I sometimes wish there was more choice than the ubiquitous ‘like’ button on Facebook. At the time of writing, 398,844 people ‘like’ Marmite on Facebook. That sort of ambivalence shouldn’t be allowed. I thought it was a LOVE / HATE thing?

Idea for Marmite brand owners: start a campaign for Love and Hate buttons on Facebook.

As those who know me will attest, I’m a glass half empty kind of guy, although I like to label it realism rather than pessimism. Anyway, it means that I have a soft spot for self deprecating humour, you know that very English under the radar sort of stuff.

I saw this on the tube the other day…

…and it made me think that negativity is underused in advertising. Ads always focus on positivity, sometimes to the point of arrogance or desperation, so it’s nice when they go the other way. Somehow it seems more sincere, even though it’s more contrived than ever. Maybe it’s a sign of the times. Bleak austerity Britain has had enough of Barry Scott shouting at them about how clean his pennies are.

Let’s think a little bit about Dixons for a minute. I can’t remember the last time I bought anything there, as everyone who knows their stuff buys the things they sell online instead. If you were the bosses of Dixons you must have been getting pretty worried recently as the whole retail experience moves into the ether, people flock to electricalbargainzRus.com and your stores sit there ironically eating up their own electricity.

I love the fact that someone really got under the skin of how people perceive stores like Dixons now and subverted it into a nice little well judged piece of despair.

And let’s not forget the past masters of the art, Marmite, who deserve some sort of advertising valour medal pinned to their chest for displaying adverts of someone actually vomiting their product.

Maybe it’s because I involuntarily dislike being sold to, or because I move in marketing circles, I can hear the squeal of the truth being stretched a mile off, but it feels like this sort of attitude gets through my defences much less opposed. I might not buy my next TV from Dixons but they made me smile. Perhaps I’ll buy a memory card or some blank CDs…

Yes, they certainly will. If you have forgotten to bring the latest Harry Potter book with you this morning, didn’t have time to buy a newspaper and came off second best in the mad scrabble for a copy of Metro, then you’re left stood in the packed carriage, nestled under an armpit, reading the horoscopes over someone else’s shoulder or comitting all the stops on the current line to memory. Someone else is reading a novel, although they keep turning the pages before you’ve finished them – It won’t be long before you turn to the adverts throughout the carriage, travel insurance, property investments, Paul McKenna can make you rich, something on at the O2 etc etc, then this one which I saw the other morning: Even posters this dull get read. It’s funny ’cause it’s true.

Leaves you wondering why they need graphic designers to make them look nice as well…