advertising – Page 3 – don't confuse the narrator

debt and ruin

WordPress blogs use Akismet to deal with spam, and it seems to work quite well. Even so, I usually check all the comments, just to see that nothing has been caught up in the filter by mistake.

I am wary of any ‘hobby photographer’ who wants me to check out their ‘amateur artwork’ with a view to using it on DCTN, but I do love the badly written false praise:

It is rather interesting for me to read that blog. Thanks for it. I like such topics and anything that is connected to them. I would like to read a bit more soon.

Clearly spamming isn’t a lucrative enough activity to warrant paying decent copy writers.

The latest comment on the fine feathers three post amuses me as it’s from a debt consolidation company: “Eliminate debt working at home.”

I don’t think what ‘Melia – the Ruined Maid – was doing counted as ‘working from home’, but she certainly seemed to have found a way to escape the poverty trap.

tact in advertising

Metro UK frontpage March 14th: Japanese earthquake news and Pokémon advert

Occasional unfortunate juxtapositions of headlines or adverts and news stories can’t be avoided, particularly online when there may be no one person in charge of a page design and layout.

Even so, I was shocked to see the front page of today’s UK Metro digital edition.

There’s a huge, attention-grabbing photo of devastation caused by the earthquake in Japan, and right below it an advert for Pokémon Everywhere which claims that “over 150 new pokémon have arrived in the UK”.
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accuracy in advertising

I understand that there are people who have little grasp of the grammar, syntax and spelling of their own language, but should they really be allowed to work in jobs that require them to write for the public?

Texts published on web pages are often faulty – many are written by badly paid hack writers with a deadline to meet – but it’s fairly simple to go back and correct them.

Slogans and texts for major advertising campaigns, on the other hand, are worked on by teams of professionals and they pass through the hands of many people before being approved. And yet we get things like this:

Advertising slogan: "It's time oil companies get behind the development of renewable energy"

of maths and chocolates

This labelling on a box of ‘chocolates and toffees’ makes me want to reach for a pen and paper and start drawing Venn diagrams:

political polemic

I know I try and keep away from politics on the blog, but because of the Catalán elections, there have been a couple of Spanish stories in the news this week and they are really too good to ignore. The first, reported by the BBC under the headline Spain outrage over migrant bombing game centres on a video game – Rescate (Rescue) – that the Partido Popular launched a few days on their website.

I haven’t played the game, which seems to be no longer available on the website, but have read a few of the reports in both Spanish and UK national press. The tag line for the game appears to be:

Ayuda a Alicia y a Pepe, su gaviota, a rescatar a Cataluña de la crisis

and it features Alicia Sánchez-Camacho (President of the PP in Catalonia) as Alicia Croft, perched on a great white seagull shooting at illegal immigrants and symbols of Catalán nationalism.
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