Them's Fightin' Words

I’m seriously late jumping on this bandwagon, I know at least one other blogger (Brandslut) who’s already given the current Cell C ad in the February issue of Marie Claire a solid bollicking and she did that more than two weeks ago (great job by the way), but I just couldn’t resist.

The lowdown is that the new Marie Claire (and apparently the new Cosmo too) has a four page Cell C ad in the middle of it that is topping pretty much EVERYONE’S lists as the kakkest ad ever.

Four pages of our buddy Trev doing his retarded Cell C monkeyboy routine is bad enough, but the real kicker here is that the fucking ad speaks to you.

“Welcome to the world of Cell C. The power is in your hands” it says, and you immediately crap yourself because what the hell just happened?!

Then the new Cell C jingle plays and sounds exactly like I imagine a jack-in-the-box would if it were underwater, or if you’d taken too much acid and KAPOW! the full effect is achieved.

About 3 seconds after being verbally assaulted by the ad I dropped everything I was doing, cancelled my Vodacom subscription and signed up with Cell C.

Right after that I ran to the nearest tattoo parlour and got the logo inked on my forehead, and as soon as I get home I’m gonna [change my pants and] get down and dirty with J-Rab so in nine months time I can name my first child “Cell” and 18 months after that, the second one “C”.

The advert was that powerful! Well done everyone involved!

All we can hope and pray for is that more magazines adopt this novel approach because it’s exactly what we all need in our lives – MORE advertising being shoved down our throats.

Cell C I can forgive. I never gave a shit about the brand so no love lost there. They thought they had a rad idea but it was kak. Too bad.

Marie Claire I can forgive as well. They need to sell advertising or the magazine shuts down, it’s a simple fact.

An advertiser comes to them and says, “Hey, we’ve got this great idea. In the next issue we want to include a four page advert that, when you open it, sends a signal to launch every nuclear missile the former USSR ever created, targeting every major city around the world.”

“Never!” the magazine replies, indignant, “We would never allow such an atrocity to be commited, not in our magazine!”

“We’ll pay you half a bar.”

“Sold!”

But the person I really can’t forgive here, not for this, not for anything to do with the campaign, is good ol’ Trev.

Why dude, why?! You were a great comedian, one of the few South African comedians that cracked me up with pretty much every sentence you spoke and then you went out and agreed to all this and you know what I think every time I see at you now?

Whoosh. The sound of all your integrity and credibility leaving the building.

Whoosh.

-ST