Home life
Hard sell
Alice Thomas Ellis
Quite often I don't know what the ads on telly are actually trying to sell. I liked watching Maureen Lipmann so much that I didn't ask myself what she was advertising. Of course it is the telephone company which has employed her, and when I think about it I am baffled. If one needs to make a telephone call one does. Any necessary reminders are supplied by one's mother. It is a pleasure to watch M. Lipmann on the phone but it does not create in me the need immediately to emulate her. At the other 'Absolutely staggering — these results were completely predictable.' end of the scale is a maddening woman who bleats, 'People tell me I'm attractive.' 'They lie,' we snarl, reaching for the thingY to change channels. As she is flashing a lot of hair about, fiddling and making much play with it — which I was always taught was bad manners and likely to distribute stray hairs and dandruff over other people — I take it she is selling something which you're supposed to put on it. I detest her so much I'd develop sales resistance to rasp- berries and cream if she told me to go and buy some.
I haven't seen the coffee lovers for some time, thank goodness, but there is now an even more awful lady who bursts into song when her husband's boss comes to dinner. Whatever she is advertising — and it is obviously something to eat — I don't want it since it clearly leads one to acute social embarrassment. Someone, remembering his days in Africa, tells me of the bicycles that went unsold because the makers put out an ad portraying somebody escaping from a lion on one. The rather negative impression gained by the public was that if you hopped on one of these bikes a lion would instantly materialise and pursue you for miles. I am the fortunate possessor of a dishwasher but if I wasn't then rather than follow the advice of the lady who plods between trestle tables laden with crockery I would break all the dishes. When people tell me to buy something my usual re- sponse is 'Shan't'. I always got cross when they advertised gas and electricity, because unless you've got a primus stove you have to cook by one or another of these means, and the stuff is expensive enough already without us sub- sidising pointless adverts. But the most peculiar was the recent spate of advertise- ments for water (`Water? Cor, brilliant. Let's turn all the taps on'). A lot of citizens and water consumers flew into a rage at this since they correctly suspected that they were being lured into buying shares, and I haven't met anyone who thinks privatisa- tion here is a good idea. Then Someone received a communica- tion through the post which begins: 'Over the last few years it has become apparent that many people have a very narrow view of the BOC group. All too often, we are thought of as just a British oxygen com- pany.' I never gave it a thought, actually. I have a number of other things which tend to occupy the forefront of my mind before I start agonising over the precise nature of BOC. Anyway, they are embarking on a national campaign in order to clear up any misapprehensions we may be harbouring about their raison d'etre. The letter con- cludes: 'If, as a result of reading it [an early run of the campaign] you would like to know more about the BOC Group,
write to me.' They can't imagine that we are so egregiously curious we just want to learn what they're up to. They must be trying to sell us something. Oxygen? Never touch it. please
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