Charlottetown — Prince Edward Island has earned the dubious distinction of having the worst locally produced television advertising, the Canadian Centre for Advertising Excellence announced today.
Pierre Pointilleux, Executive Director of the CCAE said that Canada’s smallest province was head and shoulders below any other province or territory when it came to the quality of their homegrown commercials, and was, therefore, worthy of a Walter Thomes Effler award, the lowest distinction the organization can award.
“We were horrified by the poor quality of advertising on the Island’s only local television channel,” he noted. “It appears that unscrupulous producers are hoodwinking local businesses into paying for low-budget ersatz cinéma verité garbage with no production value, no internal logic, and even, in some cases, no call to action, and charging them a fortune.”
While he declined to identify any specific commercial, citing instead the overall awful quality of Island ads, an informal poll conducted by The Manatee seems to suggest that most Islanders agree with Pointilleux.
One woman said that she has found herself screaming at the television on more than one occasion.
“I’ll be happily making supper and watching Compass when one of them crappy ads come on, and before I know it, I’m swinging a raw chicken by the wing, smashing it into the television and yelling, ‘The address they moved to is on the goddammed door, you moron, you just read it out loud!’ I don’t know how much more I can take.”
Her husband agreed.
“Why they think seeing some arsehole who couldn’t find his backside with his own two hands is going to make me want to go to a store where he would shop is baffling. Now, even when I hear the name of the company, which, by the way, has a fucking G in it that apparently nobody can pronounce, I shudder and grab the Yellow Pages to find another supplier. That’s how bad it’s gotten…I mean, who uses the Yellow Pages anymore?”
Another local recalls looking up the definition of “continuity” because he wanted to accurately berate one of the producers of the ads.
One of the commercials noted by Islanders was created for a real estate agent, although the jingle is so annoying that most people are unable to watch the full 30 seconds and now feel a sense of animosity whenever they hear the agent’s name. Another involves a local jeweler plunging his hand into pond water that is probably contaminated with pesticide runoff to retrieve a ridiculously high-priced ring that he has “accidentally” dropped.
Not everyone agrees that the ads should be removed. Teacher Dahlyne Murphy said she likes the down-homey quality of the ads. “Like, everyone’s really real, you know? And their problems are real. And if the ad sticks in your head because the jingle is so bad, or the concept is so octrocious [sic], that’s still a good thing, right?”
The first television commercial ever to hit the airwaves was broadcast on July 1, 1941. The Walter Thomes Effler award, or the WT Eff as it is commonly known, was created one year later to recognize that, even in the industry’s infancy, there were people creating shitty, low-quality TV commercials.
You got that right!