For the removal of costumed men

Being the barely sentient potato that I am, last evening found me planted upon the sofa being advertised at by the television. This time I was being sold Febreze, on the basis that sometimes when you come home there are men sat on your sofa wearing out-sized foam costumes (representing smells), and a good way to get rid of them is to aerosol them in the face. Alternatively you could hold up a mirror and the not-so-fancy-dressed actors will simply die of shame. Starting with the one dressed as a putrid fish carcass.

I suppose it's difficult to find new ways to advertise air freshener. As indeed it is with anything that does exactly what it says on the tin, unless you happen to be advertising Ronseal woodstain. Ronseal is fortunate in this regard as they have been straddling the painful inanity/marketing genius line for some time now. In case you need reminding (and I know you don't) Ronseal advertise their woodstain by having a shouty man standing next to a fence saying "if you need to stain your wood, buy Ronseal woodstain because it stains wood. Look it says so there. On the tin. Because that's what it does. It stains wood. And you've got wood that needs staining. Which is what this is good for. Because..." actually now that I think about it, maybe it's not so clever. The shouty repitition makes it seem like 'Rain Man', re-casted with Gregg Wallace in the Dustin Hoffman role. Staining doesn't get tougher than this.

The same no-nonsense 'we're blokes who don't mince our words or talk bollocks' approach is adopted by Direct Line for their van insurance. They have used Ground Force's Tommy Walsh to front their campaign, in which he loads up a white van with various items that you expect an honest down-to-earth working-class labourer to load up his white van with (ladder, toolchest and so on) whilst telling us that we, as blokes, can't afford to cut corners in our work and therefore shouldn't cut corners with our van insurance. We obviously trust Tommy because, you know, he's a bloke who doesn't talk bollocks, so immediately organise a bloke policy and swagger off to the pub scratching our balls for a pint of tits.

Wa-hay.