Advertising Done Incorrectly. The Sad Consequences.

It costs £23,625 to put an advertisement on the back cover of Saturday Times magazine, and £27,195 for a full page in the Times newspaper. It really does. Usually I just make up the data for my blog posts but these are the genuine figures. You would think that if they were going to spend that amount of money the watch companies would make sure their advertisements were definitely going to persuade people to buy their wares.
But look at this:

Patek Philippe! What possessed them? NO-ONE - NO-ONE - is going to buy any of their watches now! Who would EVER run the risk of being thought of as being like these beastly people depicted here? That overly-immaculate man is clearly getting too much money if he can afford to wear an expensive watch like that for rough games like rowing. The child is Fotherington-Thomas come back to us, and he looks covetously at the watch instead of listening to his father's instructions about not catching a crab. The father is about to smack him one whilst saying "Get your eyes off my watch, Brat. Over my dead body you are having that." (They actually admit that in the text, if you read between the lines.) Also no gentleman worthy of the name would own such an ugly watch; and as for the matching cufflinks... here we see vulgarity taken to new limits.

This self-defeating advertisement graced the whole back page of the Times magazine recently.

 

 

 

Rolex are just as bad, because this took up a page of the Times on 19th November: 

Who the devil are all these nonentities? One of them is, I think, Elvis Presley, there's a bird who might be Sophia Loren but I'm not sure, and apart from that... one of them could be William Hague though it seems unlikely. There's a fellow dressed up as a Cherokee brave for some reason, and what is presumably a ghastly sportsman (the one kissing a big cup). What they have got to do with Rolex I can not tell, and the idea that their pictures could make me want to buy a Rolex watch is absurd. There is no clear picture of any watch so it's a remarkably unhelpful use of the page. 

As for the WORDS -  dear oh dear. "This watch is a witness"? No, mate. It's a watch. It just sits there, with its hands going round. It is not a witness to anything and it does not "dare men faster", or further, or any other speed or distance. This is TOSH. Someone at the advertising agency must be squirming with shame at having written the stuff. It's as bad as that terrible British Airways campaign "To fly. To serve.", though admittedly that one granted our family HOURS of amusement teasing our brother who works for them. Anyway, you won't catch me buying a Rolex after THIS, I can tell you.

 

 

Look, boys. THIS is an advertisement that would make people buy your watch:

 

18 ct Gold Hunter.

Keeps good time.

£5

Available now

from Jewellers in Minehead High Street.

 

 

That's all you need. A fine product, with a picture to show you how lovely it is, and information about the price and where to buy it from. Notice the complete lack of silly gimmicks. The customers will flock to your counters. I am afraid it may be too late for Rolex and Patek Philippe, but thanks to me other manufacturers can benefit from the mistakes made by those foolish firms.

N.B: About the price, £5 :  I am sorry but this is a lie.