Bananas

Bananas have their own advertising campaign. Bizarre as that may sound, 97.3FM today was running an advert for bananas.

Now I'm sure they deserve their own advertising campaign, after all they've put a lot of hard work in, in the world of fruit. They've frequently led from the front when other fruit failed to step up to the mark, but now it seems that bananas are in need of some moral support.


Bananas: Well Hung

The advert today was 30 seconds of a smack-in-your-face reminder that bananas were in shops, they were a great price, they were healthy and that you should go and buy some bananas today.

I'm convinced. I rushed out straight away and bought a car full of bananas.

Well, obviously I didn't really, but this radio campaign was a prime example of pouring money down the drain when it could have been used a hell of a lot more effectively. How about spending some money on effective point of purchase? When people walking into the supermarket, how about some sort of ingenious signage around the fruit counter reminding us of how great bananas are? Even a man in a giant banana costume walking up and down the aisles of your local Coles would have more impact than throwing cash away on pointless and very banal radio ads...

Sure its another rant about pointless radio campaigns, but its painful to see money spent on - and I don't use this word lightly - shit advertising. Funnel a 1/4 of that money into the creative process and the remaining 3/4 would have worked ten times harder for you...

Carbonators

I must admit to a bit of confusion about the new advertising campaign from NRMA about the 'Carbonators'. The premise behind the campaign is that if you move your insurance from another supplier to NRMA, they will off-set one tonne of your vehicles emissions for you for free.

On the face of it, that sounds great. Except in my opinion, the whole campaign raises more questions than it asks. Sure, NRMA want people to be engaged with the concept of 'doing your bit for the environment' and they want to make their product eco-friendly, but this is still just car insurance. Its great that we have this secondary feeling of well-being, but the most important thing to anyone hunting car insurance, is that its cheap and it covers you for an accident. All-singing and dancing it doesn't need to be.

The detail that you only get to see if you access the website and click through the right areas and onto two more '?' buttons that aren't very well displayed, is that NRMA will invest in purchasing carbon credits in a number of different ways. One of those is 'sequestration of forests as certified under the NSW Greenhouse Gas Abatement scheme.' I mean, what??

I'm all for campaigns that make you think, but in this case they really should have followed the advice of the word K.I.S.S - keep it simple, stupid. I'm postively disposed to doing something about the environment but I have no idea how much one tonne is, what the NSW Greenhouse Gas Abatement scheme is or exactly how I check that my investment in growing more trees is actually investing in growing more trees. Someone could be charging 3 different customers for the same tree for all I know.

Sure it sounds cynical, and the website and the adverts with the images of 'trusted' Broncos players should develop some faith in you that NRMA can be trusted, but would it be too much to maybe simplify the message a little? Maybe explain to us up-front how much our cars produce in the way of emissions, without us having to go into the website and mess about entering all our details?

Either way, I'm not sold. I've just forked out $4000 to make my house save gallons of water should it ever decide to rain again. Sure I want to help reduce greenhouse gases, but pay more to do so?

Maybe later. Maybe when I've paid for the water tank. Or maybe I'll just pick the cheapest quote. Tough call.