You know the ones I mean. Book-ending every original comedy show on Channel 4. A terrible, TERRIBLE comedian in a Prisoner style jacket and regulation indie curly hair delivers some jaw-droppingly unfunny jokes about the Internet. The more you see it, the worse they get. You start to notice how the timing is off, the overly posh accent, the too quiet audience laughter.
It’s got to me. I hate it with every fibre of my being. So I did a little digging. I wanted to know who was responsible for these things. Who has been making me dread the advertising break. Who’s responsible?
I WANT ANSWERS!
Easy bit – The comedian is a man named Spencer Brown. He’s easy to find – there are plenty of his videos on YouTube. And while not being a revelatory comic who’s likely to set the world alight with his genius, he’s quite funny. A bit silly. Inoffensive. Even does a comedy rap about the Queen.
And he has a MySpace where he mentions working for 3.
They’re basically the kind of things that end in “3 mobile sponsors original comedy on 4″ or some such slogan. Anyway, content-wise, they’re me doing stand up about the internet, so I thought they were probably worth mentioning. I haven’t seen them yet, and they presented quite a challenge as I was suddenly trapped inside advertising guidelines and up to five second time limits (not an easy feat) but fingers crossed they’ll turn out really well.
Sorry Spencer – they didn’t turn out really well. But you can see his situation. He’s a stand up, used to working in, at minimum, 20 minute chunks, suddenly thrust into a situation where you have to be funny in five seconds. Within industry guidelines. About a topic you didn’t choose.
He’s got good comedy pedigree too – playing characters in Garth Marenghi and Nathan Barley, so I think I’m going to forgive Spencer. It’s not his fault. He just wants a job. He didn’t choose this. Who did?
3. They are the culprits. What man would throw a young stand-up into an ill conceived stand up routine about the Internet? A topic that means it’s possible for the jokes to go only one of two ways – either so geeky that they alienate the mass audience, or so dated and overused Internet snarks like me will mock them mercilessly on blogs and forums.
What man would do that?
A marketing man.
A marketing man named Alan Doyle
A bit more searching and I found this…
Alan Doyle, Director of 3 Integrated Communications says:
Sponsorship of Channel 4’s comedy stream is a great fit for us as a brand. Like Channel 4, we like to push the boundaries of our industry. And while we strive for constant improvement to the status quo for our customers, we try not to take ourselves too seriously. These are values that are important to us, and we hope that this deal will help us share them with the 16-34 year old audience that the broadcaster’s award-winning programming attracts.
- Great Fit
- Brand
- Push The Boundaries
- Status Quo
- Values
- 16-34
Marketing speak 101.
So it’s Alan’s fault? Not entirely. As much as marketers may think they are creative – responsible for the output on our screens, monitors and magazines – they’re not. Marketing guys are number-crunchers. Dishing out money here, counting the results there. Middle men who leave the actual creative work to – well – creatives. Alan simply took his budget and spunked a big chunk of it on what he thought was cool. And Alan is a man who talks in age ranges. He probably knows his shit, does Alan, but he’s no creative.
The blame lays here. On the creative agency Alan hired to create these adverts.
They are the people who got paid ungodly amounts of money to sit in a swanky office in Shoreditch and say ‘Hey! How about we get a stand up to tell an Internet based joke in five seconds? That would go well with the comedy they’ve been watching. And, yeah, Internet goes really well with mobile. Yeah, mobile Internet. Shall we work on a script? Naaah. Actually, that’s the comedian’s job, innit? Lets all go down a gastropub and smell each others’ farts’
Or something.
The agency behind the crap 3 adverts is Glue. Here is the proof. Shoreditch based, with a self-consciously cool website – featuring Julian Opie style portraits of the staff. Glue are, among other things, responsible for an RSS feed reader that features a dancing Page 3 girl.
They are the ones to blame. I couldn’t find the actual person responsible – but I’ll guess their Creative Director Seb has something to do with it.
There you have it. Pour your anger towards them.
I probably shouldn’t take these things so seriously should I?
*end of football comment*
168 Comments
Fantastic piece, great research too. An example to us all – find the culprits and name & shame. I quite liked some of Spencer’s act too so your target appears to be spot on and I happen to work in Moorgate, a stone’s throw from Glue’s offices (in that fucking Tea Building with the overpriced bar) in Shoreditch.
*gathers suitably large stones*
‘Glue’?
For fuck’s sake. What sort of a name’s that for a firm? Remember when companies used to be called Ackroyd & Son India Rubber Co. Ltd. (or what-have-you)? ‘Glue’, indeed. Twats.
I must admit these had passed me by.
The ones that irritate me are thoese t-mobile ones with the singing. TERRIBLE!
I see both the Vauxhall Corsa ‘C’mon!’ ads and that fucking Prudential one have resurfaced. Bastards.
DINLT: Yes they’re shit. Reckon we can track down everyone in them? And pelt them with stones?
I was just perusing the staff avatar page on the Glue site- Jesus Christ, what a bunch of self important, pompous meejahores. And wacky, they sound so wacky – so bloody fucking hilariously wacky.
Quincy – I’ve just done the same, and now blame you for the waves of nausea I’m experiencing.
Quincy: I’ve got a few spare stones if you fancy a go?
Oh my word Spencer Brown is bad bad bad.
I’m somewhat amused that most of the standup clips on his channel are from a “Special” in Sweden. Very polite people, the Swedes.
I might skip the stones (so to speak) and move straight to industrial sized boulders and some kind of Flintsones style catapult device… that way we can get them and their wacky pool table, x-box and air hockey games too.
I suppose it wouldn’t be totally rude to mention at this point that I have a new advert specific blog up…
http://www.worldforsale.wordpress.com
…for fans of that atrocious Pear Cider ad, Blackberry Loving U2 and wanky impatience is a virtue phone ads.
Great piece Von, that’s some research, ever thought of MI5?
Odd website.
“Gluers” Mmmm
That pigs head cake looks a little ominous eh?
Nick..do not forget you are expected at Borders today. Signing your autobiography no doubt.
That was last Saturday DINLT and it was canceled.
Those Glue avatars are great ”
“Andy
Work Hard, Play Hard”!
Classic
WAs it? OH….do any of you gigs go ahead..?
There was a page on the Dailey Echo website (daily local paper for Southampton)yesterday, mentioning that Katie Jordan Price had turned uo at Waterstones to sign HER new book after canceling a few weeks before. I was going to post a link to it but it has been pulled.
Odd eh?
All of me gigs do.
You trying to start a fight with me DINLT?
I’ll call a prefect….
You can’t constantly improve the status quo, because that would change it. By definition, the status quo doesn’t change. Besides, who wants the status quo anyway – even if Alan is improving it?!
That link you posted yesterday i thought was fresh. I did not notice it was Friday’s and the “tomorrow” they were referring to was last Saturday.
No Nick all of your gigs do not. WALTON!
I do believe I nominated this man (and these ads) for the most annoying person on TV thing the other week.
Huzzah!
This is insufferable. I changed my number two weeks ago, and since then I’m being rung up by hundreds of French people asking for ‘Madame Ju-Ju’ (who I imagine is either a prostitute or a mysterious Caribbean voodoo priestess). Last night’s conversation was typical:
“Hello?”
“Ah, bonjour, Madame!”
“Bloody hell …”
“Pardon, monsieur?”
“I’m not French.”
“Madame Ju-Ju, s’il vous plait?”
“You’ve got the wrong number.”
“Pardon?”
“Je suis Anglais. I’m not French. NOT FRENCH.”
“Anglais?”
“Oui! Yes!”
“Aaaah … I sorry …”
“That’s alright.”
“Daccord! Au revoir, monsieur.”
“Au revoir.”
This now happens a minimum of five times a day. Bastards.
Nap are you sure it is spelt JuJu..I am wondering if it might be from jouer to play.
Can we call you Mrs Play-Play now then, Nappers?
Research! Enjoyed that. I know that Tea building in Shoreditch. Wankers.
There was a good link in the b3ta website about advertising ‘creatives’ – the URL is a bit NSFW tho:
http://copycunts.blogspot.com/
I have a date tonight. YIKES. NC – she is French, I will ask her about Madame Juju. Maybe she IS Madame Juju…
DINLT – They’re definitely saying ‘Ju-Ju’. And then loads of French stuff.
NC – are they pronouncing it ‘jew jew’ tho, or ‘joue joue’. Cos if its the latter, it probably is some sort of lady of the evening.
I hate shit like this. As soon as an company starts to look into doing things “outside of the box” that’s when things go wrong. What they means is “we can’t really be very wacky, but we’ll pretend we are”. What you get instead is a mish-mash of…. crap.
Fourstar – I’d rather you didn’t. It’s bad enough being called ‘Nappers’.
Roszs – If it is her, can you ask her to tell her friends that, should they ring an English man by mistake, can they not then ring him over and over again? That’s what happened four times last night, with the Frenchman getting more exasperated with every call.
Roszs – ‘Joue-Joue’. With soft js.
The French all they think about is sex..sex and more sex…food..wine and then sex..sex..sex and sex…food and wine..
Well I wish they’d think about it somewhere else, DINLT. That bugger ruined Panorama last night.
All that drunkeness on the streets of Oldham.
I think you should just give in and fulfil their needs, NC/Nappers/Mrs Play-Play.
That was the one. With the bizarre idea of Post Office queues to get two drinks and a phalanx of rozzers and bouncers watching your every move. Bit Soviet Union, I thought … and what if you want to get a round in?
It might be joue jour.
Don’t blame the creatives, pass the blame to Alan.
You can almost see the creative process unfolding:
> Glue creates dozens of great concepts but keeps a lame one on the go called the ‘banker’, so obvious any stuffed suit will get it.
> Predictably Alan picks the lamest concept
> Creatives come up with jokes loosely based round a mobile phone, very funny, laughs all round.
> The account exec tries them out on his mates from Clapham. They are too busy being rugger buggers and don’t get them. Jokes deamed unfunny, won’t get presented.
> Creatives come up with slightly less clever jokes and send them off to the client
> Client shows it to wife, she doesn’t get it, jokes deamed unfunny.
> Finally creatives come up with jokes, account exec and client love them, creatives and comedian die a little inside.
Welcome to my world.
I must admit I would not fancy a bar where coppers are standing in the bar, by your table! Mind you I did think it was an appropriate point, that football clubs pay for their policing whereas bars do not. Maybe it is a good idea for (some) bars to contribute to town policing.
Fourstar – Easier said than done. For a start, my French isn’t good enough to understand the demands of a native going at full pelt, and for another my prices would be beyond most punters’ wallets as they’d have to take travelling to South Yorkshire into consideration.
And I’m not sure they’d be all that pleased to discover the mysterious Madame Ju-Ju was a balding, overweight man with bad teeth and a dislike of all things Gallic.
Awww..thanks to those who said this was a good piece. I can’t review TV shows for shit, so taking another angle is all I can really do.
But yeah – Glue look like a bunch of tossers don’t they?
‘Creatives’.
*vomits copiously*
Thanks for that, I hate them – I assumed they were supposed to be rubbish, nice to here that although they weren’t he’s not.
Nap..you got to think business. What you can do is be the middle man. Link up with a local brass…details probably found in local paper and then sub contract the work out, taking a cut.
DINLT – That’s hardly novel, is it? The idea that city centre boozers should pay the cost of policing’s been kicking about for years. The government’s response? Remove the power that councils had to refuse licenses, and keep the boozers open until five in the morning in a country where half the population appears to be on a mission to drink itself to death.
Huzzah!
DINLT – That’s a thought. I might polish up my French and become a pimp. It appears I already have a large customer base in place by mistake.
DNILT: “The French all they think about is sex..sex and more sex…food..wine and then sex..sex..sex and sex…food and wine..”
And zat eez why I like to ‘ow you say… ‘date zem’.
Filth, they are.
Kudos – you should be charging for this service.
If ya like this why not head over to Downtuned where I rant on about wankers at gigs…
http://downtuned.net/2009/08/10/10-people-you-meet-at-gigs-but-dont-want-to/
/shameless plug
I lived in Paris for awhile and at midnight there would be a strip tease on the telly every night.
Driving through the bois de boulogne the girls of the night (and day) would flash you as you drove by.
Careful, you’re about to enter into the realm of ‘if you like biscuits, you’ll love these new freeze-dried Hobnobs’…
DINLT ahh yes Walton, I see your point. That was simple. When organising a festival it’s up to the organisers to sell tickets. To expect bands to sell the tickets and collect the money for you is sheer lunacy.
Disgraceful behaviour.
*books tickets on the Eurostar immediately*
Napoleon, when the French ask you if this is ‘Madame Joue-Joue’, why not just keep saying “No, this is Napoleon (your Emperor)”. And please record the subsequent exchange for the next podcast.
When I was in Hamburg, there was a local tv station that would show strippers every night, except they were all ropey, bored local housewives – laddered tights and all…
It seems all our European brothers think about is sex.
Napoleon Bonaparte did not succeed because when he tried to invade Russia he had not taken into account the soldiers need for sex. Cold winter was the excuse, but we all know they wanted to get back and do some shagging.
Likewise in WW2 when the germans invaded, where were the French. I will tell you, they were in bed shagging.
Office Pest – That might backfire on me. You know their attitude to authority. Should I reveal the truth, I might wake up to find a pile of burning sheep in the garden tomorrow morning. No doubt they’ll be protesting after I dared to suggest a lunch break doesn’t have to take three hours, two bottles of wine and fourteen courses.
I you sure they weren’t hiding under the bed, DINLT? Hiding and shagging, waiting for the British and some other people to ride to their rescue? Again.
Quite correct nap. And when they do venture out into the street after the food, wine and sex, all they do is set fire to tires or set up road blocks.
Actually, given their capricious nature, I think if you show them the iron fist of authority they will roll over and re-instate you. Then you could declare France a part of the British Empire and we’re all sorted out again.
I saw my old boss on a C4 trailer last night being told she had ‘the best smoked salmon in the world’. How good is that for free advertising and exposure? Far better than this comedian’s anyway. Yet for any jobbing stand up surely doing the 3 ads is a dream, even if you know you come across as an idiot on them.
Has anyone considered that it might be joue, as in cheek? Mrs. Cheek-Cheek? Mrs. Cheek-Play? Mrs. Flipping Play-Cheek?
Loving your work, Vones, A+++ from Mam.
Hope you have a lovely date, Roszszszszs. What news of the saucy barmaid?
Dave – You used to work in a salmon smokehouse?
No. I used to work in the smokehouse cafe and shop which was right next to an old Scottish castle. The smoked salmon in question is a closely guarded secret only known by the couple who own it. It’s a bit like KFC but instead of D grade chicken it’s one of the best food products in the world.
Can you have secret recipes when you’re legally obliged to reveal your ingredients? Surely a food scientist could work out what you’re up to given time?
It ’s the amounts rather than the ingredients.
It’s all about the process and what you do with the wood chips.
I’ve said too much…
CM – I have actually met a NICE girl wot is a social worker and everything, and I don’t think she would be very impressed with barmaid antics, so the barmaid is finito. (Not dead, I ain’t killed her…). Have arranged tonight’s french-girl-date for a while so thought it would be a bit rude to cancel. And i think it is important to keep options open (if you are a terrible old slag like me anyway…)
And the methods..
I shall be making cider in two weeks, just saying..methods…
Yes, but these food boffins know their onions. I knew one once, and I reckon she’d be able to work out ’secret recipes’ if she had the ingredients in front of her.
She had great tits.
The best smoked salmon is wild and is to be found here.
http://www.springs-post.co.uk/shop.htm
The shop is in a lovely Sussex village.
DINLT – Don’t make me get all ghetto on you about smoked salmon.
Sussex? The best for smoked salmon? Not sure the Scotch would agree with you there.
I take great delight in the nature of these comments threads. From the weak nature fo the sponsor idents on Channel 4 to the smoking techniques for salmon, in only 72 steps.
The salmon comes from the sea…and has swum all over the place. You get a wild salmon and smoke it, it can be smoked anywhere.
Looks like the place that does smokies on that Local Food Heroes show.
via Freench ladies of the night 4*
Nap..I do not think the Scotch would agree with me on anything!
DINLT: I know better than to start documenting every detour, especially where naughty Miss Game-Cheek is involved.
http://theworldfamouschalkandcheesesatiricalwebblog.wordpress.com/
There’s a stall turns up in Sheffield from time to time. It’s ‘As featured on Rick Steins. Food Heroe’s,’.
morning all.
i am with headache.
those ads sound annoying.
i like calling nappers nappers. it’s great. and it suits him. i think. i don’t really know. i don’t know his fass.
the french are dirty cnuts. i once had one for 3 years. he was a dirty cnut. salope, even. a man one.
i like smoked salmon, but dry smoked salmon better than that wet-scab-after-a-shower effect you get with normal smoked salmon.
I had a french girl friend who after some snogging which I thought was rather enjoyable, said she was going to teach me to kiss properly. for the next few hours she demonstrated ways of kissing and how she liked to be snogged.
Mind you it is true that these days i am regarded as an expert snogger.
I was 16 at the time..she was seventeen.
waiting for life to start?
What a juddering bunch of thunderc*nts! You only have to look at those avatars, and the fact that half of their staff have either written ‘funny’ bios, or confessedly worked in Sainsburys, or that guy’s handlebar moustache, to know that this place is infested with tw*ts such as only Hoxton can produce.
Somebody said to me the other day that the thing with Hoxton is that it should be made illegal to have more than one hairstyle at any one time.
As a born Londoner..it does amaze me how these areas become gentrified. I remember when Fulham was a rather deprived area. Anyways it seems that a starbucks (for goodness sake mugs of coffeee…doesn’t that tell you something!) and a few over priced restaurants and a so called “in crowd” and these places become sought after. Basically, london is overcrowded full of wannabees who are living an illusion.
And if any company represents the state of modern London, it is foxtons. I dislike that company more than any. Wankers the lot of them.
Did I invent the name ‘Nappers’? Did I did I did I? Well did I? Am I aces breeks? Am I?
you are aces clarry’s mam but i’m not sure you did.
did you?
i am not sure.
I think that Hoxton was invented in the 80s.
I’m looking at a map of London from the 60s here. Hoxton, not on it!
Nick – is Hoxton Square on it, just off Old Street? Hoxton’s just a bit of Shoreditch innit?
Nick – from wikipedia:
“‘Hogesdon’ is first recorded in the Domesday Book, meaning an Anglo-Saxon farm (or fortified enclosure) belonging to Hoch, or Hocq.[1] Little is recorded of the origins of the settlement, though there was Roman activity around Ermine Street, which ran to the east of the area from the 1st century. In medieval times, Hoxton formed a rural part of Shoreditch parish. It achieved independent ecclesiatical status in 1826 with the founding of its own parish church dedicated to St John the Baptist, though civil jurisdiction was still invested in the Shoreditch vestry.”
Fascinating, eh?!
*isn’t really looking at old maps of London*
….
Hoch or Hocq, eh? Funny that they didn’t call the area something like Hockney, or Hackney.
*polishes philologist’s badge with sleeve of cardy*
“Shoreditch” is a corruption of ye olde medieval adman’s cry of “Sure, titch!”, which means something like “You’re paying, Alan!”
Wow.
You could take such things so seriously – as indeed you appear to have done here. But everyone would think you’re a bit mental for venting such anger at something so trivial. Wouldn’t they?
OK. So here’s a challenge for you:
Would you like to come and spend a day with us?
Unfortunately we don’t get paid ungodly amounts of money to sit in a swanky office in Shoreditch (although the Shoreditch bit is right), so we can’t offer you either of those. But rest assured, we’ll extend our best Shoreditch style welcome. If you’re lucky we’ll also knock you up one of our Julian Opie style portraits.
And then perhaps you can share some of your ideas with us as we brainstorm the next idents campaign?
Failing that, we’ll take you for a pint in our local gastropub and you can join in one of our regular fart-sharing sessions. First round is on us.
love, Team glue.
brilliant! I’ll go! I have some ruddy great ideas for crap marketing campaigns me!
Glue – can we bring our friend Scott Grimes?
Since it’s far easier to attack somebody else’s creativity than actually be creative yourself, can I suggest an ident that doesn’t result in the viewer being repulsed by comedy, especially if you’re sponsoring comedy?
Saying that, it’s not as bad as that cherry singing songs by The Three Degrees.
and George Lamb. He’s pretty hard-up for work these days.
@ Glue
Will you pay me?
@ Vones
No, but they will let you brainstorm with them then nick your ideas.
@glue: “You could take such things so seriously…something so trivial”
So the 3 idents are trivial? You didn’t take the campaign seriously? Have you mentioned this to Alan? Does he want his money back?
The point that Vones appeared to be making, not unreasonably, was that if you are sponsoring a comedy series/season by using ‘joke’ idents, they would do well to be funny.
And as we have no evidence that Spencer wrote the material – if he did, shame – then it falls to the people who created it to take the flak.
No?
I don’t suppose The Legendary Jas Mann (Off Of Babylon Zoo) is invited, is he?
@ glue.
I’ll come but I don’t know too much about advertising, my brother does though.
I am sure you guys agree with me that the t- mobile adds are awful.
Give me an idea of what I should be thinking about and I will draw up some ideas. Basically I am thinking sexy girl, catchy jingle and an exotic location.
Yes Hoxton as an area is made up.
Tits always sell stuff. You get a nice pair of tits, add on a voiceover talking about the tits, insinuate you’ll get a pair of tits of similar quality if you buy the product, then show the product at the end, next to the tits.
@glue. you might give Dave a job though, the creator of the world famous chalk and cheese. Also do you guys like football?
And your local..how much is a pint?
insinuate???
Imply so the watcher infers maybe?
The synergy between a brand called 3 and a channel called 4 is already so brilliant they really don’t need any more ‘ideas’.
Glue – I’ve already been at this advertising lark for years. You can ‘ave these buggers for free*:
http://primerump.blogspot.com/
*Not free
They couldn’t afford my creative genius. What I’m doing won’t be commercially viable for another thirty years…because it’s so cutting edge it’s blunt!
@glue If we come can we have cool avatars made up and witty biogs? If so, count me in.
What’s a ’synergy’? Is it a sort of snake?
Not everybody at glue has a witty biog. some have no text. why is that?
I tend to use the word “symbiotic” alot in meetings.
I have an idea. It’s a lady with lovely hair eating a crumbly chocolate phone in a boat. That would do wonders for Britain’s fifth mobile network.
What about Scott Grimes eating a crumbly chocolate phone in a boat? Or Scott Grimes alongside a big pair of tits? Anything with Scott Grimes really… focus groups would love it!
Nappers, synergy is a kind of all-purpose verbal condiment.
They should have a giant mobile phone in a bikini saying ‘I’m 3 and easy’ before rubbing her hash key violently.
steady on Dave, that’s quite close to an actual idea/slogan. It symbiotically grows the audience’s brand awareness.
Scott Grimes wearing a false pair of tits eating some chocolate with a mobile phone up his arse banging on about synergies?
Scott Grimes has incredible, free-floating synergy. He’d be ‘top’.
Dave – that is brilliant.
*buys loads of 3 phones*
Free-floating? This is all getting a bit London, is this.
It could all be done to a soundtrack written by 2Unlimited or the Outhere Brothers, using the word synergy…a lot.
I am literally pissing myself.
What about getting Dusty Bin from 3,2,1 to come back so old and senile that he can only count backwards to 3!
Each ident could have him weeping alone, trying to take his life in increasingly hilarious ways before fellow bin-shaped celebrity Rubin from the 80s/90s school environment campaigns comes up to him and says…
‘It’s okay if you’ve got dementia Dusty Bin, with the great deals on offer at 3 you’ll only need to count backwards to 3 from now on!
and then Dusty will say…
‘What? You think an old has bin (joke) like me can get a job working for 3?’
and Rubin will go…
‘Don’t be stupid, you daft, useless shit! With the great models of phone on offer in every 3 phone store why would they have use for a bin? Nobody wants bin-shaped characters anymore. Nobody’.
And then Dusty Bin and Rubin will sit in the smoke-filled car together, holding hands and fading gently to ‘first time evr I saw your face’.
WHERE’S MY COOL AVATAR?
Was it glue’s intention to make all their staff look like ravenous zombies in those avatars? It’s not a great corporate ‘look’
They look bloody awful, don’t they? Still, you have to do something to justify spending all that money on Adobe Illustrator licenses, I suppose.
They should have just downloaded Adobe Creative Arty Suite v.3.4567889990 from a torrent, like my creative team over at Chalk and Cheese did.
At least it might all work out alright for Spencer, the guys that did that phones 4 u advert are doing alright now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFo9nnmOU_4
(oh, and that’s blatantly the same cliff from my favourite advert ever:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opCecHAjzeQ
http://theworldfamouschalkandcheesesatiricalwebblog.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/episode-11-the-3-ident-man/
Satire about Spencer!
Dave, this is getting out of hand.
Sorry.
It’s alright. Carry on promoting, it’s all good sir.
The search engine joke is from an arj barker joke, though cleaned up for television, that’s what really ground my gears, to use a past tense.
I see the Glue people didn’t STICK around.
Ha ha ha.
I’m almost weeping with joy.
Finally, after long weeks of angry, spittle-flecked bellowing at the television, I discover that I’m not the only one who hates these adverts with an intensity usually reserved for the clinically psychopathic.
There are simply not enough words to describe how incadescent with rage these ads cause me to become. Indeed, I have become so livid, on occasion, that I’ve feared a cardiac arrest can only be moments away.
Thank you for this. Now, like the late Dennis Potter and his cancer ‘Rupert’, I can give a name to the cause of my inevitable, arm-clutching, panic-eyed death. Stress-induced heart failure – I shall call you Seb. Seb the cunt.
Bless you for this.
You’re welcome, rablenkov. Von is a superdetective.
Trouble is the creatives & graphic designers & other work-horses are all payed shit & given soul destroying non-creative work to do whilst the directors, account managers & client facing people are all payed OTT in comparison and have their heads up their own arses.
Thank you so much for this, I hate these ads with a passion and glad to know I’m not the only one.
I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to blame just Glue though. They’re not a bad agency, and I don’t think the concept itself is terrible. Had the jokes been funny, the editing spot on, the direction improved – they could have been ok.
It was just executed so poorly. And it seems everyone involved – from 3, the creative agency, the comedian, the marketeers – all share an equal blame. At some point someone should have realised this didn’t work and made some changes. The end result makes me hate 3.
So 3 – shoot some new ones? With funny jokes? If I hear “don’t you mean seeeeeeance” one more time my chicken tikka will be going through my tv.
Euan – that’s a very specific missile. Do you always have chicken tikka ready to pelt the screen with?
Rina – true, that’s why Seb was mentioned. It’s hard work being a creative underling.
It’s chicken tikka or macaroni and cheese. Something messy.
whilst we’re talking about awful adverts, those Phones4U adverts ought to be banned and those sponsered ads for whatever e4 show it is with the soul singer singing ‘no one’s reading your updates’ etc… but then maybe they’re meant to be so crap so that you actually take notice & start talking about them as we are now…..
I long for the good ol’ days – you know, those ‘wake up in the morning wanting some breakfast, wanting something to spread on my toast..oooh…oooh Vitalite’ adverts.. Not to mention the Kiora adverts…Whoever brought back the Milky Way ads was genius – ‘the red car and the blue car had a race’… genuinely catchy & not in the least bit annoying. But then.. that was a time before Big Brother & Celebrity Love Island etc….what has happened to the world? Maybe mobile phone radiation has actually killed half the population’s brain cells..who knows..
Euan – So long as it’s sloppy and delicious.
Rina – Solution to part of that problem – don’t watch e4?
So, erm, the pretentious Shoreditch tossers hired a comedian who had featured in Nathan Barley, a programme lampooning pretentious Shoreditch tossers.
No doubt they think that’s somehow ironic and will have a good guffaw about it over a Hoegaarden with all lemon and ice in.
It’s like some weird Venn, or at least something vaguely circular.
An oval?
Coo, look -> b3ta newsletter, SH.
I thought it was supposed to be ironic, I thought he was being a deliberately bad comedian, maybe to make the program you’re watching to seem funnier by comparision.
I’m appalled to discover I’m wrong
bitchy much?
Oh dear – my mate works for Glue. As soon as you said Shoreditch I thought of him. And then, they actually made these terrible ads. I’ve asked if he had anything to do with it, but I think it will be a case of every staff member being in the position to have to do their jobs, just as the comedian is.
The person at fault is whoever OK’d the whole shenanigan.
BRILLIANT. I was about to smash up my computer as I couldn’t take any more of it, until I read this brilliant piece and reassuring comments. Faith in human nature- restored. Thanks!
At shit as the jokes are, I think it might have worked if the comedian was inherently funny. See if he was a bit more Northern and just funny to look at, then if he told a bad joke you’d have to spend some time wondering if it really was bad or you’d just seen a piece of performance art. Now, John Shuttleworth may well take this idea and do a massive 50s shit on it, but there are plenty of other human comedy pieces who could have done it.
If the jokes aren’t funny then what do you fall back on? The person telling the joke. And if that person is an insufferable cockney fuckweasel? Well, make sure the joke is on him. But what if nobody in this jerk circle has even a modicum of self-awareness and all they can see is LDN? Well, it’s a shit set of idents for you, madame.
I was watching You have been watching on demand last night and I noticed these adverts have been taken off…
Really? They’re still on the broadcast version.
Yeah, just a 3 logo and a short voice saying ‘3 sponsors original comedy’. Maybe they’ve taken them off since Tuesday’s showing? This article made the b3ta newsletter the other day, that might have helped.
Is it just me or have these been replaced now? I was watching all the usual Channel 4 funny stuff last night, I think it was Charlie Brooker’s thing, and the idents were just white screen, 3 – sponsors of original comedy…no poor sod who sold his probably quite nice soul to a boring ad agency. It’s no loss like, but I wonder why?
It’s a mystery, Sarah. I can’t wait till next week, when WWM brings about the end of the Soviet Union.
Sarah – I just hope Spencer was paid in full. Hardly his fault.
Maybe he’ll get some material from it.
You hope he was paid in full? Fuck that! He deserves a hundred at the mast!
Blame the organ grinder!
From Spencer Brown’s Myspace Page
Here is me doing stand up on the paramount channel, in which I am wearing the same jumper as on my album cover. I did this on purpose.
I think that’s his best punchline to date.
I’m blaming the fucking monkey! And those twats at that twatty Glue twattery, the twats!
Does anyone have a link to these terrible adverts? They appear to have vanished from everywhere on earth.