{"id":2454,"date":"2009-01-08T22:03:04","date_gmt":"2009-01-08T22:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/2009\/01\/celebrities_ina\/"},"modified":"2009-01-08T22:03:04","modified_gmt":"2009-01-08T22:03:04","slug":"celebrities_ina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/celebrities_ina\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrities Inappropriate Advertising"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last Friday was the last in Clive James&#8217; current run of A Point of View (Harold Evans takes over this Friday). You have about 24 hours to download the <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/magazine\/views\/a_point_of_view\/\">podcast<\/a>, otherwise you&#8217;ll just have to <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/magazine\/views\/a_point_of_view\/\">read his words<\/a>.<br \/>\nJames got on to the habit of Hollywood actors promoting products that once they&#8217;d never have been seen promoting &#8211; having probably signed agreements to ensure that the ads were only played in Japan.<br \/>\n<em><br \/>\nMatthew McConaughey is doing commercials for a certain fragrance. I&#8217;m sure the extra money he is making is going to a good cause, but there are two questions that I ask automatically whenever I see those commercials. The first question is: Who wants to smell like Matthew McConaughey? And the second question is, doesn&#8217;t he looks silly? <\/em><br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\n<em>If I could be assured that the certain fragrance doesn&#8217;t make Nicole Kidman smell different, but instead smells exactly like Nicole Kidman, I would buy a bottle and drink it. But otherwise I&#8217;m convinced of nothing except that she looks exactly as if she&#8217;s hustling for a buck she doesn&#8217;t need. Even if she does, is this the way to get it? Doesn&#8217;t she look silly? <\/em><br \/>\nRecently two other adverts have started being screened on UK television that makes you question the sanity of those involved, and wonder exactly how big the cheque must have been.<br \/>\nFirst there&#8217;s the Aviva ads rebranding Norwich Union to a meaningless international name. Norwich Union was founded in 1797. If the smart marketing folk think that employing Bruce Willis, Alice Cooper, Elle Macpherson and Ringo Starr <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.youtube.com\/watch?v=MbdN067a-tE\">to try to persuade us<\/a> that if they hadn&#8217;t changed their names, they wouldn&#8217;t have been successful is laughable &#8211; especially in Starr&#8217;s case. [And yes, I&#8217;m well aware that I&#8217;m employed by a company that&#8217;s just changed its name &#8211; but I don&#8217;t believe this is the same thing at all].<br \/>\nThat, however, is nothing to the truly appalling Swiftcover advert featuring Iggy Pop.  You can see it <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.youtube.com\/watch?v=yYnydYrZPp8\">here<\/a> &#8211; I refuse to embed it.<br \/>\nDo you really need the money that much Iggy?<br \/>\nIs anyone fooled into thinking that Iggy cares about British car insurance?<br \/>\nI don&#8217;t find some of the fragrance advertisements quite as upsetting as Clive James &#8211; they&#8217;re always ridiculous because it&#8217;s impossible to advertise a smell that costs thirty quid or more a bottle. But car insurance? Online car insurance? Is this what punk rock was all about? It&#8217;s much worse than John Lydon&#8217;s butter ad.<br \/>\nI believe that Iggy is due to be touring again soon. There&#8217;s good money in that, and I&#8217;ve never seen an Iggy show* where he hasn&#8217;t put his heart and soul into it. He performs for the money. All the more reason why he <strong>shouldn&#8217;t<\/strong> be making ads like this.<br \/>\n<em>*OK &#8211; I&#8217;ve only seen Iggy live once &#8211; at last year&#8217;s Isle of Wight Festival. But I&#8217;ve seen him on TV at things like Glastonbury, and he always puts on a show and works incredibly hard.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last Friday was the last in Clive James&#8217; current run of A Point of View (Harold Evans takes over this Friday). You have about 24 hours to download the podcast, otherwise you&#8217;ll just have to read his words. James got on to the habit of Hollywood actors promoting products that once they&#8217;d never have been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-misc","category-music"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}