Aaargh! Secret Escapes hasn’t gone bankrupt after all. After months without its annoying ad being shown, I was just mugged by it!
EDIT: As of late 2014/early 2015 Secret Escapes has embarked on a new advertising drive. I must say that the woman is beginning to look a bit past it now.
Another annoying set this year is the ones for Rennie – sponsors of UK Gold. They feature a strange character that looks partly like some sort of sex toy, and partly like a balloon or a haggis. It is supposed to be a stomach, of course, and whoever created these ads was one of that elite class of people in advertising who cannot grasp the simple fact that some things cannot be represented successfully by cartoons, no matter what angle you are trying. The stomach being one of them.
The UK Gold promo is even more annoying, as it has the stomach making farting sounds to the tune of “Deck The Halls”. I suspect the ad-men intended it to be the sound of indigestion, but they’re obviously just as incapable of distinguishing a fart from a burp as they are a stomach from a cuddly toy.