Nomination: Irritating ad of the year 2008

Pizza / Pasta Hut and Oatibix: Both effectively the same ad, both sound like they've been written by the marketing director's 12-year old son. Lindsey makes a interesting point about irritating ads in other media. Press and poster ads you can just blank out in a nanosecond, so it's hard for them to be irritating. I get most irritated when ads waste my time, or spoil my enjoyment of something. 95% of radio ads are utterly dreadful, and they get in the way of listening to music, which is irritating. Online ads can be irritating if they pop up in the middle of your screen, but otherwise they are simply 'ignorable'.

 Anything the Halifax have ever done. And anything else that takes a 'popular' song and murders the lyrics in a vaguely 'humourous' way. And that Edith Piaf one. Tchaa!

Why has nobody mentioned that awful pain-killer ad where the girl is apparently being chased by secret agents, apparently finds a 'magical way to make her lift to the roof go faster than theirs, and then magically finds a rope and harness and then magically abseils down thew building although you don't actually see her do it. If I was the director I'd just have the two heavies magically shoot the smug ***.That'd give her pain-killers!

 

 

Bloody awful, gives me a headache just watching it.

Although Edith Piaf doesn't do Halifax ads (maybe she did go to specsavers) she'd be better than any of the freaks bombarded on us in this totally useless campaign. I mean, do they actually pay people to come up with this rubbish?

I think that's insulting to 12 year olds.

'Tax doesn't have to be taxing'

But it is taxing becasue it's a tax. Taxes are taxing. They're tax! 

 It's the slef assessment form that doesn't have to be taxing...but still is.

I quite like them!

Has to be the Gorilla/Trucks cut-and-shut job. Awful.

Confused.com seem to have learned to stop shouting but they're still irritating. Injurylawyers is definitely up there too.

Polaris world - great comedy value for the first 3 / 4 times at the presenter's inability to speak english, sounding like a B-movie Spanish villain,and trousers-under-chin fashion. It then became deeply offensive after the 5678567856785678568rd time

 I like the trucks but hate the gorilla too.  No point to it :)

 Hi Stephen,

 I agree, Confused.com is just so irritating.  Why do they do it????

Anything with 'pentapeptides' involved, Olay is an example.

HSBC: Tired, at odds with the reality of the products and services. Convoluted and dismissive of the domestic market. Marks & Spencer: overblown and overcooked. And anything Morrisons have ever done.

What about those shocking Bradford and Bingley ads with that infuriating women? Sleep easy?! Not only were they massively inappropriate (erm, this company has failed and is being bailed out, where is the security in that?) but I hate being spoken to as if I'm a three-year-old girl. Now go away.

 well, you must have been happy when they failed as a business ;)