Loan Advert

One advert has angered me. Well angered me more than most.

It is one of those daytime TV adverts where its target audience is down and outs. Redundant, unemployable idiots who shouldn’t be watching the TV, instead they should be out being a productive member of society.

Of course this advert is for a loan shark company. It shows a man, depicted as an absolute failure in life, the universe and everything. He is trying to mow his tiny lawn with an old inefficient electric mower. Cue connotations and denotations of struggle and strife by the advert makers. His wife stands on the porch and is joined by his stereotypical children (one male, one female) and the family dog, they all look on as their husband, father and provider fails.

After a cut sequence of the man of the house mowing a meadow (cue more connotations and denotations of struggle and suffering) the mower explodes, leaving a smouldering wreckage on his lawn. The man grimaces and sighs, the family all sigh in unison.

“RIGHT THAT’S IT. I CAN’T EVEN MOW THE LAWN, WE ARE GETTING A LOAN!”

The family get a loan and waste it all. The house is then shown with a new car on the drive and the husband is riding a sit-on-mower mowing his ten foot by ten foot lawn.

Everyone in the advert is happy, it seems, until the aftermath of the advert is exposed by the magic of SOAPBOX-VISION.

They realise that everything they have bought is depreciating in value. And the money he has borrowed has to be paid back with interest. If they are that foolish with their money, they probably wont be able to pay the money back.

The family then spirals into poverty they loose the car, the house and dare I say it, the beloved sit-on-mower.

Unfortunately the father, realising that he ruined his family with his idiocy then takes his own life. Leaving a grieving widow and the children with inherited debt.

The family dog was the smart one. He ran away from it all, and starred in a lot of RSPCA commercials and became quite successful on his own.

The moral of the story is never live beyond your means.

If you want to borrow money use it wisely.

And don’t buy anything that depreciates in value.