BAD AD AWARDS
(North American Only. We are not affiliated to the Bad Ad Awards Website in the UK)
LAST YEARS FIRST PLACE WINNER - HONDA CANADA
The TV ad was about pedestrians being hit by their new 'pedestrian friendly' car where it implied that if pedestrians are hit by the new Honda car they might survive! They pulled the TV ad after the award was sent to Honda headquarters in Japan.
We are now hosting the BAD AD AWARDS given at the end of each year for the WORST TV COMMERCIAL appearing in North America, as well BAD AD AWARDS to any company, organisation, business, public facility (hospital, school, library etc) that misrepresents their products or services through any form of advertising, be it, newspapers, magazines, flyers and related advertising means.
YOU are invited to submit your choice of a BAD AD by telling us about it in an email Britmail@aol.com (details please) or, if it is in printed form then send it to us at: Brits Abroad, PO Box 316, Rosedale, BC, CANADA, V0X 1X0
FINAL SUBMISSIONS FOR 2005 (Top Three Public Choices)
TAMPAX PEARL: This years top submission from people throughout North American is this tacky, yucky, really BAD AD where a young girl plugs up the leak in a boat with her Tampax napkin!
HISTORIC.CA This unapproachable website is run by biased university boffins, and funded by Canada government grants, and seems to exist mainly to constantly inaccurately portray Canada's history in TV vignettes that are vehemently slanted in favour of French Canadian history and are very very anti-British.
CAR RENTAL INSURANCE: This is currently one of the biggest rackets in the US and Canada. Car rental companies are over-charging insurance rates, some charge MORE than the DAILY car rental rate! Their daily insurance rates exceed $15 a day at a cost to them of $3 to $4 a day. Hertz, Avis, National, Budget, Enterprise, Alamo etc
HONOURABLE MENTION:
SHAW CABLE: They advertise a 24/7 service but when you call, a voice tells you the office hours are 8 am to 6 pm and you must call between those times!
BC LOTTERY CORPORATION: Real cheap porno-shop 'blow-up dolls' were used in a badly made and pointless TV commercial about winning the lottery. The TV commercial cost YOU the taxpayer well over six figures!
INFLATED GAS PRICES: All the major gas companies took every American & Canadian for a ride on the big profits train when they had no need to do so. Now they rack up BILLIONS in PROFITS and don't turn a hair. They are ALL getting a BAD AD AWARD this year for sticking it to the public.
ABOUT TV COMMERCIALS AND ADS
Did you realise that every TV commercial, every glossy ad, every flyer, every billboard, and every other form of advertising you - you - the public, the consumer, the person in the street pays for right out of your own pocket? The cost of every single aspect of advertising is passed on to the buying public to pick up the bill - everything even remotely linked with advertising. You pay to keep all those TV stations running, all those TV commercials blaring, all those rich Ad agencies,
It all starts innocently enough with a company wanting to advertise their products. From the Yellow Pages to an ad in the local newspaper, that cost is added to the price you pay for their product. All ads, be they newspaper, magazine, or flyer, the costs of such are added to the price you pay for the product. Some companies like Coke, McDonalds, Hersheys, and Dasani mineralized water, actually spend more on ads than they do on the cost of the actual product you buy. Like Coke. It costs about 17 cents to make a two liter bottle of Coke. You pay about $3 for that two liter bottle. Of that $3, a third goes in advertising costs, split between the Ad Agencie and the source of displaying the ad. Another third goes in related company expansion costs. And the balance goes in actual product cost and net profits. See how being in the Ad business pays off? Thanks to you.
Now for the really surprising news. You do not have to watch TV ads. Honest. The best advertising is word of mouth, followed by visual property (seeing the place where you can get the product), flyers, and billboards. TV commercials are the biggest waste of your money there ever was. Only about 3% of people (3 out of every 100) respond directly to buying something seen on TV. Most people buy something because of recommendation, seeing the place, reading a flyer, or seeing a billboard. When companies pay millions of dollars to advertise on the Super Bowl TV show it does not move sales up at all - if anything it justs add costs to the product months later. And all that cost is past onto you. Every nickel. And you might have to watch those TV commercials as well.
But you do know that you do not have to watch TV commercials? You have many alternatives. Be like all the wise and wonderful executives and smart people who hardly ever watch TV, let alone commercials. They do not waste their time. Ask them. Most 'educated people' never watch TV. Only the 'shuffling cookie eaters' do as one report said from a major US university. You can always record a show you like and fast-forward through the commercials when you replay it, or buy one of those VCR's that will re-run the show after recording it and take out the commercials. And you do know what the mute button is for, don't you!?
TV commercials has brought television to such a low and mindless level of entertainment that watching the news has now become a frustrating fight with constant breaks, and a string of repetitive commercials, most being hardly worth the millions you paid for them, with some making such ridiculous claims that you wish they could be vetted by some honest people before they go out on your screen. But I guess as long as this world is full of people who like to watch TV commercials (yes there are a few) and full of people who believe them, we're going to be stuck with them. After all, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS and a thousand Ad Agencies from New York to Canada's helping-hands national government, would all go belly-up if we refused to watch commercial television. One day TV commercials will be limited to four breaks an hour, being three minutes each break, will be vetted for truthful content, and will not drive us all crazy, so until then, keep buying and keep paying for every TV commercial you are almost seemingly forced to watch.
Centre for Advertising Research. November 2005. Form 200511ADV
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