Andy's Blog

At one time in my life I was reasonably plugged in on the subject of upcoming movies, but that kind of fell by the wayside for one reason or another. For a while now my main source of movie news has been the adverts on the side of buses. So here is what I know about The Hundred Foot Journey: The bus advert did not have either tagline. Helen Mirren is in it She has staff, but they are both chefs, so maybe there is a restaurant involved The staff maybe make out? Typeface and static layout suggest romantic comedy Helen Mirren is more important than this I guess somebody travels a hundred feet over the course of the movie, probably right near the end because something is preventing them from walking from one place to the other, maybe pride? And the thing they find there is ... Love? None of that is important, we have HELEN MIRREN in our movie, shut up Apparently the full poster has more people on it, and some landmarks that suggest a journey between Paris and India, but ...

It's fairly obvious that "Pick" - formerly PickTV - is the Sky-run freeview channel; Wikipedia confirms my suspicion that it is simply a rebranded Sky 3. I wonder why they changed the name? I guess either "Sky 3" tested poorly - people thought it was third-class or third-rate or just generally offcuts - or they wanted to trick people into watching what they thought was an independent channel so they could bombard them with adverts for other fine Sky products at a discount rate. And wow, what does it say about the broadcasting industry that it is cheaper to buy your own channel than it is to buy advertising space on somebody else's? Anyway, I only mention this because they've recently been pushing this thing called "Moonfleet". I don't know anything else about the show. I believe it involves boats. An advert in my news feed suggests it contains Ray Winstone. Whatever. The important thing is it's called Moonfleet. Moooooonfleeet. ...

This announcement  kind of highlights a lot of what is wrong inside the heads of the people behind Facebook. They're going to start autoplaying video adverts, initially without sound (as they apparently have been with user videos, though I haven't seen any). The idea is that the brightly-coloured movement will attract your eye, and after a moment of staring at it you'll naturally want to click to activate sound. Because of course, the best way to watch a video is always mute for the first twenty seconds. But as you read this press release, you realise it's not a new mechanism for getting adverts in front of your eyeballs so Facebook employees can pay their bills. It's "a New Way for Marketers to Tell Stories", a "richer storytelling format for advertisers".  It's not just for the benefit of marketers, it's "for people who will discover more great content". And after the video is over, they want to make it "easy to dis...

So Tesco are doing this thing where they are advertising their tablet based on what you can do with it. This makes sense for pretty much any other product, but not so much with an Android tablet. All the things they are advertising are available to pretty much anyone running Android (except Kindle Fire owners)! Video conferencing, watching movies? Talking sodding Tom ? They should be advertising things that are unique to the Hudl. Like, maybe, explaining how it's as fast and powerful as a more expensive one? Or that you can use Clubcard Boost to halve the price? But no, the man in the street doesn't get the distinction between software and hardware, so we can just show some pretty moving pictures and assure you that this [PRODUCT] is making people's lives better. Honestly, it's like advertising cars by just showing them driving around, without explaining why this one car is better than any other car that you might ... ... ... huh.

This advert is running in Comixology right now: Any sane person would interpret this to mean "Superman Unchained #1 and 200 other comics are all on sale for 99¢." At first glance you might not realise other comics are involved, because that text is de-emphasised. What the advert is trying to very strongly imply, to get you to tap on that box without reading it properly, is that Superman Unchained #1 is only 99 cents. It's not. It's like $5. What the advert is actually saying is that Superman Unlimited #1 is now available to buy , and in unrelated news 200 issues of various Superman comics are only 99¢. To be clear, I don't feel cheated or decieved - I noticed the specific wording and figured something was up before tapping through - but I am disappointed by the clear attempt to deceive. Something that is by now so thoroughly ingrained into advertising culture that I'm sure whoever laid this out didn't give it a second thought. This wasn...

"Snickers" (still often referred to in my house as "Marathon", no matter how long ago they rebranded) are currently running a competitive promotion. They're producing two variants, named "More Nuts" and "More Caramel"; you can probably take an educated guess at the difference between them. It's probably more apparent from the labels than it is from the contents, both of which taste like ... Well, like a Snickers bar. The "More Caramel" variant is packaged in an easily-identified tan wrapper. "More Nuts", on the other hand, is either the standard Snickers brown or so close as to be indistinguishable. Certainly shop staff appear unable to tell the difference as several times now I've seen them mixed in with the standard bars. At first I had assumed both variants differed from the standard bar. However I'm no longer certain this is the case. It's possible the wrapper colouring is intended to indicate that ...

This billboard is positioned on a main road, though it's also fairly busy for pedestrians, being just down the road from a major commute train station.  So I get that it's not such a massive flaw that the text is too small to read while driving quickly past in a car.  (Also, it's Deansgate, down which nothing moves faster than a particularly lethargic sloth.) It's just a shame they didn't know about this roadsign, which completely obscures the text from about 50% of viewing angles.  It's the only text on the board - I don't even know what it's saying, something about how their carry-on limits let you take huge jumpers on holiday - and it's got this honking great thing in the way of anyone actually engaging with it. And even if anyone does have their eye drawn by the bold striking visual, the logo is small and inoffensive up there in the opposite corner where nobody's going to be looking. Overall it's not a very good advert for anythin...

"It's classic.  It's bold.  It's Johnnie Walker.  And you ordered it." What?  No I didn't.  Are you trying to trick me? What is this advert trying to say?  Is it trying to compliment me on my excellent taste, because surely only people with fine reasoning skills would select such a "bold" and "classic" beverage?  Perhaps it is suggesting that, since I have already bought it - apparently by accident - I may as well bite the bullet and try it. It's odd, because without that fanciful last line it would be a fairly standard positive advertising slogan.  With it, the quote seems bizarrely lacking in context, as though it is trying to evoke some sort of scene in which these lines are spoken.  I am genuinely struggling to conjure one. Possibly it is positing a scenario whereby an attractive waitress is approving of my selection and will now come to bed with me. The actress featured is Christina Hendricks, who I had to look up bef...

This is an ad for Levi's jeans. They claim to be "tailored for the young and hungry". What does this mean? Are these clothes for the homeless? For poor people? Is it some comment on society's preference for the slim, or how "skinny" - a word once used exclusively to mean underweight rather than attractively slim - has somehow come to be a compliment? Do I want to look like I am hungry? I find that I do not. EDIT: Okay, so uploading photos via the mobile app sucks.  Fixed!