Ad Nausuem

"OK, so we start with a close-up of the gorilla playing the drums-"
"Sorry, er...what?"
"The gorilla. Didn't... did you not get the fax I sent? With the script. The advert script?"
"What? Was that the one scrawled on the back of a Cutter's Choice packet? What has a gorilla playing the drums-"
"Actually it's a man in a gorilla suit."
"Whatever. What does it have to do with chocolate?"
"It doesn't have to have anything to do with chocolate John."
"Yeah John."
"Stay out of this."
"Sorry."

It was George Orwell, with one of his less pleasant images, who said 'Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.' It's testament to Orwell's sardonic grasp that such a bristling medium be described with so much opacity, but the great man's cynicism overlooked the trick that advertising is 'a judicious mixture of flattery and threats.' Thanks to the splendidly named Northrop Frye for that one.

Adverts either show you how you want to be, or how you could be with the advertised brand or service. They tell you you are intelligent and deserve to be entertained; cleverly cajoled into wanting merchandise. They must never assume to know more than you, like a precocious child, but appear as the friend who always bats off the ladies with his rippling, Tag-clad forearms: better than you, but not unattainably so.

There have always been good and bad adverts. What amazes me is how some companies can, in the quest for that perfect sales-pitch, produce adverts of such woeful inconsistency.

Cadbury, chocolate sellers since 1905, have an annual turnover the size of Chad and should be able to produce effective and (ideally) entertaining ads. And it has, on occasion. Indeed their drumming gorilla caused quite a stir (as it should; it's produced by Fallon Worldwide, the company behind the Sony Balls). It's even come up with its own in house advertising company, as if it's the paragon of innovative branding.

This comes from the same company that led a friend (not unaccompanied by a large percentage of Britain) to totally boycott Cadbury's chocolate in protest of the raging shitfest that was the 'Your Happiness Loves Cadbury' series. Such discrepancy shows how mercurial an art advertising is. One moment you're a genius for identifying a need the consumer didn't know they had with an image they would never have thought of, the next, you're singlehandedly boosting the national circulation of Mars Bars. The latest reel to be effortlessly tossed on Cadbury's 'miss' project pile should remind itself that it is selling a chocolate bar, not a cure for cancer.

It's true that strong bands can withstand bad ads. 'Why can't all the good things in life come without down sides? Like girlfriends, without the four-year plan. Or like bras, without the fumbling.' Or, indeed, like adverts, without typecasting the entire male demographic as skinny twenty something lads with straightened hair. The question is why they bother. If a product is good enough, or the brand sufficiently recognisable, there is little point in rehashing a trite and tenuous ad campaign.

There are some things that you never see advertised. Imagine a celebrity endorsed advert for pencils. It would be the worst advert since this pigswill. No one advertises apples, or ceilings. Tetrapak, the chairman of whom is the richest man in Britain, rarely need to force innovation in advertising. And they seem to be doing pretty well.

The hypocrisy of adverts can sometimes be arresting. As I write, a hook-nosed Gabby Logan is marauding a trolley down a Morrison's reduced to clear aisle, telling me how much she loves fending off tracksuited single mums during her weekly shop. Gabby Logan doesn't shop at Morrisons, nor do people who find the rugby-player felater palatable. Not even her servant shops in that dive. Equally, when pressed, executives do have a habit of producing (or plagiarising) toss.

The Peugeot 206 claims to be 'inspired by nature'. A car. Inspired by nature. In the same way that China's CO2 emissions are inspired by nature.

Adverts are getting more cinematic; more expensive. But they are not getting uniformly better. With increased budgets, one would hope to see increasingly effective ideas at work. One consistently brilliant company is Guinness, who must have a human-ideas juicing section to their factory on St Jame's Gate - disposing of young and promising media execs who have been lobotomized by Guinness' 'inspiration pump' in the murky green water of the Liffey.

The old 'ad'age that people don't buy a drill for the drill, but for the hole it creates should be born in mind when coming up with adverts. It would be nice to see a bit more parity between the product advertised and its advert's content. It would also be nice to never have to see Michael Winner on television again. But, you know what those ad executives say. Sex sells.