Audience participation

Revels are inviting us to vote out our least favourite at Revels Eviction. (Takes a while but it's worth it!)

While Walkers want us to nominate a new flavour in return for £50,000 at Do Us A Flavour.

In the words of Wolfie Smith, "Power to the People!"

Does the ASA have any teeth?

Read these FAQs from their website and decide for yourself.

Q6. What if I notice that a misleading advertisement is repeated after action by the ASA?

You should bring this to the attention of the ASA who will take further action. The system overseen by the ASA is self-regulatory and relies on a responsible approach by advertisers. If an advertiser chooses to ignore an ASA ruling, the ASA can call on the industry to take action against the advertiser by, for example, alerting publishers that the advertisements should not be accepted or by applying other sanctions.

Q7. What if further action by the ASA doesn't work?

In the end, if self-regulation proves ineffective, the ASA can refer the case to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for investigation under the Control of Misleading Advertisements Regulations. If the OFT agrees that an advertisement is misleading it can apply to the courts for an injunction to prevent publication of the advertisement. If the advertisement is repeated again, it would be treated as contempt of court and the advertiser could be fined. Although the OFT can take action in response to direct complaints from the public it will normally only act after the complaint has been investigated by the ASA.

Air guitar

Hello. My name is Jackie and I like Nickelback*.

So I can't let another day go by without commenting on the DFS Rockstar ad.

I don't like the awful dancing. Even it it is deliberately bad.

I don't like the ads, which seem to have any old music clunked on just so people can dance around their sofas.

Ergo, I don't like DFS.

But I still like Nickelback. Sorry!

*Yeah, I'm a rock chick!

[Edit: These ads were banned for making the sofas appear larger than they really are.]

Jumping on the Beijing Bandwagon

Advertisers around the world seem to have sat down and said: "Let's do something topical around the Olympics."

I'd award a gold to SpecSavers: Short-sighted long-jumper ends up in sandpit.

But I'd disqualify Scottish Widows: Muscular athletes morph into Little Black Riding Hood.

I blame Budweiser commercials

Specifically this one commercial about a man being reincarnated as a puppy. He's in heaven because he's being kissed and fondled by a gorgeous model. But then the model hands the puppy over to her hideously portrayed grandma, and the puppy wants to kill himself.

What is the point of this misogyny? What the hell is the matter with this society that it feels compelled to ridicule any woman past the age where she is deemed sexually attractive and therefore useful to men? No wonder middle-aged women are gong bonkers: first they're zapped by total hormone chaos that gives them hot flashes and black depressions, and then society tells them that if they're not invisible, they're ridiculous.

When I get older I'm moving to Europe, where old women are not only respected but are encouraged to become as goofy as they want.

From 'Get Your Tongue Out Of My Mouth, I'm Kissing You Goodbye' by Cynthia Heimel

Collectables

I notice that Becks beer are doing their limited art labels again.

Read what the V&A have to say about it.

It's like Harry Potter books that have two covers, one for adults, one for children...

Or like Innocent drinks in Winter with their woolly hats, each individually knitted by customers...

What an inspired way to get people to buy more stuff!

Who'd have thought

Coca Cola would ever be advertised as a healthy drink?

The new ad talks about its 'no added preservatives, no artificial flavours'.

No mention of the added sugar then.

Ants in your pants?

Worse.

While Blogger was down, I'm sure I saw an Always ad with little blue dodgem cars* racing around on a panty liner.

I can't find it online anywhere. I can't believe it was real. Was it just a bad dream?

* In my day they were called bumper cars but that was before Health & Safety

Arguably the most expensive ad ever made

The opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics.

Bye bye, Howard Brown

According to today's Metro, the singer has been dropped from future Halifax ads because his cheeky chappy persona doesn't suit the current economic climate.

Does that mean we're in for a commercial crunch as well as a credit crunch?

A spammer, moi?

You might have noticed it's been a bit quiet on the Bad Ads blog for the last few days. That's because Blogger had a bug that decided lots of us innocent bloggers were spammers, and temporarily shut us down.

Anyway, it's all fixed now, and we're all back to business as usual.