Mysterious advert explained. Boy was it rubbish

26 September 2006 Rob Buckley Commercials, UK TV 2 Comments

I was in Charing Cross train station today and I saw a somewhat offensive advert:

FIve US ad

“WTF?” I thought to myself. It was on a graphics screen, so I assumed it was going to change into something like AOL’s “Discuss” campaign.

But it didn’t. It was just that. I went away from it thinking, “What tossy Guardian-reading spanner thought that was a good idea?”, enumerating to myself all the wonderful things the US (I assumed they weren’t having a go at the Bolivians) has given the world. And I’m a Guardian reader.

Turns out it was an advert for Five’s new digital channel, Five US, which as we all know is the channel designed especially for me. There are going to be follow-up adverts that will turn the campaign into a positive one, apparently, but it’s already garnered complaints. And if I’m p’ed off with the ad, I’m pretty sure some of the rest of the target audience are going to be, too.

Whoops, Five.

Author

  • Rob Buckley

    I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.

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