Irresponsible Advertising
I know, I know. Those two words are practically synonymous in a lot of cases, but today there was an ad in particular that irritated me enough to make me want to blog about it. I have written about advertising before, but those examples were probably less brazen than the one I came across in the Daily Mirror while having my breakfast today at McDonald’s.
The perpetrator of this wonderful piece of ingenuity is Abans, and either they were out of cash to pay for a good ad, or they got one of their repair men to through something together for the papers.
I probably should not be so nasty, but if you look at the ad, it compares a big tv to a big woman and a flat tv to a slim woman and says that the choice between them should be obvious. Ergo a big woman and tv is unappealing compared to a flat woman and a flat tv. If I were a big woman, or a man who likes big women, or even someone with any sense of propriety, I would not be buying a discriminatory flat tv from what looks to be a sexually skewed company. I would expect a bit more sense from such a big brand, and not what looks to be an ad made by some horny old men.
A Janusis 
The problem is that they is no proper regulatory body.
The question is will the ad industry welcome this?
sorry;
“that there is”
Hi just saw this post and wanted to say that I agree with you one hundred percent… this ad reeks of bad taste. I too work in the field of advertising and its sad to see ads like this because it gives the entire industry a bad name. All I can say is that not all agencies would do work like this. Sadly there is only a handful of them.
You see the ad industry is like the legal industry… You get the professional lawyers and then you get those guys who stand outside the court and hustle you to appear on your behalf for fifty bucks. For instance I know for a fact that Abans does their advertising through an inhouse agency which means the would have had to reach deep down in to the bottom of the barrel to find people. Guess the quality of the work shows how good the people are.
ya I agree with u. And I am a little fat guy (a little more) so when they are insulting the fat pple I feel so sad. (nobody wants to be a fat person)
But if I am a fat guy is it something wrong.
Well, as with everything else, you get what you pay for. Quality costs money.
David, I reckon Abans is bankrupt in that respect too.
Sanjana
Pah ! Garbage collectors !
Who does their advertising?
I think it’s in-house.
@ a fat guy – So what if you are fat. If you are happy with yourself its all that matters.
@ the rest – It looks like there is a consensus on the advertising being in-house. That would explain the awful result
Who would ABS GDH be? Code for in-house production perhaps?
im quite disappointed at the advertising gimmicks sri lanka has to offer. they can use soooo many more examples to show the difference in TV size….
i dont even like abans 🙂
Janusis, in-house doesn’t necessarily mean poor quality. At one time the Hilton Colombo had its own in-house shop called Hilton Graphics, run by Tony Hoffman, and they did good stuff. I think in this case it’s the combination of manic deadlines and poor strategy (quite common with big retailers in SL) in conjunction with low tactical budgets and mediocre people.
I see..