Friday, February 04, 2005

Wasp T12 Speechtool

As I walked into Whitechapel tube station yesterday, I actually stopped and backtracked to read one of the billboards, regarding the Wasp T12 Speechtool. I'd seen the obnoxious seemingly teen-geared advert a few times already (and it somewhat reminded me of the horrible JD Sports Adverts branded around the "we got it they don't" message), but up until that point, I hadn't realised it was satire. Something from the text jumped out at me in the way it messed with the English language, and I immediately recognised it as the work of Chris Morris, of whom I'm a huge fan.

Have a look at the online version of the advert, pressaging the forthcoming Nathan Barley series (of www.tvgohome.com fame). I don't want to try and demistify it in words, but it's a brilliant piece of work in the way it takes apart many of the unpleasant conventions that have entered into advertising, and the ugly desires that those adverts work on.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can find a photo of the Poster in my blog. I walked past it a few times until the penny dropped.

Ambrose said...

Hi Connor, I checked out your Nathan Barley photo - your blog was the first place I'd seen one (certainly google image search doesn't yield anything!)

Sadly, I missed Nathan Barley this last Friday - was at a gig a mate was promoting in High Wycombe and my girlfriend, who'd considered recording it for me, forgot. I guess I'll have to wait for the DVD.