Stop all the cocks....or should that be clocks? Nah, I’ll stick with the former... Poetry ads on telly*

Essential headwear for poetry ad voice-over artistes

It seemed to start with the Cathedral City advert showing warm and comforting scenes of British life accompanied by poetry voiced by the warm, salt-of the earth, “real” tones of Pete Postlethwaite. Nothing necessarily wrong with this ad, it had some of the warmth and “realness” that the brand wanted to get across, but there's something a little irritating and patronising about the glib poetry offering slices of British lives, like they think the brilliance of Larkin and Alan Bennett can just be hashed out in an advertising office to shift slabs of cows’ congealed mammary juice.
 

And then they seemed to be everywhere like a rash, carbon-copies of the Cathedral City ad, featuring "gritty" northern voice-overs ('cause Northerners - anyone North of Watford -  are "real"and quirky and  have the common touch according to TV types. Southerners by the same distinction are either terribly posh, cockneys or, on rarer occasions, quirky South-Western Bristolians or Cornish - the Northerners of the South), rousing or folksy music over supposedly heart-warming images of British lives and quirky, lovable Brits, like slices of Mike Leigh films.



Next was McDonalds’ even more irritating poetry advert, again voiced by a “real” sounding Northerner, David Morrissey, proselytizing about how McDonalds is for everyone with the repeated line about how everyone “was just passing by”. The ad tries to tell us how everyone loves a Maccy D’s, from the road labourers to the sweet old folks, but it feels like an exercise by marketing strategists pigeon-holing us into socio-ecomonic groups – “Oh here’s what we call ‘the grey players’ – old folks who’ve remortgaged their homes to subsidise their gambling habits. A trip to McDonalds is quick break from the bookies... This group here is what we refer to as the Defeated Dads – divorced, struggling to meet child support payments and the mortgage for the house they no longer live in. They live in a bedsit and take the kids to McDonalds as there’s no room at home” . And there’s a slightly superior edge to Morrissey’s tone that gives the message, “We all pretend we’re too posh for Maccy D’s, but really we love it, but if we’re seen in there we say we were ‘just passing by’” . Yeah you, that’s right you posh frothy-coffee drinking twat, you’re not too posh for Maccy D’s, go on, hide in the corner and wrap your lips round a Big Mac.  And they’re at it again in a way in their latest ad, as your average Joe recites lines from On the Street Where You Live – a love song turned into a love letter to McDonalds, whilst Audrey Hepburn spins in her grave. 

Winalot's at it as well, albeit with limited rhyming in that every line ends in "a lot". (If you recall from English lessons, poems that don't rhyme at all or as well as the ones we grew up with are seen as da more sophisticated and clever ones, innit?) . And the rest of the poem ad cliche's are there, admittedly done in a tongue in cheek way - rousing music, shots of  diverse groups of people in British slice of life settings, or being quirky and eccentrically British. Ah, makes you feel proud to be a Brit.

Latest to jump on the poetry bandwagon is Magnet. Their ad is basically Cathedral City without the cheese. Pointless poetry, just empty, meaningless words that are supposed to be imbued with the high-culture and classiness that poetry implies, tempered with the earthy, “in touch with the working man” northern accented voice over to balance out the poshness of poetry that may alienate the plebs.

Oh, and how could we forget? Bringing up the rear is good old Iceland with our old friend Stacey Solomon. The distinguishing feature of this ad has to be the blatant targeting of their market, not for Poshos is Iceland, as demonstrated in the eloquent line “Why fork out at Chez Nobby’s for their fancy bread?” Ooh, yes we don’t want none of that fancy bread, just bleached, nutritionally deficient white-sliced please, Iceland. Or a stick of frozen garlic bread if we’re really pushing the boat out. What other poetry ad clichés does the Iceland ad tick? Poem? Check. Northern voice over? Check. Whimsical, folksy instrumental music? Check. Not even thinly veiled patronising of the “common people” ? Check! Full house! ...Is that the sound of a barrel being scraped? 

Eh up, cock! It's gritty northern types. (The much missed brilliant Jack & Vera Duckworth)

*That’s telly as in tellay – pronounced in Northern, salt-of-the-earth, man of the people, common touch way: “What’s on't  tellay, Mam?” “Oh some posho reading a poem.” “Quick flick to Family Fortunes or summat.”