The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

  Not my wife. But kinda.

For people out there who don’t know what I am talking about, my dear wife has a habit of becoming like Gareth from the TV show ‘The Office’ everytime she is about to fall asleep or wake up.

I’m still trying to work out if it’s disconcerting or funny … so if you click here, you can see what I have to put up with and then tell me if it is cause for concern or not, ha!

My dear friend Truus … who brought the Travelling Tractor to my attention … has emailed me about another ‘charitable cause’ being promoted by some Dutch nutter.

I quote …

Sorry it’s all in Dutch, but if you go here, you can see a little film celebrating ‘Swap Your Vibrator Day’.

A couple of weeks ago a company sent a bus around Amsterdam exchanging old vibrators for new.

And of course the Dutchies went for it, coz it was for FREE!

I’m so happy we’re going home!!!

To be honest I’m not sure what to make of it … though for the first time I AM happy Jonathan and Truus are heading back to Clogland because I don’t think I could look them in the eyes anymore.

🙂

Yes, I know there is a blog post and all that, but I’m actually not here … I’m in a land far, far away …  however in a moment of complete stupidity, I wrote this [and every other post appearing this week] in advance.

Now you could ask the question ‘Why’ … and that would be a good question … but as I already pointed out previously, I’m a sad and stupid little bugger.

Anyway, what this means is I have all your evil comments to look forward to reading when I’m back … and given my life now revolves around a cat … it’s something to look forward to. [cue: Violins]

OK, lets get on with it …

Below you will see an ad for ECOVERVE – a Singaporean cleaning company.

In the ad, they talk about how they only use environmentally friendly cleaning products because they want their customers to be able to spend time with their loved ones rather than

[1] worry about the cleaning

[2] worry about harmful chemicals entering their homes.

OK so the ad is one of those shitty ‘family happiness’ shots and the ‘spend more time doing what you really want to do’ has been done to death …, but it’s a fair proposition which probably has massive appeal to young professional families.

Just one problem. 

This ad appeared in FHM Singapore … a magazine John Dodd’s referred to as ‘sleazy’

Now I appreciate the ‘disruption’ theory in media planning … however just like promoting ‘Meat’ in a Vegetarian magazine would be abit daft, so is spending a heap of cash advertising a cleaning service [using happy, caring, loving families as the underlying message] in a magazine that is almost entirely focused on the denial of family responsibilities and the celebration of gratuitous female flesh.

Right product. Wrong execution.

And is it just me or does the ad feel like it’s been written more towards women than men? If that’s the case, why the hell would you run it in bloody FHM???

[Alright, there’s no evidence whatsoever that’s the case – and while I could try and write about ‘traditional roles’ in Asian culture, I know I’d be talking complete bollocks]

So to the nice people at Ecoverve … may I suggest you kick the person who sold you that media placement really hard in the nuts and to the person who did the selling, pick up your Salesmen/Con Artist ‘Award Of The Year’ at reception!

I’ve been meaning to point people to this absolutely great site because …

1 It’s errrrrm, absolutely great

2 A mate of a mate is behind it

… however given my old age, it kept slipping my mind until today – when the lovely [and I use that term VERY loosely] Jasper at Branded Asia reminded me about it whilst calling me a very rude word beginning with ‘C’.

He probably meant that to be an insult, but coming from Nottingham, I take it as a term of endearment!