Advert humour

I've wondered what happens to comedy writers who fail to make an impact on TV because they're so awful at what they do. I reckon they try their hand at writing "funny" adverts. Sadly a lot of adverts these days end up being "funny", which is more than I can personally take. Too many adverts now involve a daft soap opera set up or whimsical characters that agitate you with their annoying voices or musical numbers.

The most egregious example of this advert "humour" would be the Go-Compare adverts. A lot has already been said about these, and whenever a list of the most annoying UK adverts in recent times is compiled, it invariably tops that list. Someone must have thought some guy singing opera about car insurance with a stupid moustache on was absolutely hilarious. Similarly, that CGI meerkat with a russian accent also tries to invoke some kind of humour. "Hahahah it's funny, cause he's Russian, even though meerkats aren't from Russia! It's also funny cause comparethemeerkat.com sounds really like comparethemarket.com, simples!" The other one I hate is that Ocean Finance one, where the guy is bald and dumb, and that's funny apparently. If the Simpsons are struggling to make that concept funny anymore, then what in the hell chance does Ocean Finance have of doing it.

The real problem I have with them is that they start to get caught up in their own hype. They take the original advert with its questionable but not yet outright insufferable attempt at humour, and then turn it up to eleven. Let's go back to Go-Compare. The first advert involved some boring City types having lunch while discussing insurance, before Luciano Pavarotten comes blazing in singing about the virtues of using Go-Compare. He reappeared in a suburban estate for the next advert doing pretty much the same thing. But it wasn't long before he was appearing in Egypt, space, silent movies, desert islands, the 18th Century and now in Cinderella land, all the while the theme tune was becoming even more offensively bad. "Hey guys, I bet we can make this character even more funny if we stick him in implausible situations and update the song with Egyptiany verses!" "Yeah Chuck that sounds awesome man lets do it!" I have no idea why I made those executives sound American. Americans don't piss arse about as much as us in their adverts I don't think.

The Meerkats are the worst for getting into their own hype. That bastard now has a back story stretching back to the Crimean War, and there's a whole town of russian meerkats now. Honestly, I don't get what the point of doing the adverts that way is. I forget they're even about insurance anymore, because of the riveting tales about how the town is dying over this simple name confusion, or how his great grandfather Vitaly didn't fight for meerkats to be confused with markets or some shit like that. They now even have stuffed toys and expensive ornaments made in the likeness of these creatures. I would know, I hate to sell them when I was working the summer before last. Thankfully, we realised that people were well and truly sick of them by 2011, so they did not reappear by the time I hade returned to work.

I only just noticed while writing this that it's always insurance or finance adverts that are guilty of these embarrassing attempts at being exciting or humorous. My guess is that because they're not selling a material product like an mp3 player to grab our attention with they have to resort to putting on some kind of ridiculous pantomime to get their point across. The adverts these days make the old confused.com adverts look informative and direct. I'm sure these adverts could be try to be catchy by using some decent music and simple visuals, but the hacks in the writer's chair still reckon humour is the ultimate form of expression. Which it would perhaps be if they were any fucking good at it.