Thursday, February 17, 2011

Letters to the Advertisers

I was watching television the other night. This, however, is not news. I do that regularly, because I like TV. Even the schmaltzy, badly scripted soaps amuse me. Whether this makes me an airhead or not is debatable – a debate we can have another day because it’s not what I want to talk about today. And it’s my blog, so I get to choose. It’s the ads. They have prompted a letter writing flurry. I haven’t written any for ages, so here goes:

Dear Self-Squirting Room Air Freshener People,

Firstly, I am amazed that you actually sell enough to pay for such elaborate ads. I cannot fathom why anybody would want their lounge to smell like toilet spray every 10/20/30 minutes. It’s just weird. Even if you are an elephant who has a teenage caterpillar son who plays football and has many, many stinky football shoes. I’d make him store them in the garden shed, but that’s just me.

While we’re on that, though… an elephant with a caterpillar for a child? The logistics of that have kept me awake night after night. It worried me so, that someone in the coupling that resulted in that child was in severe discomfort. It’s okay, though, after eight sleepless nights I finally realised. The child is adopted. Good on you for promoting families other than the nuclear stereotype. My nephews have two mothers. Nuclear families are so yesterday.

I just have one question. Despite my dislike for so-called ‘aromatic’ sprays, I am most tempted to get some, purely to have pretty little flowers float happily out of my house all the time and up into the sky, as they do in the advert. What a lovely thing. I thought I’d get my neighbours to get it too, so we can have an extravaganza of flowers wafting about in our street. I just wanted to check, though, can one choose which flowers?

Love,
Shiny x

Dear Slimming Cereal People,

Just a quick question, please, before I go out and buy your ‘delicious, yet slimming’ cereal. The red carpet that will roll out before me wherever I go once I start eating it… does it come with a person to vacuum the carpet too? I worry that it’ll get dirty, especially when it rolls out along the pavement outside, as I saw it do in your advert.

Love,
Shiny x

Dear Feminine Hygeine Product People,

It’s just plain irritating when you say “Have a happy period.” And no, I’m not pre-menstrual. This is my non-pre-menstrual response. You don’t want to see the pre-menstrual one. I may then use language which could hurt delicate ears/eyes, which you may well have. So stop it, please.

Love,
Shiny x

There are more, but I must stop. Real Work calls.

4 comments:

Angela said...

What drives me crazy about these advertisement guys is that they
1. are so terribly conceited about the CREATIVE work they are doing and 2. they earn so immorally much money for their stupidities!

Miranda said...

Heh heh! Okay, go back to real work for a bit, but maybe some more later? Did they really say 'Have a happy period?' How insufferable!

tam said...

Please write to the ones with cartoon character germs who get obliterated by the spray.

Shiny said...

Angela - indeed!
Miranda - bloody real work just keeps getting in the way. Blergh.
Tamara - oo, the school teacher germ thingy. I love him in Afrikaans when he says "Blikskottel". Wierdos those ad dudes, wierdos.
x