The most annoying ads
Wednesday Ramblings
It is time for the MAC awards. MAC stands for the Most Annoying Commercials. Below are listed the candidates with ratings for annoyance on a scale of 1 to 10. Most should be familiar with a Banks Beer offering set on an island with a bunch of nubile girls. Dressed in red and white bikinis they seem to spend most of their time belly down on the sand like rows of sleek sports cars in an auto dealers lot or running with long yards of cloth. Could they be fleeing from a bunch of drunken men clumsily pursuing them round this little island? One can only wonder. In what must be the most unsubtle use of subliminal advertising ever, a presumably drunken man's hand reaches across the screen grasping for some girl's cheeks (sic) which are magically transformed into two beer bottles. Add a sound track which goes "Liquid Anthem of the Caribbean...a celebration of who we are... Banks beer! Banks beer! Another word for beer." Surely "Banks beer" is two words and what in this world is a Liquid Anthem? The MAC factor is a roundly deserved 9 for the flagrant use of human body parts and poor grammar. A Carib commercial also set on a beach is no better, with a young man pouring beer on a girl's back. Strike one for women's rights. The same girl later slaps the boy so hard across the face she leaves a Carib symbol permanently indented on his cheek. This woman should have been arrested immediately for physical abuse and hauled before a court in her bikini. MAC factor: 7 for dereliction of duty by the police and a waste of good beer. Staying in the alcoholic beverage category, there is a commercial for Royal Stout which often comes on during boxing. The scene is a trendy party where a thirsty young man opens a fridge to see frosty bottles of the product piled high, shining invitingly. Cut to a woman, of course filmed from behind, dressed in a zebra suit whom he calls over to look. As they peer through the cool mist, the bottles suddenly turn into a roaring lion! Question: how did that lion fit in the refrigerator? Someone must urgently call the GSPCA before he dies from hypothermia. Meanwhile the message seems to be, drink a liquid lion and you will catch a zebra. Reality is more like, drink a stout and you will want another and another until you either fall in a trench, crash your car or disappoint a nice looking striped animal. MAC factor: 6 - only because it is mercifully short. Equally annoying is the Banks Milk Stout commercial where an old man turns into a bodybuilder. Let it be stated categorically for those out there gullible enough to believe such a thing. There is no scientific proof that such a rejuvenation could occur and considerable evidence to believe the opposite is true. MAC factor: 4. Keeping on the category of things that can do you harm, Bristol really has some nerve to air a commercial entitled "Our own choice". Exactly what part of a foreign manufactured package of Bristol is our own? Certainly not the tobacco, nor the paper nor the cellophane wrap. Once again the product relies solely on improbably white-teethed young people; this time playing volleyball in more skimpy bathing suits. Even the commercial looks like it was made abroad. Where is the coughing and emphysema-induced wheezing usually associated with this habit? MAC Rating: 9 for complete lack of patriotism and for portraying smoking as a healthy past time. Let us now examine the Citizen's Bank commercial. What an uproar this innocent production has caused. People with little else to do but write letters to the Stabroek News, condemned it for its political incorrectness. Of far more concern is the whereabouts of that poor woman now shrunken to Lilliputian dimensions. Did the creators of the commercial compensate her for the sudden loss of height? MAC factor 7 - mostly because the employees of Citizens Bank look too damn happy. Speaking of banks, the GBTI commercial "Guyana's on the rise" should be canned immediately. That big fish endlessly pulled out of the fishing boat must be rotten by now and the little girl sitting on the floor has probably graduated from UG. MAC factor 6 because of GBTI's laziness in not making another commercial. Has anyone got a clue what the new GT&T commercial is about? Here we have a set of healthily sized women standing around in tye-dyed bedsheets saying they are the rivers, the mountains, the sugar of Guyana. One declares "I am the Soul of Guyana". Who made her appointment to such an esteemed position? Was any committee involved? Not one letter to the newspapers on this one. By the way GT&T is a phone company and the only sighting of a phone is a cellular which rings when one woman says she is the future. How stupid one is not to realise that this is another subliminal message. GT&T has already stated that landlines are uneconomical to install. They are simply telling you to buy a cellular. MAC factor 9 because most GT&T employees never smile that much. But most annoying of all is the Breeze soap powder commercial with the housewives from Trinidad extolling its cleaning power. How many more times do we have to hear how that horrible boy came home with a "pennycone" (?) stain on his shirt and how his mother rubbed the spot and miracle of all miracles it went away? "I belieeeeve in Breeeeeze!" she declares! implying so should we. Do the purveyors of this imported product honestly believe that Guyanese housewives would listen to advice from a Trinidadian? Keep your pennycones, lady and give your son a good hiding for being so clumsy. Mac factor: 10
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