Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Bad press for adverorials

The Express's thinly veiled attempts to pass off advertorials as real news was tantamount to a Premiership star not trying too hard against his old club. At the end of the day, and with the score at 0-0, no-one gets hurt, so what if a few rules got a bent a little?

After all, how many travel puffs have you seen tarted up as the poetically knowing prose of the world weary. Or adjectives laden as a hefty tip in a breathless blurb disguised as a restaurant review?

I don't even blame Richard Desmond. He's a businessman. I'd expect him to do what he could to keep an advertiser happy.

But the question remains: how the hell did it get on the page? And it shouldn’t have taken the Advertising Standards Authority to see it for what it was – a creeping cancer that should have never dodged the copytaster’s spike.

As for ad concessions, I think the Sunday Express probably did enough with last week’s awful Tesco Club Card ad that reduced their splash on The McCann’s stalker to a mere five lines.