BADVERTS - DIREct Line

I must confess that I find TV advertising in general to be irritating, but for some time now successive campaigns by Direct Line have been driving me crazy!

 I was compelled to write this blog after overhearing two women in a café the other day who were discussing how funny they thought the ads were. I find them infuriating on a number of levels.

Take, for example the Alexander Armstrong campaign. Here we, the viewers are presented with a character who is pushy and a know it all, as seen in “free cakes” where the potential customer (Armstrong) shows the salesman (Chris Addison) “how to do it”. In “good spiel” he informs us “I used to be a car salesman myself” and in another ad recounts “I’m a bit of an amateur psychologist” and he then interprets the salesman’s mannerisms, etc as techniques. In another ad Armstrong wants to pretend to play golf while they chat about insurance. Of course, he criticises the salesman’s swing. Anyway, I shall return to Mr. pushy later, what of the other campaigns? 

Amelia Bulmore appears in a series of ads, portrayed as a stereotype of a new ager. She is in to Feng shui, yoga and crystals and acts like she is “on another planet “: not really listening to what she is being told. We are presented with a woman who acts eccentrically. She is wacky and off the wall. In one ad she is sitting upside down, in another she has Addison lying down as if on a psychiatrist’s sofa. She also drops her crystal on Addison’s foot in another advert. 

Have Direct Line any positive characters for potential customers? Let’s look quickly at three more before drawing some conclusions. There is a series of adverts for pet insurance. I have seen three ads: one where Addison has to talk in “baby language” to be heard, another where dog owner offers Addison “doggie chocolate” as thanks and one where she misunderstands an example presented to her of a cat requiring an operation. This character is also wacky and eccentric, talking to her dog like a baby and ignoring the sales pitch. Even when something is explained to her in basic terms she is shown as not knowing the difference between a fictional example and the real world.

The above mentioned campaigns were running in 2011. In 2012 we are introduced to a van driver that thinks he’s phoned his mate by mistake – because he gets offered such a great deal that it must be a wind up. This guy talks as if he is sub educated and holds his phone in strange ways, talking very loudly and incessantly to the poor, normal long suffering sales person who shows that he can stay calm and patient and deal with anyone. 

The most recent offerings that I have seen feature a couple from Smack the Pony who bicker, and as seems to be customary in these ads they don’t listen to the nice man selling them insurance. They are Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary with busy lives.

So why am I pointing this out? I’m sure that Direct line wanted to show that they can deal with any kind of person. I, however, am left with a different impression: Direct Line see their potential customers as overbearing, ill educated or eccentric. There’s nothing there I want to identify with! Ordinary people come across as being stupid and self indulgent. Is that how Direct Line sees people?  Direct Line know better than the customer, they are saying no matter how big a prat you are, we’ll deal with you, we can explain it in a way that will penetrate your thick head. 

What winds me up, apart from the negative stereotypes of the public that they want to take money from DL appear to be looking down at “ordinary” people which they don’t have the right to do, given that they are owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland who we, the taxpayer had to bail out not so long ago. On the surface the adverts appear to be funny, light hearted sketches, underneath the veneer lies the real attitude of banks and insurance towards the people they want as customers.

They have convinced me never to be a DL customer.

HISTORY – MADE EVERY DAY?

What on earth has happened to the History Channel?

Up until about a year ago it did try to put out programs with historical content. Ancient Discoveries, Cities of the Underworld and various collections of unseen war footage from the many wars there were in the 20^th century. Admittedly, the Channel has always had a leaning toward pseudo-history with such shows as Ancient Aliens, Life after People (which is actually about the future, not the past, but was interesting all the same), the Nostradamus Effect and Mystery Quest, but at least these shows can be said to have some kind of Historic content, in as much as they were at least about the past (except life after people) even if not based on verified fact.

Nowadays there seems to be little or no connection to the past.

 Current programs are firmly rooted in the present. Since their arrival on the schedule The History Channel has coined a new catchphrase: the title of this blog. Perhaps they thought that this would stop people from noticing they’re not history programs. Pawn Stars, for instance, whose only link to the past is the junk brought into their shop. However, the show does not concentrate so much on the items, more on (and that should be moron) the family that runs it. The shop is staffed by four tubbies: a Father, a son, a grandson and another bloke. The most annoying thing in the show is that an expert will be called in to value a military sword, for example, which could be valued at 500 dollars. When the punter returns they’ll tell him/her “I can only offer you 100 dollars for this…” and then trot out some glib reasons why, the greedy lot.

But there are worse shows: Ax men, about Lumberjacks who come across as ill educated yokels, Only in America with Larry the Cable Guy yokel, Swamp People featuring scary, hairy yokels and Mounted in Alaska, which turned out to be nothing like I had imagined! All these programs appear to present an assortment of eccentric regional characters THAT ARE CONTEMPORARY. Not what I tune in to watch on a history channel.

Still, they must bring in viewers, because these shows are spawning the next generation. Following the success of Pawn Stars a program called American Restoration has sprung up. The team in this show appeared in a few episodes of pawn stars restoring items for PS. Now they have a show of their own. There is also American Pickers, kind of “rag and Bone men” who travel the country buying junk mainly from hoarders to sell to preselected buyers. There has already been a crossover show featuring Pickers, Restoration and Pawn Stars. 

I take this as a sign that there are more of these shows to come: so I guess I’ll be finding a different channel to watch.