous encyclopaedia, the same song has been used to advertise Diet Coke in the USA. So I’d bet that by far the vast majority of people worldwide who have heard an Aberfeldy song, have heard that song, on an advert.

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Keyword noise: Aberfeldy, advert, advertising, Belle & Sebastian, Diet Coke, gambling, moral, music, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, publicity, Riley Briggs, Rough Trade, selling out, Summer's Gone, Young Forever

Searching

In which someone admits that SEOs are entirely pointless

Written by Forest Pines; published at 9:50 pm on June 12th, 2008.
Filed under: Geekery, Media Addict.

An intriguing claim appeared in The Guardian yesterday, buried in its corrections column. Insurance-comparing website GoCompare has stated that there is little connection between its Google positioning and its income. More specifically: dropping from the first page of Google results for a common search term did result in a big drop in traffic, but had no financial effect on the company.

GoCompare is an internet business. As far as I understand it, they rely entirely on their website for income. What they’re claiming is: when Google lowered their ranking, they lost a large amount of traffic – but that none of that traffic, apparently, was making them any money.*

There are entire companies based solely around the premise that they will push you up to the top of Google’s pages. I’ve known marketers spend huge amounts of time and effort on it, taking common search phrases and analyzing them with a fine-tooth comb, trying to find out why they’re below their competition. I’d expect GoCompare to have been doing exactly the same thing themselves, in fact. And they’ve found, apparently, that it was all for nothing – because when Google pulled the rug from under their efforts,** they say, it had no effect at all on their income. Maybe they’re a special case because (unlike smaller online companies) they do spend a lot on irritating minimal-budget TV adverts.*** Even so, it’s intriguing. If their claim is true, there’s probably hardly any point at all in any large organisations spending much effort on search-engine optimisation. Small companies who can’t afford TV adverts, or who produce specialist products – well, that probably doesn’t apply. It probably doesn’t apply to AdWords campaigns either. But general search results? “Overall sales figures were not affected”.

* They seem to be talking about general search results. If they were talking about paid-for adverts, then the drop in traffic would also mean a drop in outgoings; but as they’re not, the change in traffic shouldn’t have any effect on their running costs.

** The Guardian had previously speculated that Google did this deliberately – it was that article which prompted the correction.

*** which, at least, aren’t as annoying as those produced by their competitor Confused.com. I’m never going to go near confused.com, no less than barge-pole distance, because their adverts are that bad. “I’m so stupid I’m trying to get money from a piece of cardboard with a cartoon cash machine printed on it! I’m confused! Dot com!”

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Keyword noise: advertising, confused.com, GoCompare, income, insurance, search, search engine optimization, search engines, SEO

Going Up In The World

In which we note someone’s spreading fame

Written by Forest Pines; published at 4:49 pm on November 23rd, 2007.
Filed under: Media Addict.

The band Camera Obscura are clearly going up in the world. I noted, a few months ago, that one of their songs had popped up on a Tesco advert. Never mind about that, though: today, they were on the front page of The Guardian, up above the masthead. Admittedly, only because a Guardian reader had written in with: why weren’t Camera Obscura listed in your recent “1000 albums to hear before you die”* list? It’s better than not being there at all, though.

True Camera Obscura fans, of course, will be spending next weeked at the Midland Railway Centre, in Derbyshire. Their bass player, Mr Gav “King of Partick” Dunbar, is doing a DJ set there, in a heated marquee at Butterley railway station. Now, to my mind, that’s how you judge you’re doing well. Never mind the Guardian front page; once you’ve got your marquee heated, you know you’re on the up and up.

* not to be confused with the entirely unrelated book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, of course.

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Keyword noise: advert, advertising, Butterley, Camera Obscura, Gavin Dunbar, indie, indiepop, Indietracks, Midland Railway Centre, music, pop, Ripley, Tesco, The Guardian

Commerciality

In which we recognise some music

Written by Forest Pines; published at 6:28 pm on April 29th, 2007.
Filed under: Dear Diary, Media Addict.

I was pleased and slightly surprised the first time I heard the band Camera Obscura on the radio. I was even more surprised the first time I turned on the radio at random and heard a Camera Obscura song playing.*

We were sat, lazing about watching telly, the other night, and the adverts came on. There was an advert for Tesco clothes. With, I was rather amazed to realise, a Camera Obscura song as its backing. “Bloody hell,” I said, fainting slightly. However famous they keep on getting, I’m not sure I’m ever going to get used to it.

* it was on Radio Two, at about 4am on a Sunday morning; I was driving home from a certain Theatrical And Social Club and had just dropped a friend off at her house.

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Keyword noise: advert, advertising, BBC, Camera Obscura, indie, indiepop, music, pop, radio, Radio 2, television, telly, Tesco, tv

Speedy

In which we spot some truth in advertising

Written by Forest Pines; published at 1:29 pm on February 21st, 2007.
Filed under: Dear Diary.

At the office, we often get random pieces of promotional crap sent to us by companies touting for business. The best so far: an “emergency phone kit” from O2.* The latest: a pen from Openreach. If you’ve not heard of Openreach yet: they’re the chunk of British Telecom that actually gets to play with wiring and hardware, and ends up doing all the manual work.

Openreach’s PR people clearly aren’t as imaginative as O2’s, because they’ve sent us a ballpoint pen. One of those pens with a moving picture inside, that slides from one end to the other when the pen’s tilted. Rather than go for the classic “woman whose bra and knickers disappear” design, their pen has a background of terraced houses, and an Openreach van chugging from one end to the other.

So far, so boring. This pen, though, is ideal to represent BT.** Because of the speed the van moves: chug chug chug, dead slow along the line of houses. Perfectly representing the speed it takes BT to do pretty much anything.*** Ideal publicity material!

* A piece of string, and a capped cardboard tube marked with a “cut here” line around the middle.

** Or, “Openreach, a part of the BT group”, as it says on their promotional bumpf

*** To be honest, I have found one part of BT that does what you ask, quickly, and gets it right first time: whatever office it is sets up reverse DNS information for ADSL lines with static IP addresses. If you do not know what this means, rest assured you will never need to get in touch with them. Oh, and if you know anyone who works for BT: they have a special staff-only customer service number which allegedly gets better service than the ordinary one, and if you have a problem they can call it up on your behalf.

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Keyword noise: advert, advertising, British Telecom, BT, freebie, junk, junk mail, Openreach, promo

Not a meme

In which we see what Google thinks of our correspondance

Written by Forest Pines; published at 10:31 pm on January 16th, 2007.
Filed under: Dear Diary, Linkery.

An Unreliable Witness recently wrote something that definitely isn’t a meme: scanning the adverts Gmail throws up after reading all your email for you. As I have nothing better to write about tonight, I thought I’d do the same thing. Here’s a selection of things that, apparently, go with my email.

Organic Rice Syrup
Physical Immortality Is Possible
Looking For An Essay?
Secrets To Understanding Men
How To Stop Sweating Now

So, according to Gmail: I’m a student who needs to find a spiritual side, cooks a lot, doesn’t understand men, and is a bit sweaty. There you have it!

One comment. »

Keyword noise: advert, advertising, GMail, Google Mail

People you bump into in the post office

In which FP recognises someone

Written by Forest Pines; published at 8:36 pm on March 8th, 2006.
Filed under: Dear Diary.

In case you were wondering: last week, I was away in Wales. I was staying in the small, snowy town of Aros Heddlu,* Merioneth, doing some volunteer work.** Of course, I came back from my holiday needing another one to recover from it.

I managed to come across as a bit of a mad English tourist, whilst I was there, whilst I was in the local post office. The post office’s Lottery machine, you see, had a cardboard advertising hoarding on top of it. “Do you have a spare one?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” said the shopkeeper. She started to hunt around. “I’m sure we have one somewhere.”

“I don’t mean to be any trouble,” I said, “but if you had one handy – I’ve been looking for one of those.”

“I’m sure we did have another,” she said, wondering what the hell this mad English tourist wanted with a cardboard Lottery advert. “I’ll have a look for it and put it to one side for you.”

“Oh no no I don’t want to be a nuisance,” I said, feeling slightly embarrassed. “I just wanted one because that” – I pointed at the picture on the advert – “is my friend W, and it would be nice to have one. Well, um, thank you anyway. I really don’t want to put you to any bother.” And I left the shop, leaving me feeling embarrassed for causing a fuss, and her baffled at these strange tourists with friends off the adverts.

* Not its real name, as people with Roadsign Welsh vocab will probably realise.

** “…with the mentally ill,” as one of the other people there said. I think it was The Goon, who may well be reading.

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Keyword noise: advert, advertising, celebrity, Merioneth, tourist, travel, Wales