No more Halifax ads - a nation rejoices
Posted by Johan on 7 August 2008 - 5:27pm.
The Halifax have apparently decided to end their ad campaign featuring Howard and hundreds of their staff butchering the songs of Aretha Franklin, The Beach Boys, and many more which I have probably mentally blocked out to ease the pain.
Praise the Lord. They were easily the most annoying adverts I can recall, and these great songs really did not deserve this treatment.
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When we have "hate my job" moments...
...just think about Howard going back to his branch, telling newly weds that no they cannot have a mortgage without saving £35k deposit.... And telling students that their overdraft has been exceeded and they are charging £50 for telling them.... And queues of pensioners not understanding what he's telling them about their savings book....
"I was someone, I was a STAR, I was on The Office..."
I don't mind Howard...
So much as the lady caterwauling her way through Think.
Is it me, or is she really, really flat? I assume she must have passed some sort of audition, but Jeez...
Aretha who?
I think she's ill-advisedly trying to do that technique of flattening the ends of lines. Aretha did it when appropriate, when it felt right; this halibut in a suit does it every line.
Well there you go...
I assumed it was because she was tone deaf. Turns out it was 'technique'.
Ah, the old Client Remix strikes again
The track is recorded and mixed to the creative team's satisfaction. It's presented to the client. The client says, "Hmm. Very nice, yes. But you can't hear the words very well, can you?" The creative team try to persuade the client that most punters' TV speakers are quite tinny, so it'll sound fine once broadcast. "The speakers in the conference room here are actually too good. That's why you can't hear it properly." The client, who's made a couple of dark comments recently suggesting that he may be tempted to take his millions elsewhere unless the agency bucks up and buckles under, is having none of it. The agency suits, as is their time-honoured role, then panic. They insist it must be be remixed with the vocals "as loud as poss, please", in all their naked unglory.
And thus are crap adverts made.
Thank f**k for that...
I loathe those ads with every fibre of my being. They make me want to do unreasonable things to my TV. Oh please let this be true... I don't have to see that grinning potato head anymore...
Another 10 years
must pass before I will consider a Halifax product.
Leave it to the experts
Nationwide 2003
Cracking tune,
but I found the video a little slow-moving. I particularly liked the use of the John Cage sample towards the end. (2:00 onwards.)
Yeah sorry
it was a quick post and could not find decent vid quick enough
Just pleased
to hear the music. (And glad to see someone else is up!)
Some beer...
...is being advertised at the moment. It's an expensive German one, so the ad begins in black and white and proceeds like this until the beer is shown in colour, natch, at the end.
What troubles me are the opening shots of some tatooed, mohicanned punks which are then captioned, "the punks who turned their backs on pop culture".
But...
Let's not forget...
the ads where some 'creative' cockend has decided to shave a few quid off the already bloated budget by getting some soulless musicians to copy the song they want, with the odd note changed here and there. Air's 'Le Femme d'Argent' has been pilfered in this way many, many times. A friend of mine used to work in a studio that specialised in these 'replica' recordings. Good on him, he left after a week, not being able to live with himself.
There's also a current Fosters ad featuring the Violent Femmes' 'Blister in the Sun' - with all the slightly outré bits changed, eg 'I'm high as a kite' is now 'I fly like a kite'.
If the Violent Femmes rerecorded it to turn a shilling, shame on them.
If a soundalike band did it, double shame on them.
And, Fosters people, 'Blister in the Sun' is still all about wanking.
Don't shoot the pianist
It's not usually a creative decision at all, or a matter of just "a few quid". Getting the publishing rights for a song (for the melody and lyrics) usually costs a tiny fraction of the mechanical rights (for a specific artist's recording). Time is another constraint to factor in, often making it necessary to rearrange songs to fit into 30 seconds without cutting off the chorus in full stride.
What I hate
is when they go to the hook too soon. destroying the structure of the song. It happens all the time in ads. I know why they do it (yep, time constraints, Archie), but it bugs the hell out of me to hear an old favourite thus distorted. (And yes, I'm fully aware of how anal this sounds....)
Yes, I hate that too
But the worst are the lyrics changed to shoehorn in the product - the "Once, twice, three times a Ladyshave" ones.
Actually,
I think that particular example might be an improvement on the original...
Ex-Lax
by Frankie Goes To Hollywood?
I used to twitch...
...whenever I heard the AA ad, using "You've Got a Friend" and they'd lopped a whole beat off each bar. Horrible, horrible, horrible.
That's fair enough
(sort of), my main gripe is the folks too cheap to pay publishing for a song at all, and commission a soundalike with altered chords. Another example is the rash of 'Teen Spirit' flavoured music in the mid 90s, usually for spot cream or hair gel, though never Teen Spirit deodrant. There's another current ad that's curiously similar to 'Oo La La' by the Faces, but isn't. Some adman obviously saw 'Rushmore' recently.
Rushmore
At least they're watching one of the greatest movies ever made.
Howard
I heard a rumour the other day that Howard always demanded a massage when he was on the set of the Halifax ads...and that he is now in the pay of Halifax's marketing department, as opposed to the branch he used to work in as too many people were coming into the branch to abuse him...God I hope that's true...
Nickelback - why?!?!
On the subject of adverts that make you want to bash your head through a wall, I cannot understand why Nickelback are allowing DFS to use Rock Star for their latest campaign.
Surely they can't need the money? They've just had a No 1 single, and their profile in the UK is probably higher than it's been for years. So why sully their name for this load of over-expensive tat?
"I wanna be a rock star by, erm, buying a nice comfy sofa..." It's hardly molesting a coachload of groupies or drinking your own bodyweight in absinthe, is it?
What goes around...
Nothing is totally discarded in the talent and originality-free vacuum that is adland - witness Norwich Union, sorry, Aviva, and their current 'Happy's back' adverts, a subliminal link to those nauseating past 'Quote me happy' efforts featuring the likes of the appalling Richard Blackwood.
Reviving an advert/brand usually gives you spin-off publicity - see Mars and the killing-off of 'Work, rest and play' and its recent near-revival.
So, give it a couple of years and expect to see Howard and maybe Carol Vorderman - once the loan ad market dries up and she really needs the money and publicity - duetting on something like Multiplication.
Still, for now, it just leaves the DFS/Nickelback colloboration to be axed...
Immeasurable
Mars changed their slogan to "Pleasure you can't measure", simultaneously shortening the length of their chocolate bars. Pleasure they'd rather we didn't measure, then.
Halifax ads and others
Perhaps the credit crunch has done for the Halifax ads - they must have cost an absolute fortune to make but they've definitely had their day.
As for Norwich Union, I work in a city where they are a major employer and their staff who are faced with redundancy and/or re-applying for their own jobs are not too happy with the 'happy's back' campaign and who can blame them !
Ads where the words were changed. Heard as a youngster in the '70s, but I always struggle now with Da Doo Ron Ron, which was once used in a Persil ad that went something along the lines of 'use persil automatic and you wash things white, you do wash clean and you do wash white....yeah ! you wash things white...etc'.
Orrible Halifax
Hate everything about the Halifax after ten years of dealing with them. So glad those adverts have finished, I had to turn off the TV when they came on or switch channels. ARGGGGGGGGH!!.