Back in the eighties, I worked for a radio station which ran a campaign for a double glazing firm. This campaign never actually ended. Like those sofa sales, it just continued year in, year out. The ads were very straightforward, consisting of little more than the name of the firm sung to the tune of Frère Jacques. By the time you'd heard it a hundred times, you were inclined to claw off your ears and feed them to a passing dog.
One day, the client visited the studios and I had the chance to ask him about his strategy. I pointed out that almost everyone in Nottingham found his commercials more irritating than a giant gnat bite. "Ah!" he said, "But they'll never forget them." He was right. This was almost twenty five years ago and the wretched things are still reverberating around my skull.
In 2014, the website Hotels 4 U appears to have settled on a similar idea for their current TV spots. When you're first exposed to these ads, you're dumbfounded for a few seconds, unable to compute what you've seen. I'm sure you know these clips, but for the mercifully uninitiated I'll explain. We're in some ghastly, ultra-vivid cartoon world, and in the home of a man with an exaggerated quiff and his bespectacled, pink wigged girlfriend. They are booking a hotel and the female lead is very particular, voicing a multitude of demands. The coiffed gentleman isn't fazed. He replies to each instruction with the phrase "Anything for you cupcake."
"We wanted to use a friendly accent from one of the great UK regions."
Obviously this is intensely aggravating; every second is like a thousand fingernails on a hundred blackboards. But I suppose that's the point. Just like the fellow with his double glazing ads, Hotels 4 U obviously figure the attention gained from driving the nation to distraction is the mark of the advertising success. The website has even gained a few column inches via a rake of complaints from the good folk of Birmingham. They are particularly furious because the 'Anything for you, cupcake' line is spoken in a heavy West Midlands accent, by actor Craig Painting. To be fair, Craig is a genuine Brummie (although that doesn't mean he's not spoofing the dialect).
So, have Hotels 4 U genuinely set out to build a campaign so infuriating, they believe it will be a massive hit? If they have, they're not admitting to it. Mike Hoban, marketing chief at Hotels 4 U, is quoted in The Daily Mail as saying 'We wanted to use a friendly accent from one of the great UK regions to help create a distinctive character so that people remember how easy it is to save money on hotel bookings.'
Good for you, Mike. However, if that's true, you're so wide of the mark you're almost on holiday. He goes on to say he thinks the work has a 'truly memorable tagline' and the characters will become 'household names'. Again, that's very optimistic. To achieve such a level of recognition requires more than acid colours and a stupid script. It takes very sharp copywriting and a cracking performance (I'm thinking of Maureen Lipman as 'Beatie' or Leonard Rossiter spilling his Cinzano on Joan Collins). And, in truth, these things tend to happen organically, you can't really force them.
I suppose the fact that I'm writing about the ads means they've achieved some sort of traction, if only for their enormous crassness. But it's pretty easy to be a pain. Conveying wit, warmth, charm and a persuasive selling proposition is where the art of advertising really rests. That was clearly too much for you. Cupcake.
Magnus Shaw is a copywriter, blogger and consultant
