This is a tough one to call. Every week there’s a celeb prattling on about some product or other for an undisclosed sum. Outside of tech our faves were a Desperate Housewife advertising spuds and Louise Redknapp doing an impression of a binge drinker for ladies’ beer brand Eve. Inside the land of gadgets we had the weird and the worrisome. Click through for our top five.
Darren Gough Plusnet In one of the ropiest celebrity endorsements of the year, Darren Gough gave out some cups of tea in the centre of Sheffield, his only company, a grotesquely modelled giant plastic terrier representing Plusnet. The press release emphasised that it was a “decent” cup of tea: shame they couldn’t match the tea with the celebrity endorsement. Here’s Darren and his mutt.
JLS
Wii Chop Chop We don’t need to tell you what this looks like. Whether it’s meant to be tongue in cheek or not, we still took the opportunity to stick the kettle on rather than watch JLS…going through the motions. Who thought it was a good idea to make JLS play Wii Chop Chop – the game where you just chop things really fast? We’re baffled.
Take That
Samsung Galaxy Tab Robbie chortling through an endorsement of the Galaxy Tab was the best and worst celebrity endorsement of the year. It was great that there was some remedy to the pre-prepared saccharine speeches usually associated with celebrity endorsement, but this meant that it was a disastrous endorsement for Samsung, and probably cost them a pretty penny too. Robbie said: “Samsung is great. And we’ve always done it. It is the best ones. And they love us. And it’s important that we do singing, and then put these with us.” (Skip to 6:51 for the giggles.)
Terry Wogan
DS Brain Training Cringe as Wogan blatantly walks us through Nintendo’s marketing strategy for the Nintendo DS – chasing the silver pound. Show the over 60s that the DS is so simple to use it might as well be analog: “You’ve got a little pencil that you can use” beams Tezza. (Subtext: not scary button pressing.) We’ve never seen this advert on telly, but that’s probably because it’s only ever scheduled in between reruns of Poirot and Countdown.
Bernie Ecclestone
Hublot After Bernie Ecclestone was mugged and his Hublot watch stolen, he sent Hublot this snap of himself battered and bruised, and suggested the ad himself. Somewhere in there they decided to make it a bit more worthy, saying that Hublot was against violence and racism, although where the racism part comes in we’re not sure. This was a shocking and unusual endorsement, but while it’s an unusual and candid advertising strategy, we’re not sure it’s an appropriate way to flog super-expensive timepieces.
What do you think has been the worst celebrity tech endorsement of 2010? Drop us a line in the comments!
This is a tough one to call. Every week there’s a celeb prattling on about some product or other for an undisclosed sum. Outside of tech our faves were a Desperate Housewife advertising spuds and Louise Redknapp doing an impression of a binge drinker for ladies’ beer brand Eve. Inside the land of gadgets we had the weird and the worrisome. Click through for our top five.
