Arsehole's Day

Well, here we are again, at the intersection of marketing masquerading as culture.

Noted masters of the dark arts of advertising, Guinness, are trying for the second year running to parlay some bullshit date they picked almost at random into a secular national day in honour of their piss-poor product.

Most Dubliners, indeed most Irish people, were prepared to tolerate this blatant hijacking of Ireland and Irishness for a once -off event, especially since there was little we could do about it, short of banning their pub promotions.

But now that they're trying to make their secular Paddy's Day into an annual event, it's time that people started protesting.

Why bother, you might ask. After all, if Diageo want to give away cheap pints in Dublin, what's the problem?

The main problem I see is that it is yet another elision of drunken behaviour with Irish character, one that plays to outdated stereotypes that the global media laps up, just as it lapped up the idea that our Taoiseach is an ardent boozer who does interviews while hungover.

There's the secondary problem of anti-social behaviour resulting from this Arthur's Day nonsense, as Garda figures for arrests for disorderly conduct last year in Dublin will testify.

But if we really must have another national drinking day, why must it celebrate one of the great tragedies of the Irish brewing industry?

Not only did the growing hegemony of Guinness (a British run firm owned by a multinational) destroy the vibrant local brewing industry in Ireland in the past century, but their own much-vaunted flagship product is, frankly, muck.

Don't get me wrong. They do know how to brew at St James Gate. But the marketing wankers won't let them. The Guinness Foreign Extra Stout is one of the world's great beers. But try buying it in Ireland. The carbonated Guinness Extra is also pretty damn good, but is restricted to a few dusty bottles hidden away on pub shelves behind the ranks of Smirnoff WKD.

The draught version of the stout is nothing like what it was even after the nitrokeg creamy head was introduced. On order from on high, the brewers have been forced to try to brew all the taste OUT of the beer, so that the marketing wankers can 'position' it against swillable piss-lagers like Budweiser.

But Guinness is a stout. It never was, nor never could be a competitor for bland, fizzy alco-waters. The result is that they lose their traditional consumers and yet fail to attract the 'Heino or Carl' contingent either.

It doesn't stop them trying though. We've had Breo. We've had Guinness 'Lite'. Now we've got 'black lager'. All diabolically bad. And this is the direction they keep pushing Guinness draught towards.

There's a reason why Guinness doesn't compete in international beer competitions anymore. It's because they're not only not the best stout in the world, they're not even the best stout in Dublin.

(That honour goes to the spectacular Wrasslers XXXX by the Porterhouse Microbrewery.)

Thankfully, there has been something of a renaissance in craft brewing in Ireland in recent years. In addition to the Beamish/Murphy (same brewery now) Guinness alternative, there are now real options for stout drinkers who wish to avoid the fish-scales slop coming out of St James' Gate.

Carlow do an extremely tasty O'Hara's stout, and College Green in Belfast have the excellent and sumptuous Molly's Chocolate Stout. And of course the Porterhouse boys specialise in stouts and porters, as the name suggests. Their Plain, Oyster Stout and XXXX are all superb.

These are REAL Irish beers, deserving of people's attention, palates and money.

I propose that all right-thinking beer lovers and Irish people turn their back on the bullshit that is Arseholes' Day and spend the evening instead exploring the delights of Irish craft brewing either in the nearest enlightened hostelry or else in the comfort of their own home.

Maybe when Diageo start shipping market share in large amounts to real brewers, they will realise the error of their ways and permit their own brewers to do what they do best and make some proper stout.

After all, they do it for foreign markets and they've done it in small batches for Ireland too. The only thing stopping them is the delusions of the ponytailed wanker brigade who have such contempt for both beer lovers and the Irish nation that they genuinely believe you'll buy into their new national day proposal just because they'll discount their pints of muck for the night.

And now Budweiser are getting in on the act, proposing their own 'national happy hour' in the US.

This crap is going to spread, people. Not content with privatising our public spaces, now they want to privatise our holidays too. Don't let the marketing vermin win.

Asian babes not good enough for marketing mongs

Apparently Asian babes aren't good enough for the marketing morons at chav outfitters, the incorrectly named Top Shop.

When they decided to foist their tacky, ill-fitting clothing on the people of China, the advertising wonks didn't think to hire some local models to try to make their clobber look wearable.

Nope, instead they spunked 24 million euro on ageing addict Cocaine Kate.

According to one fashion victim, the reason why people keep giving this human car crash so much money for effectively just standing about looking bored while wearing clothes is because of her 'look.'

Now, I'm no fashion expert. So I rely on those morons who are to inform me as to what this magical 'look' is (since to my untutored eye she looks exactly like what she is, which is a skinny, coked-up chav from Croydon.)

And here's what they say:

"Kate Moss was so different when she first arrived on the fashion scene," says Jen Stevens, editor of U Magazine. "At the time the catwalks were filled with six-foot goddesses and then suddenly along came this short, pretty ordinary girl from Croydon. It was this 'difference' that drew everybody's attention and upon which she managed to build a career."

So it isn't her look, because she looks short and ordinary. My eyes weren't actually lying after all. Even the fashionistas think she looks like a chav.

Okay, let's try again. Maybe it's her winning personality? Nope again. In fact, she almost never speaks in public and barely ever in ads. One assumes her paymasters in the fashion industry are aware that the sound of her grating estuary tones would shatter the glamorous image they've spent a fortune on creating.

Is it perhaps her life story that inspires people? That's definitely what one fashion victim believes:

"Maybe it's because she's fallen so low and fought her way back up again," says model agency boss Celia Holman Lee. "She's shown a vulnerable side that people can relate to."

Yes, you heard that correctly. Cocaine Kate's tabloid fall from grace, not to mention her house-trashing antics and association with hard drugs and hard druggies, is something that we can all relate to. What a load of shit.

Which brings me back to the news item I began with. What the fuck are Top Shop paying this cokehead chav tens of millions for?

And if they really must pay people preposterous amounts of money to stand around looking bored while wearing clothes, what's wrong with paying some stunning looking Chinese babe who doesn't do tons of hard drugs and isn't closer to forty than twenty?

All adverts are lies

All adverts are lies. Let's ponder that for a moment.

Okay, we'll return to that later.

Meanwhile, Consumers International (who are unsurprisingly an international consumers organisation) have unveiled their list of the crappest products on the market worldwide.

Top of the tree are sleeping pills marketed at Japanese kids, closely followed by Coca Cola's tap water masquerading as spring water, Kelloggs' sugary breakfast cereals that pretend to be healthy, and shit Chinese toys sold by Mattell that fell apart and were full of lead.

Now, let's drop the shit toys from the list. What's so wrong with sleeping pills? Did they poison people? Did they not work and instead, like being sold cocaine instead of mogadon, they kept kids awake? No. They worked fine. They just weren't properly advertised.

And what's wrong with selling tap water? If people are prepared to pay a quid for something they can get out of a tap, bully for you (or in this instance, Coca Cola) for parting fools from their money. It's not like the tap water is bad for you.

Incidentally, Coke pull the same stunt in Ireland. Deep River Rock, the water you wear, is also the water you get out of a tap in Belfast. True.

As for Kelloggs' breakfasts, well, no doubt they're not the sort of thing that Mr Kellogg had in mind when he set up his healthfood company back in the Nineteenth century. But they're not bad products. They're simply sugary products that should be considered akin to sweets, desserts and other things that kids should only have in moderation.

So what do all these things have in common? They're not bad products, despite what Consumers International say (apart from Mattell's shit Chinese toys, which are genuinely bad products.) They're actually bad marketing.

Let's return to where I came in. All advertising is lies. It is. The next commercial break that comes along in your evening's telly watching, analyse the lies you're being peddled.

"Because you're worth it?" Says who? Worth what? Worth it how? What does it even mean?

Don't read into it, simply dismiss it as the lie it actually is - the lie that these mass-produced, morally dubious cosmetics products are somehow 'elite' and you are part of that elite and entitled to these unlikely expressions of luxury lifestyle.

There's the crux of the ad (not the science bit, which is total bollocks) and it's a fundamental lie.

Same with any of them, all of them in fact. All adverts are lies. Lies designed to part you from your money for something you don't need.

I previously highlighted my plan to fine companies 50% of profits if they can't prove their advertising claims. I still stand by that as a plan to universally improve the existence of pretty much every human being on the planet (apart from advertising execs and marketing scum, who we all know aren't human at all.)

Having established that all ads are lies, it's time to return to the bad products list and rap the knuckles of the Consumers International people for failing to notice that these are bad marketing stunts, not bad products, and also for failing to notice genuinely bad products out there.

Ryanair flights, for example. 'Booking fees' for concerts. Premium rate phone lines, especially on customer support lines. Ringtones. Dry cleaning. Luas tickets. Fianna Fail governments.

These are really shit products, and I hope to see them on the next Consumers International list, rather than products that are actually legitimate, but are merely the subject of bad marketing lies.

When I'm world dictator...

... the very first decree I'll introduce is that all advertisements of any kind must be able to PROVE all claims or face the loss of 50% of company profits.

"Because you're worth it?" Prove that EVERY SINGLE PERSON exposed to the ad is 'worth' it, ie they can all afford to purchase overpriced cosmetics. Since poor African feckers obviously can't, L'Oreal hands over the profits.

"Probably the best lager in the world?" Show us the test results of blind tastings held under clinical conditions in every country on earth, indicating that Carlsberg won on every occasion. There aren't any such tests? Oops, hand over the money you lying Danish gits.

Overnight, my blood pressure would be spared the excess lying of ponytailed advertising and marketing scumbags, and so would yours.

We'd soon see ads like 'Renault, decent enough cars that will rust after a while, though' and 'Casillero del diablo, it's mass produced cheap South American plonk but we're marking up the price for Britain and Ireland.'

Think about it. You could learn to trust the media again.