We Are The Walking Dead: Our Civilisation Is Almost At An End

Added on 12 May 2011

Every now and again, when the sun has finally sunk into the western sky, the birds are quietening their general racket and hullabaloo, the dishes have been washed and the kids have finally come indoors after playing endlessly in the romantic late evening sun, one turns on the television and asks the following question: why in the name of the supreme gods of marketing are the Halifax adverts - those scrotal fuckbags of advertising ignominy - still on the airwaves?

The fact that in thirty seconds each of the adverts manages to suck the life from the viewer - turning you into a zombified killing machine hellbent on the mindless slaughter of all lifeforms just so that such an advert can never be made again - aside, it is in itself an absurd notion that people looking so smug and pleased with themselves should help sell anything. Why on earth does anyone look at that and think, 'Fuck yeah, those people are really fucking annoying, I'm going to open an account with them right now'?

Here's the weird thing though. Those bloody adverts, those festering self-righteous poster children of banking arrogance, have been getting broadcast for well over a year now. Days and weeks have turned into months and years. There hasn't been a new advert in ages - not that that would help - the same three or four are being repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Imagine you're one of the poor bastards who acted in them. You make an advert that's so cheesy that it's hot fetid cheese - crapulent, stinking and vile - and you think, well it'll be on for a month or two, then it'll be gone and my mates can stop taking the pish out of me. But no... here we are, years later, and they're still showing the same execrable fuckbucketing mince and those poor people, who were ordered to play the part of a self-satisifed wanker, are still having to watch themselves every night.

Perhaps, for the moment, they only watch the BBC.

And here's the weird thing about the fact that those adverts are still on the TV. These companies do their market research, and the cost of making a new advert would be buttons compared to the cost of endlessly showing them on TV. Which can mean only one thing. The adverts must work, and the people that run Halifax marketing know that they work.

When customers sign up for a mortgage or a new account or whatever, and they come to the part of the form that asks where they heard about the Halifax, they must be ticking the box that says I Saw That Fucking Woman Drop Her Cup of Tea or the box that says I Really Fancy That Middle-Class White Woman Doing That Thing With Her Head And Looking Fucking Smug To Ice Ice Baby.

There may not be such boxes on the form, but the fact remains. Those adverts are only still on the TV because they work. Which means that like so many things that are shite in Britain - the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Express, all those shows about Kerry and Pete and Katie - they only exist because people want them.

We are a nation of people who like the Halifax adverts.

We are the walking dead. Our civilisation is almost at an end.