I hate listening to ads that scream on radio. One current example is the XX air-con (not going to give the brand more publicity than it deserves). It has two women screaming at each other about how the air-con auto-cleans and how it kills bird flu virus (now I wonder if that can be substantiated).
Hello, Mrs. Lee and Mrs Tan or whatever your names are.. are you both deaf? Why are screaming at the top of your lungs? And for your info, we aren't deaf either. It's so irritating that everytime you come on the air, I switch channel. I refuse to let noise pollution creep into my space. My kids can do that without any help from you, thank you.
There's another type of ad that grates on my nerves – those with voice talents that are so kayu that they sound like school children reading aloud in class. I can't believe there aren't better talents out there. Is there a budget problem that necessitates the taking on of lousy and cheapo talents? Or do those voices belong to the wife or son or daughter of the boss?
There are some ads that are pretty clever and don't resort to screaming gimmicks in order to make their message stick. The UPU infoline ad comes to mind. The one where Rashid Salleh (I think) hyperventilates to the telephone operator and becomes so crazed that she pretended to cut off the line with a toot-toot-toot sound. The other UPU infoline ad is a spoof on eye-cream ads. I thought that was quite clever.
Advertisers don't have to resort to tacky gimmicks in order to make the AIDA (Attention-Interest-Desire-Action) principle work. Please give us tasteful ads. Otherwise listeners will just switch channel when your silly ads come on. They might argue that some ads are more memorable due to their stupidity or irritability quotient but then again remembering is one thing and getting into action is another.
I know, I know, at first it irks me to no end that advertisers love to portray housewives as the types that can’t speak good English (“aiyerrrr……sure die wan yerrrr……” they were talking about the bird flu virus can ‘die one’ after you use that product, right? BTW, virus can die one meh?)
But after a while, I had a good chuckle at their overdramatic expression. I attracted me, in a way.
They, advertisers just want to create an impact. Good or bad, the most effective one is when you can remember and even complain about it.
See, Lydia, already we are talking about it here. It means they managed to attract our attention…
Sometime a sudden outbreak of glass breaking sound comes from my car’s rear speakers scared me. I hate it too.
Yvonne, yeah, that could be their intention but it’s so tasteless lah.
KK, that’s scary. Another one that should be banned is the sound of a collision or siren. I’d be looking around to see where’s the accident or ambulance. Very distracting.