Some of the offenders, the aforementioned Go Compare and Comparethemarket.com (granted I still have a soft spot for Alexander the meerkat, probably due to the voice actor being the legendary Michael from I'm Alan Partridge - and a meerkat) are at least obvious what they are advertising. It's still got the nuisance value but they at least sit there and make it obvious. Far worse though are sitting through adverts which don't actually seem to be that good at what they're doing.
Now let's look at the latest Confused.com advert shall we? We have some bint singing how she needs somebody to love and two random people from loads who join together and talking about two million people... When the blue Hell did they turn into a dating website? When they first started advertising it was obvious, show hopeless elderly person being shown how to use the internet and how easy the web site is. So why on Earth did they go with some cryptic thing which leads to any confusion. Rule number 1 of performance and PR, always assume that people have no idea who/what you are. Incidentally the blonde must have severe back trouble with bristols like that!
For a long time there have been a whole host of adverts along this line, generally they fit into three categories. Car adverts, men's deodorant (clearly we can't handle the scientific and hilariously small focus groups used for women's stuff!) and alcoholic beverages are the ones worst for this. Please, if you're going to wind us up at least could you do us the pleasure of making it obvious what you're trying to sell us!
