Whatever You Do, Don't Push Button

You know there is some bad reading going on, when the star of one of the worst adverts in recent memory is made to look like an acting regular.

Imagine the most wooden thing you can possibly imagine.

Woodier.

Woodier.

Try Woody Harrelson and Woody Allen at a wooden workbench making a balsa wood model of the cowboy from Toy Story and a famous cartoon woodpecker in a gigantic oak-furniture filled studio in a timber framed house.

That still doesn't quite describe Rory Mcllroy's performance in the latest Santander ad.

A great golfer yes, well, usually. But a good performer in front of the camera? Not on this evidence.

Do Santander now sponsor Jessica Ennis and Rory Mcllroy? At least I got why Jenson was there, as part of the sponsorship deal with McLaren. The other two, much as they are sports stars - appeared to be there only as celebrity space, in a Gillette campaign approach.



Maybe it's about them being medalists in sports? No, they wouldn't claim that two of them were losers surely..!

It's basically get a famous person to read the features of the card, though at least it tries to come up with a narrative or setup to make it more interesting. It does go on for quite a while, the person sat near me whilst watching it said "this is dragging on a bit." by time Rory popped up again. If you are going to pay that much money to get three major sports stars to appear in your ad, it would be good if they could act just a little.

In the end, like most campaigns that try to list features and benefits at a time when you aren't really paying much attention; I cannot (clearly) remember a single one of the features. (I've seen it six times today.)

Rather like the recent Renault ad that listed about 15 different specification features as it were a brochure on my screen, piling features leads to ads that sound like this to most people at home...