Sold? Low Low Cheese’s Extreme Mouse Trap

Food and mice? Gasp.

Fallon has launched its first campaign for the Kerry Foods-owned cheese brand Low Low. The commercial features a squealing white rodent boldly bypassing a minefield of traps. Like a little furry Indiana Jones, the mouse spirals through the air in matrix fashion, all for the plate of advertised cheese-on-toast.

This is not a live animal we are talking about. Thanks to CGI, the pest is as precious as Mickey Mouse, except that he does not speak or sing and dance. The little guy merely squeaks. And that is all it takes for us to become enraptured by his quest.

As for what he is after–”the ultimate cheese,” we forget the product the moment our dear protagonist leaps into the picture. The voice-over for “cheese made from semi-skinned milk with a third less fat than cheddar” is muted by a sensational rodent. But just because I secretly wanted the little guy to get snapped by a trap in the end does not mean I did not thoroughly enjoy Fallon’s action-packed advert.


Danielle Jacoby

Sold?: Emmerdale – False Advertising On The Farm

In a list of ironic TV names, Charity Dingle would have to rank very close to the top.

This woman has spent more time gold-digging than Heather Mills, and would struggle to tell the difference between a copy of the Big Issue and the Emmerdale Examiner.

She isn’t the most unsuitably named person on television though, that honour has to go to her sister – Chastity.

But that’s quite enough of the Dingle family’s penchant for ridiculous titles. Read More…

Sold?: Incoming Message From The Big Cadbury Head

We like our chocolate to come with a lesson, so we were delighted to see the new Cadbury ad that taught us that chocolate is good, but paying Ghanaian farmers low wages is bad.

If you were paying attention to the ad breaks in last week’s X Factor then you will have seen it and there’s not a gorilla or a wobbly eyebrow in sight and especially no trucks running riot in an airport car park.

Here’s the breakdown: somewhere in Ghana, a giant head with cocoa beans on top floats around getting the locals excited. Incidentally, the head totally reminds us of the Uka Uka mask from the Crash Bandicoot games. Anyone?

One bean from the floating head flies off and explodes into fireworks from which comes Ghanaian singing sensation Tinny with the hit song Zingolo.

Everybody dances around for a bit and then an ultra happy guy smiles at the end.

Yes we know; it’s not as fun or as kooky as Cadbury’s previous ads because this one actually has a point. Cadbury are celebrating their suppliers in Ghana and promoting Fair Trade chocolate. Even if the ad doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, we give props to Cadbury for giving it a go.

But it’s got some fun moments in there too: dancers wriggling across the floor and doing break dancing 48 seconds in is pretty impressive.

It’s also something that the OTB team were convinced that they could also do after a few too many. Two sprained ankles and several bumped heads later, we realised we better leave it to Ghanaian guys in the ad.

Kudos to Cadbury for supporting their workers. Cadbury, we salute you.

Emily Moulder

Sold?: Mystery Surrounds Lesbian IKEA Yogurt Incident

At OTB we are usually the last people to complain about two hot ladies engaging in some yogurt scoffing with the possibility of future lesbianism, but we felt we had to raise some questions after seeing this advert.

The most pertinent of them being: What the hell does it mean?

My first assumption was that the Nordic decor giant had at last given up making mountains of cash from worthless MDF and switched their resources to the production of soft-porn.

Unfortunately and as per normal, I was mistaken. Maybe the rest of you in viewer-town have worked it out, if so forgive us for being slower than the delivery of a Swedish three piece suite, but we are unaccustomed to adverts that encourage us to think – after all that’s what the History Channel is for.

Does this mean that all women who like IKEA will eventually resort to a life of dairy-fuelled lady love?

Is it designed with the aim of encouraging men to fill their apartments with funky yet affordable furniture in a desperate bid to score a steamy threesome?

Did they see Fight Club? Surely they realise that any male who over-indulges in yin-yang coffee tables will eventually create an alternate personality to blow it all up.

After much deliberation, our best guess was that this teaser is suggesting the blonde woman has decided to completely deck an apartment (which the poor bloke probably mostly paid for) in cut-price IKEA paraphernalia, and will soon be showing him – and his Lara Croft posters – the door.

Regardless, if this man doesn’t do something, quickly his woman will be munching carpet rather than yogurt – and it won’t be one designed by IKEA.


Sean Marland

Sold?: Go Complaints

What happened to adverts being about the actual product they’re trying to sell? Whatever happened to the Ronseal way of thinking? We recently found that movie titles had also gone the same way and we’re sick of it.

Take a look and see how much this advert doesn’t have to do with car insurance.

Two coffee sipping blokes awkwardly lean on a coffee table in one of those coffee shops that are too hip for their own good. You know the ones, you check your reflection in their shiny windows before skulking off to Starbucks.

They try and act like they were just finishing off a conversation about car insurance by saying the barely convincing line of, ‘Car insurance, eh?’

‘What can you do?’ asks the cardigan clad coffee drinker. Indeed, what can you do?

And in place of a cute little Eastern European meerkat to telling us what to do, Go Compare opted for an opera singer who ruins the morning of everyone sitting there. He incites everyone to stop what they’re doing and to sing with him while he twiddles his glued on moustache.

Fatty McDancer struts around the shop while our confused insurance-less men stand around looking like bemused monkeys. We do give the tubby tenor kudos for getting the word spondulicks into the lyrics though.

Then with one final mighty bellow the singer shakes the monkeys’ table prompting them to ponder how much it cost Go Compare to hire the singer.

Probably more than they’re going to make from this advert.

Our clever monkeys conclude that the singer’s only a tenor and they infer that he only cost a tenner. Oh the hilarity. Honestly, our sides…


Emily Moulder

Sold?: Touch Of Grey Is Not The New Black

What should you do when a batch of faulty produce comes off the production line? Flog it anyway – a person may be clever, but everyone knows that people are stupid.

And believe us folks, there can be no stupider group people than those desperately clinging to their youth with all the strength their arthritis-addled fingers can muster. Just look at what happened to Michael Jackson…

When Just For Men realised that someone had cooked up a faulty mix of their secret recipe, they feverishly began thinking of ways to market this mishap.

After offering it to Tim Westwood as make-up, the marketing department decided to move in a far less imaginative direction.

And this is what they came up with. Ironically, it’s almost enough to turn any advertising exec’s hair grey.

For many years Just For Men have mercilessly harvested the grey pound, turning respectable middle-aged blokes into idiots who quite obviously dye their hair, but they may have hit a new low with this advert.

After their profits took a pounding earlier this year when Tom Jones finally accepted his greyness, the JFM bosses could be forgiven for a shot in the dark, but this tactic will surely be unable to fill that chasm-like shortfall.

I just felt sorry for the poor bloke on the left who started the ad with brown hair and ended up looking like he had aged 20 years and been attacked with a felt-tip.


Sean Marland

Check out OTB’s other favourite commercial aberrations..

Sold?: Sex And The City Finally Condemned To The Toilet

As a man who has been forced to sit through more than his fair share of Sex and the City, I was truly astounded when I saw this advert.

Not since Steve McClaren’s tenure as England manager has the nation seen something that was already exceptionally terrible, be so tangibly ruined further.

The creators obviously believed that an idea as mental as this one couldn’t possibly fail. Unfortunately, only the Die Hard universe operates that way, and this piece of s**t just leaves us well and truly jaw-dropped.

Woman A enters and immediately gives a thorough account of her painful visit to the toilet, luckily woman B has got some tablets in her bag which will solve the problem. In a pathetic attempt to add humour to this horrendous conversation, woman C informs us that she has just split up with her boyfriend.

Frankly, I can’t imagine he was that heart-broken.

So then girls, which of these morons do you identify with? The one who constantly chats about poo, the one who likes to give out advice on poo, or the one who can’t maintain a relationship?

For the first time in the history of casting four people were probably fighting over the one non-speaking role, sadly three of them lost and their fledgling careers will be forever soiled.

Of course this dialogue all takes place to the tune of a chronic version of the SATC jingle.

Meanwhile across town, as an advertising manager calls his team in for a very urgent meeting, he silently curses the fact that a revolver can only be fired six times before it needs to be reloaded…


Sean Marland

For more advertising genius dealing with bodily functions, check out our assault on the Glade child who loves Paul’s toilet. Go to our regular Sold? column for a steady stream of advert pokery.

Sold?: Poos House? Paul’s House!

What a challenge the campaign for air fresheners faces. After having to rely on convincing the consumer that they stink and that they can’t be bothered to open their windows, they go on to employ subtle techniques, showing us how colourful and alluring our homes would be if we had a few canisters of fragranced chemicals knocking about Read More

Sold?: Shove Your Tampax Pearls Where The Sun Don’t…

Since the iconic “Wooooow! Bodyform! Bodyform for yooooooou!”, the bar for advertising female sanitary products with impact has been set pretty high.

Picture the scene: you’re a bright young thing modelling on your photo shoot in your conspicuously white dress sitting on your conspicuously white cushions when, uh-oh, Auntie Flo comes to town!

Mother Nature, a character Chanel-suited with a sprig of ivy in her hair (who if she looks familiar it’s because she’s Malcolm in the Middle’s teacher), has come to ruin everything.

Ladies’ private bits being a bit of a sensitive subject, metaphor often comes into its own in these adverts of this nature, some of the results of which have been endearing and disturbing in equal measure (remember the bumper cars?)

Continuing the evolution of the innocuous representation of ladies’ bodily fluids, Mother Nature comes bearing the “monthly gift”, a pressie all wrapped up in a bow which is, in a ground-breaking turn, red in colour.

“I think you better stop shooting right now!” she bellows. Because as every woman knows, it is absolutely impossible to function after you’ve come on. Don’t even think continuing to work young lady, go home to bed for 3-5 days to binge on chocolate and write in your journal.

“Mother Nature, not now” says our bright young thing. She’s got Tampax Pearl on her side. She’s outsmarted Mother Nature.

Erm, hang on, this doesn’t make any sense. What? Outsmart Mother Nature? With a tampon? Surely this is false advertising. Not convinced a cylinder of cotton on a string can fend off your monthly cycle.

Mother Nature is here whether we like it or not, so take your tampons and shove ‘em.

Leonie Mercedes

Sold?: Evian’s Roller-Psychos

Breakdancing, roller skating CGI babies. That’s why I look to adverts for realism.

Evian’s latest attempt to connect with the viewer and hone in on the marketing equivalent of a roofie (numbs you into submission, constantly in demand etc) shows a bunch of roller skating toddlers jiving and leaping at chain fences in their exuberance.

The babies dancing around on roller skates are intensely creepy. Part of the ad when the babies jump and hang on to a metal link fence looks like it’s from a horror movie, some sort of Children of the Corn prequel.  Babies of the water?

Chances are this ad was made by some die hard Ally McBeal fan that couldn’t quite let go of the dancing baby scene. But how to update it?

‘Ally McBeal hasn’t been on TV for years. What do people like these days?’

‘Hip hop.  The kids like hip hop.’

‘But are the kids going to be the main buyers of Evian?’

‘Like it matters.  It’s a dancing baby, who wont love that?’

Answer: anyone who’s seen it.

The tenuous link the ads trying to make between babies and vitality is pointless because anyone who’s ever been around knows that they’re not full of vitality. They’re full of poop.

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