Tuesday 4th September

The Whole point of advertising is to persuade you that something is true that you might otherwise either not have noticed or to buy something you would not have done without the advert.  And the strange thing is that although we know the advertisers are lying, or grossly exaggerating at the very least, we tend to believe them.  Or to accept their statements as accurate, because after all there is the Advertising Standards Authority isn’t there, so they aren’t going to tell downright porkies, are they?

Right, so this is the advert I am beginning to get really angry about.  It is all over London at the moment and it is on behalf of the sponsors of the Olympics, McDonalds, Coke, Cadburys, Visa and all the rest.  As if they need even more advertising anyway.  The advert says ‘There would be no – (then in BIG LETTERS) World records broken, great achievements, heart-stopping moments, BLAH BLAH BLAH.  Without the following sponsors…..

And they are absolutely wrong.  Yes, those sponsors have paid a lot of money which maybe make the games bigger and better than they would have been.  But are they really saying that without McDonalds splashed all over London we would not have had an Olympic Games at all, or that somehow the games themselves would never have taken place without Coke lubricating the whole thing.  Had the IOC a few years ago decreed that there would be no corporate sponsorship at all, do you really think that the Olympic Games would not exist.  The truth is that the money would have come from somewhere else, and if there wasn’t enough money then the Games would still have happened, but maybe not without quite the same razz-a-ma-tazz, not all the brand new venues, not quite so spectacular an Opening Ceremony.  Because despite the sponsor’s ludicrous claims it is the Athletes who break World records, who achieve the un-missable moments, whose human endeavour is what the games are all about.

So, yes ,there still would be all those great achievements, we just wouldn’t have Coke and Big Macs shoved down our throats at the same time.