Tonight, children (or: media students for that matter), we are going to dissect an annoying advert. It goes like this...
A black cab pulls up in a presumably London road. A female passenger boards the cab through the back door. The cabbie turns round, the woman says "To Hampstead, please".0
Children, please note that the driver is designed to be a typical car driving male: slightly red faced, feisty and it wouldn't surprise me if we'd find a chestwig if we removed his top. The woman, however, strikes us as a typical London city type. This is down to the fact she looks incredibly smart and can afford to live in posh Hampstead.
The woman confidently takes a seat and arrogantly looks out of the window. The cabbie turns round yet again. "I take it you didn't watch the game last night?"
Attention, now. Why is the godamn cabbie so annoyingly chatty, you might wonder. Well, that's part of his job. Drivers of all sorts are just like hairdressers in that respect. See, that's not the point. The point is what he actually just said. He implies the assumption that the female naturally didn't watch last night's football match. From a feminist point of view, that's very offensive. Our woman, however, does not take the easy way out of the dilemma (which would have involved chopping the guy's balls off, amongst a few other unpleasant things). Instead she....
Goes "I did actually". Our cabbie is stunned, baffled, confused. We see his eyes in the back mirror and the look on his face implies a smug "yeah right". To his horror, the woman then starts banging on about amazing tackles and Sky stats and impressive defensive records.
Oh dear. She has, quite clearly, lost it. Big time. The idea behind this ad appears to be something along the lines of "women are into football, too" (and get women to get themselves a minidish, of course). Unfortunately, the message we get is far from that. We perceive the woman as annoying right from the start. She's patronising the poor cabbie. Now why would anyone want to associate themselves with a woman like that? Empowered women, my arse. If you can't fight the enemy (ie men), act just like him. Yeah, right. I really want to impress with my obscure football knowledge. Cunning plan that is.
The most annoying thing about this ad is that it's so obvious. "Hey, we need to get into the female market, even though it's football we're talking about". "But women hate football". "Exactly. Now there's an idea...".
Just a piece of advice: Ladies, don't get yourself a minidish!