Posts Tagged ‘adverts’

This advert popped up in my Facebook feed recently and I thought I would re-post it as it is an excellent example of an advert.

It’s great for two reasons. The first is that they pick a really specific pain point and promise to take that pain away. In this case, it’s literally a pain point: no more bleeding nipples.

If you’re a runner, which is their target audience, you will probably know how sore and painful your nipples get after a long run. And having to vaseline up. And forgetting to vaseline up and running along thinking “it’s just a matter of time until this gets unpleasant”. They promise to fix this problem.

They could have talked about loads of different things. The material is designed to keep you cool, to wick away sweat, dry quickly, etc. But they don’t get distracted by that. They keep it for separate adverts. They pick one specific point to get people hucked and then sell them on everything else later.

Second, it’s an excellent offer. Try it for 100 days and if you don’t like it, send it back. It takes all of the risk out of buying with them.

I thought I would write to share what I consider to be quite a positive experience I have recently had with the Advertising Standards Authority. Last month, I complained to them about an advert by Boots which I consider sexist.

It’s updated to their YouTube channel with the caption “the girls can’t let the onset of man-flu slow them down.”

Just three days after I had made the complaint, they posted out a letter to me! While it said they wouldn’t be taking any further action, they did take the time to explain to me why they wouldn’t – in this case because they did not feel the advert caused sufficiently widespread offence for them to take action. However, given complaints so often disappear off and are never heard of again, I think the ASA deserve praise for their speedy and in depth response.

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the news today you may have seen the story that a bus driver refused to do his shift because he was given a bus with the new atheist advert on it.

I mean seriously, what the hell?

This is a clear case of discrimination against atheists. If an atheist tried this stunt with one of the many, many Alpha adverts that can be found on buses he would be ridiculed, told to stop being stupid and ordered back to work. But when the tables are turned it’s suddenly acceptable to walk off shift?

But it gets even more offensive…

“I was just about to board and there it was staring me in the face, my first reaction was shock horror.” “I think it was the starkness of this advert which implied there was no God.”

Horror? What horror is caused by this? An advert which has gone out of it’s way to accommodate religious people (it could have read there is definitely no god, now shut your cake hole). An advert with has already been approved by the Advertising Standards Agency.

What this really shows is the massive intolerance bread by religion. Who ever heard of someone refusing to drive a bus with a political party advert on which always push the boat out and get personal and yet as soon as something goes on that isn’t even offensive, the atheist community is suddenly under attack. Disgraceful.