Whenever I mention one of those counter-top grill type machines, I always say “It’s so good I put my name on it,” because, you know, George Foreman. I don’t really know who George Foreman is but that’s the kind of advertising that really sticks because it’s a catchy line and it was a new idea. I realised, watching quite a lot of TV over the past few sickly days, that you couldn’t get away with this any more.

I’m not a huge music video aficionado, but Mr C tends to point out those that catch his eye whenever he spots them. Recently, a new video from Kelly Clarkson emerged, for her single People Like Us, and it’s worth a look… for the wrong reasons. There’s an odd story about saving a colourful child from a world of black and white, but that’s not what I saw. I’m fully aware that product placement is part of how these things get funded, and I’m totally okay with that - if it is done with a bit of subtlety and/or restraint.

Tweeted by the marvellous Molly Wood earlier today, I watched a new campaign from soapmakers Dove. It’s a fascinating look at the way women see themselves compared to the way other people see them. An actual forensic artist draws a portrait of the ladies based on their own descriptions, and then on a description from someone else. The results are amazing. There are plenty of critics to this - it’s a cynical marketing campaign, he could be favouring the latter picture on purpose, where are all the men, politics, politics, politics.

Another brilliant advert has caught my attention, I’m not sure how old this is, but I’ve only just seen it and I love it. I would say, with this and the EDF energy thing, that I like adverts in which odd things dance to old music. More of this, please.

Advertising doesn’t work on me. Not really. Except for when it does. Many, many adverts on TV are irritating, depressing, stupid, or a mixture of all three. This, however, is the cutest thing I have seen in a long while.

Mashable has a brief article about a new advert taken out in the USA Today newspaper from chewing gum company Trident. Supposedly the tweets were discovered naturally, rather than the writers being sponsored to talk about the gum, and everybody was consulted to make sure they approved being included in the ad itself. A bizarre concept of micro-blogging turning back into print media.

I have been watching a couple of new advertising initiatives that have really worked on me, and I am only talking about them to encourage more of the same from companies in the future (because I have that kind of power, you know?) and not because I necessarily have an opinion on the brand either way. Other [insert product here] are available. Firstly, I’ve been reading Mighty Girl for a long time now.

A report out this week suggests that TV viewers in the UK are now consuming more ads than ever before. This is purely taking into account actual television viewing, and not online TV, and the stats line up something like this: 16.7 hours of commercial TV per week on average in the first half of 2009 that’s up 9.9 minutes on 2008, which isn’t a lot, but who was expecting it to go up?

I found this article on The Guardian very interesting. It talks about some of the elements that have been lost in advertising nowadays, compared to some of the classic adverts from yester-year. Although some of the points are contentious - like cigarette advertising, and seemingly promoting sexism - it does seem very true that adverts of the moment do not capture the imagination in the same way. I quickly browsed YouTube for three adverts that I know I enjoy, and none of them are current ones.

Three adverts have caught my attention and not for good reasons… Firstly, the second instalment of the Yakult Bacteria guy. I actually quite appreciate the idea of the advert and think it’s really nice that the girl is sticking up for her geeky friend. BUT… those Yakult bottles are so expensive, you just WOULD NOT give one away like that. Not even to a friend! And especially not to two horrible bullies.