Australia’s largest telecommunications company, Telstra, have recently approved a TV advertisement which is sure to end up on next years worst advertisement list.
The advertisement is promoting the Telstra 1234 phone service, where you can get everything you need. Apparently someone in an expensive marketing company decided that the best way to communicate that involved a female washing clothes in a laundromat.
The female opens up the washing machine or clothes dryer to find a talking sock. If you’ve currently got a picture of your 4 year old nephew or niece with their arm in a sock, making a mouth with their fingers and thumb – you would be dead on the money. The sock then proceeds to tell the female about the service and at the end picks up a pair of the females lacey underwear1 another sock and makes a comment about finding a room; not what I’d personally consider all that appropriate for a Telstra advertisement. Of course the advertisement wouldn’t be complete without the talking sock bashing its head into the side of the washing machine/dryer and babbling a little more about something useless.
In short, I can’t tell you a lot about the Telstra 1234 service because the television advertisement was so poor. If Telstra are looking to engage the Australian public anytime in the near future to inform them about a new service; I’d advise that they do not use the same company or division that produced the current Telstra 1234 advertisement.