The year has just started and some folks are really blundering their way through marketing-city. It almost looks like the only resolutions for 2006 were budget cuts, or people are perhaps still a bit intoxicated of the New Year celebrations. So what have I seen:

Carlsberg – Chinese new year TV-ad:
Two sisters are decorating their house for Chinese New Year, slow pace, in an educational way, all about luck and prosperity and doing it right. It appears to be another commercial from the national-campaign-lusty Singapore government, but eventually the crux comes around the corner: the fridge opens. What’s in there is Carlsberg beer and then the door opens with friends to help them to finish the booze.
So what went wrong: because of the slow pace is looks like a cheap $25 commercial. The fridge is a nice surprise in the commercial, but I expected to see some sort of cheap Chinese brand beer in the fridge, not Carlsberg. Oh and then the compulsory element of friends that come and visit. It was “squeezed in”, but doesn’t “blend in”, obviously a must-have dictated from the HQ…

Courts – Budget TV Ad:
It starts with “Court appologizes for the fact that this ad looks like at $25 ad”. Well, appologies not accepted, end of story. Man, I’ve seen lame commercials from Courts, especially the ones with Jamie Yeo as a newscaster, but this beats everything. They should seriously kick their TV-ad agencies’ butt to get to work (or maybe they should mess less with their work, so that they can be more creative).

Budget terminal – Branding of the LCC-terminal:
CAAS has started branding their new terminal, but have come up with the lamest name they could probably find (even after a contest about the name). Budget terminal sounds so el-cheapo and I really can’t imagine that there was really nothing better in the contest-entries than that. And even if you don’t want to call it e.g. “Sky blue terminal” or “Go go terminal”, it might have even been better to just brand it as “high-value terminal” or perhaps even “Changi terminal 3″ rather that something negative like “the Budget terminal”. Oh, and if you happen to go there, please take your umbrella, because I’m not sure if the builders of the “budget terminal” had the funds to build a roof over it…

We are cheap!
Appologies not accepted!