It’s almost the end of the year, and I’m sitting in my friend’s living room in London, wondering what to write about that anyone might find vaguely interesting or amusing.  And then I thought I would follow the example set by so many editors and publishers at this time of year, and think about highs and lows of 2008 and make a few predictions for 2009.

And conveniently, the “I’m a PC” add has just appeared on the TV, so, to start off, my top five best and worst adverts for 08 will be my first area to review:

Top 5 worst adverts

1) As I mentioned in the work blog, I took a dislike to the Citroen C5 adverts, and I would extend that as I can’t think of a single car advert that made me want to go and invest in some form of transport this year.

2) All perfume adverts, which become more frequent and more annoying as we get closer to Christmas. I don’t need to see naked models skip through fields of photographers whilst pulling stars out of the sky and ripping off films they once appeared in [Moulin Rouge, anyone?]. Just tell me what it smells like . I certainly don’t want to smell like Britney, Jordan, Kate Moss or any other crazy celebrity, thank you. Oh, and I preferred it when we still pronounced it “Fraygrunts”. When did it become “fraggrance” for the British consumers?

3) David Beckham in the Sharpie pens adverts. Come on. Who’s going to believe that he can write?

ghome_08a4) The new Mr Muscle ads are EXTREMELY annoying. What happened to the weedy guy in the specs? Why have we got the terrible, badly dubbed CGI thing?

5) Then there’s the “I’m a PC” adverts. A very late reaction to Apple’s “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” ads with Mitchell and Webb. My biggest issue with these adverts is that they were so reactionary. There’s nothing new, nothing that actually tells you why PCs are better than Macs.

And a special mention also goes to EDF Energy for the “this advert is 100% recycled”, which has been nominated by my very Wise friend.

Hmm, a bit trickier…. Top 5 Good ads

1) I think the new Barnardos advert showing how a teenage girl gets into drugs and ends up in prison is very powerful. It almost made me set up the direct debit to donate… [note for New Year’s Resolution list]

2) I love the Christmas Tesco adverts wth Des 0’Connor where the price labels keep appearing. I know the concept has been done before with the prices, but Des is very Christmassy.

3) The Ask Frank ad I blogged about last week is still excellent.

4) Oh. The Cadubry’s Gorilla. Nothing to do with chocolate, but BRILLIANT. Got everyone talking about Cadbury’s and as we all know. You talk about chocolate, you want chocolate. [excuse me a second….]

5) I’m struggling. I can’t think of a 5th advert that I’ve liked this year. Give me your suggestions?

If it wasn’t already almost midnight, I’d continue this post. However, I’m sleepy.  So I’ll call it a night, and make a promise to finish my thoughts on this subject before the year is through…

(P.S. A few predictions are; that adverts for any product targeted at women will continue to be patronising and aimed at making us feel crappy, ‘they’ will still be trying to convince people that ordering a “SoCo” in a bar won’t make you sound like a tit, car adverts will never make me want to buy a car, mobile ringtone aderts will remain annoying, Iceland won’t catch on that assosciating with Kerry Catona doesn’t make us aspire to shop there, Cillit Bang will still be do bad it’s good, and the product still won’t actually work)