I know I've complained about payday loan companies already, but I have something else to complain about. It's not my fault: they just keep making stupid commercials. It's not like the old days where their ads' biggest crimes were trying to find slangy ways to make their rates sound less scary, as in the classic MoneyMart line, "It's like three bucks on a hun'." (tip of the hat to my one time collaborator Ralph Leibniz)
But now in addition to the companies I complained about earlier, there's a new entry to the market trying to get their name out there: Wonga. Apparently, this is a British company and they've decided to make their Britishness a key part of the brand. Okay, I guess people think of Britain as stable and reliable so that makes sense. Well, it makes sense if you haven't watched the news in five years. And how are they showing their Britishness? By having a bunch of old ladies (in puppet form) as their commercial spokespeople.
Believe it or not, I - a person of English background - can live with that. You want to think of the entire nation as elderly, fine. I guess they won all those Olympic medals this summer for nothing. I can even deal with the ad looking like a pale imitation of the classic Spitting Image.
But what really ticks me off about those ads is the fake British slang. It's obviously a North American's idea of how the British actually
talk, written by somebody who hasn't noticed that true British slang is
usually unintelligible to others. "He's hotter than a teapot?" People don't actually say that. Try "cor, he's well 'ard." At the very least, you could learn the rules of cockney rhyming slang and make something up: "He's hot" becomes, say, "He's Pol Pot."
And the other ad has her saying music makes her "want to crumpet?" That's even worse, since "crumpet" is actual slang, and doesn't mean what they seem to think it means. I'll leave you to look it up at urban dictionary if you really want to know what, but it's not your typical ad language.
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