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Ten Adverts That Say One Thing and Mean Another.

1. NAB: More give, Less take. Watch the ad. The girl steals the boy’s quiff. He cries, she gives it back. So the message I get is that the bank gives you back that which was yours in the first place and which was taken from you forcefully—no more, no less. Ah, thanks NAB.
2. NAB: No asterisk. They are trying to convince us that they have accounts without the small print. Look at the bottom of the screen—ther's an asterisk!
3. Radio Rentals: We won’t say no to any rental item you can afford. Um, is it just me that thinks this sounds stupid?
4. AAMI: The singing one (which is annoying on its own level). There is a strange mix of tenses when the doorman holding half a door sings his line. He says: 'He gets the same as I did'. Because one is ongoing present tense and one the past it implies that the doorman now gets a different rate and therefore there is no point to what they are saying which is that safe drivers are not advantaged. I think it belies the fact that they are telling porkies. This is a hunch and is yet to be actually proven true—but it is an insurance company, you know what I am saying yes?
5. Biofilm. I can't recall just which idiotic toothpaste company believes we are completely gullible, but,really, this is just an ad to say that all toothpastes do the same thing so we are going to try and scare you into buying ours on another level by calling the same old stuff that happens to teeth by a new name—biofilm.I'm not buying it. I like the one that gets all foamy in your mouth.
6. Budget, Budget. Car Insurance. Besides the fact that I hate the ad to death, I just don’t understand it either. Why is the French bimbo in the old man who she met on the side of the road’s bathroom having a shower? Why is a young girl in a much older man’s shower anyway? What are they trying to say at all? In a way they are perhaps unfairly placed in this list because in order to say one thing and mean another, they need to be saying something in the first place.
7. This one is literal, but no less (eek) annoying for the fact. There is a Ford ad that is all about ‘less’—less petrol needed, less cost to purchase etc. But the starting sentence they have is ‘Less trips to the fuel pump’. Fewer!! Fewer, fewer, fewer! trips to the fuel pump. This is how languages are ruined and morons are born. I know that sounds harsh but I am writing this at work where the evidence of language degradation is abundant and annoyingly annoying.
8. I think it is either ANZ or Eftpos in general that have an ad which seems to implying that the world works smoothly when people all file after each other touching their card to a thingy and not holding anyone up with the inconvenience of cash. They all crash into one another when someone takes out their wallet and hands over a note. Um? Stepford wives? They're all auto-bots with zero personality or individuality, following each other unthinkingly. Nothing disincentivizes me more than an add that tells me to be like everyone else. 9. Quilton Toilet Tissue. They ask you to imagine the 'world's fluffiest cloud, the softest baby lambs or the softness of feathers and pillows'. Um, do you mean I have to imagine wiping my bottom with any of those? A cloud would be refreshing and watery but not really very solid. A lamb would squirm about, and is somehow immoral. And feather by themselves, messy and a bit like being tarred and feathered, and the whole pillow is really a bit of a waste! Not good analogies.