Scream

I’m sorry to go on about it, really I am, but the Business Breakfast team won’t let me talk about it on air and I’ve got to vent somewhere. Even at the risk of being incredibly, incredibly, incredibly repetitive.

Which addle-pated nincompoop was responsible for the Business in Dubai conference radio advertisement? If there were (and don’t you believe for a second I won’t be lobbying for it) an award for the worst radio advertisement of the year, not only would it be the most hotly contested award in the region, but my money says the BID ad would win hands down.

Who thought that what I needed on my way into work was to listen to fifteen seconds of random thrashing, feedback and screaming followed by some smug sounding git telling me that if my business isn’t working I can go to their damn conference? Great way to advertise a conference, by the way – go down there when it’s on and have a look at a room full of self-selected business failures.

It’s a new, horrible, trend in Dubai radio advertising: use some random sound as an example of the concept you want to introduce. The problem with this is that the sound takes half the ad, then explaining the lame idea behind the sound takes up the rest. The poor, sad, brand being pushed takes a definite second fiddle to the awkward, gangly execution of an idea that should have been strangled at birth – and, come to think of it, so should the ‘creative’ behind it.

Something’s got to change, as The Stranglers tell us.