Comments on: When An Advert Annoys You by Adam Bowie

By: Marty from new yawk

Marty from new yawk — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:55:26 +0000

Howyadoin Nick? Thank you for identifying yourself for the masses (or at least me). Anyways, the adverts that annoy me the most are the one’s from the tax authority.
As I’m a US person, those assholes can’t touch me.

Adverts with a “big brother is watching you mentality” are just plain stupid. They are laughable and sound like a parody of a real advert. Who writes these moronic adverts? “We know if you are unjustly getting benefits.” Well, if you really know about it just stop it and don’t do an advert about it. To put it bluntly, these adverts are just bullshit!

Another annoying one was the “condom” one which described graphically what happens if you don’t use a condom. This ran so often, I could almost repeat it word for word.

Years ago, there was a Dame Judi Dench one for ill children which grew annoying.

The one’s I do enjoy are the Immodium adverts. They are exceedingly creative and bring a smile to my face each time I hear them.

Lastly, who can forget Doug? Anything he does is pure gold. He deserves a lifetime contract because he’s good real good!

And to answer the question, an annoying advert won’t turn me away. It will just result in more emails.

By: Alexander

Alexander — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:55:24 +0000

Oh yes the balance is fine. And the ads are a key way in which the station makes money. So without them there would be no Absolute. So thats fair enough. Is there anything you can do about the Specsavers ad though? Cheers for your time Nick! Alex xx

By: Nick Hewat

Nick Hewat — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 08:23:13 +0000

Hi Alex,

My name is Nick, I’m the sales director here at Absolute Radio. The Hometime show is the busiest when it comes to commercial messages, with advertisers keen to get their messages across to a key audience in a 3 hour time slot. However, I think it is an illusion that there are more ads for Geoff than Iain – our records show that the number of ads were very similar.

Just so you know, we keep commercial messaging in any single hour to under 20% of the total output, and we hopefully get that balance between ads (without which we wouldn’t exist) and editorial more right than wrong.

Cheers, Nick

By: Alexander

Alexander — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:59:04 +0000

The Specsavers one is REALLY irritating, what with the woman wailing in the background. I just can’t listen to it. Also I think there’s way too many ads on the Hometime Show. There seems to be more when Geoff does it than there was when Iain was doing it… I don’t know if that was the case, or if was just an illusion…

By: Kathy Horner

Kathy Horner — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:29:38 +0000

I can certainly remember one advert that annoyed me so much that I actually wrote in to Absolute (may have been the old V… back then, can’t remember) to express my annoyance, even though I’m quite aware that you don’t have a great deal of choice in the matter. It was one with a great crunching of bones in it, can’t remember what the product was, though, which just goes to show…

I guess all you can really do is transmit any complaints to the advertiser, it may not stop the campaign itself, but at least it may just give them a bit of that wonderfully precious thing: customer insight. Only precious, of course, if one knows what to do with it. And one is willing.

By: Dan T

Dan T — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:59:52 +0000

The backing music on the Who’s Calling Christian trailer is pushing me to the mute button every time it comes on now, I can tell you that. Random crashes and that all over the place; it’s horrible.