ITV/Channel 4/Channel 5
Marks & Spencer have got a new advertising strategy for food. Not content with nausing us senseless with the postcoital Dervla Kirwan voiced “this is not just food – this is M&S food” cumpaign they’ve returned to the fray with an assault on our senses they are calling “Just because”. Caroline Quentin, a comedian there is no recorded footage of ever being funny, is voicing the ads now and a typical offering takes us through M&S Easter goodies and tells us why they are so fricking amazing. “Because salmon tastes even better when you know where it’s come from” (the sea?); then as an Easter egg cake is cut in half “because it’s got the EGGS Factor!” taking us back to Pliny from Histor’s Eye, Sky’s xenophobic time travelling crow as imagined by Poowart Lee and Richturd Herring on This Morning With Richard, Not Judy (“What are GCSEggs, Histor? I have never bird of hen”). That she finishes that line with a congratulatory giggle only adds to the already sizeable boak factor.
There’s a fine line between aspirational and smug and I doubt if Marks & Spencer fully realise exactly how far beyond that line they have passed. If the line is drawn in Land’s End, then we’re in Shiteinabucket, Northern Hebrides. It gets worse. We’ve got Quentin espousing the virtues of Marks & Spencer “Fuller, Longer” range of foodstuffs that can help you lose weight. Really, Quentin? Really? And you eat these yourself do you? Exactly how much longer are you fuller for?
In final serving of faeces bisque the series is jammed with desperate phoned-in copywriting like “Personally, I think they all deserve awards” and “now that IS a happy Christmas” that makes it sound like it came straight from Danny Siegel, Jane Sterling’s idiot cousin on Mad Men. Advertising jizz garglers are doing some of their worst work in years on one of the nation’s most treasured brands.
Why? Just because.