But follow the money. They won't, anymore.
There’s an exceptionally lame TV ad campaign running in the UK at the moment for Thinkbox, the television marketing body for the main UK commercial broadcasters.
The scene: a shrink sits alongside a hypnotised patient, encouraging him to regress and express profound, moving memories. Guess what? He sings iconic ad jingles from the golden age of TV advertising, when ads used to work and when, back in the day, commercial television was valued higher than junkbonds. It’s almost funny, and the catchy slogans take me back, back to the days when we couldn’t avoid seeing commercials.
But, given a choice, I’d rather not have had permanently burned into my memory tunes like: “Nuts! Whole Hazel nuts! Cadbury’s take them and they cover them with chocolate!” Thankfully, we’ve all moved on. It’s a blessing that consumers don’t have to – and won’t - put up with interruptive tosh trying to burn slogans into our brains. We’re no longer passive. Like trying to find a use for a slide rule when PC’s arrived, all this campaign does is to remind us that mass market TV advertising is over.