Hateable ads

There’ve been a couple of outstandingly hateable ads on TV lately.

One’s for Land Rover.  It centres on a tired-looking middle aged chap, running a dry cleaner’s.  In come a youngish couple.  They plonk some beaten up clothes on his counter, and fuck off back to their Land Rover parked over the road.  I think the first time, their clothes are covered in snow or summing.  Then they’re back again, and this time their clobber’s soaked.  Then it’s all dusty and sandy.  The hilarious pay off comes when we see an exotic spider crawling out of their gear, unnoticed by said dry cleaner chap.  He doesn’t notice said venomous arachnid, being too busy, gazing in wonder at these two, legging back to their Land Rover over the street, marvelling at them, and wondering what adventure they’ll be getting up to next.

Now, what’s hateable about this?  Let’s first say what it’s not; not quite, anyway.  It’s not that within the terms of this mini-drama there’s a terribly unequal relationship, with this couple operating in a wholly superior circle of life to the lowly proprietor of a dry cleaner’s.  It’s not just that as a mini work of fiction it’s totally unsatisfying, given the absolute lack of interaction between the protagonists.  It’s not even that the entire concept of the ad is that buying a Land Rover will give you the ticket to exotic travel such as to elevate you into another class of being, superior to those rude mechanicals who people this country, who will be forced merely to gape and wonder at you.

No; bigger and more hateable by far than this, is the following – It’s not just the character within the ad who’s being excluded.  It’s us!  The mass of plebeian fuckers watching it – who ain’t in the demographic to be buying one of them Fuck Off Motors – i.e. all those who aren’t working in the City.  It’s beyond targeted marketing.  It’s an ad whose very narrative consists of selling the aspiration to be smarmily, unthinkingly superior over 99.9% of the people who are watching it at the same time as you.

This might sound as though it’s the kind of thing that’s been going on since TV adverts first started, but I beg to differ.  This is a product of the new wealth, that which doesn’t feel it has any connections with the rest of society, let alone obligations to it.

And it invites us to smirk at the prospect of this lowly cretin being bitten, possibly to death, by the poisonous spider this couple have magically brought back in their explorers’ gear from the desert.  That’s right – smirk at the 99%.  No; this is genuinely new.  It couldn’t have been made only a few years ago.

The other hateable ads I have in mind are made by HSBC.  Let’s just mention one of them.  It’s been around for a while now, but still gets aired.  It features a little girl selling lemonade outside her house.  A Chinese-looking couple pull up, and she tells them she takes Hong Kong dollars.  Before she knows it, she’s in all the guide books, and she’s fighting off coachloads of tourists from Hong Kong, and probably all parts.  The hilarious pay off in this case is the look on her dad’s face when he sees the first coachload of thirsty oriental coffin dodgers make for his daughter’s stall – uh oh, he needs a bigger punchbowl.

So what’s hateable about this one.  Of course, first of all, there’s the falsity of it.  Said little girl would not take Hong Kong dollars; and nor would this be the beginning of a lifetime’s commercial superstardom.  It’s just bollocks.

But what’s really hateable about it is this – what it’s selling.  The advert, I mean.  Because, it is a good question, right – whom is this advert for, and what is it selling?  Well, it’s not selling this little girl’s lemonade business.  And it’s not actually selling HSBC’s business, in terms of any financial help it could offer a business.  So what is it really selling, and whom is it really for?

I can only understand it as follows.  Said campaign is selling the ideology of free market capitalism.  It’s selling the idea that if you’re smart and entrepreneurial you can a) both perform a social service, and b) steal a march on everyone else, thereby enriching yourselves.

It’s just propaganda, in other words, for neoliberalism.  Pure and distilled.  Can you get any more hateable?  There’s a fine use of real people’s cash.

If I still had my Griffin ruler I’d snap it in half.

I’d go in and complain in my nearest HSBC, but they’ve shut it down.

The world’s local bank.