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.
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