Is he serious?Well, yes, he appears to be. I'd have assumed they went to the company and the advert creators. That's if I bothered to wonder at all, that is...
And blow me, that's just what happens!
The assumption being that if you don't donate some money to charity, you don't deserve to make any. A view shared by at least one commenter:While Andrew Goodfellow, deputy publisher at Ebury Books, says Orlov's advance was "cheaper than most of the human authors in the Top 10", the book's real-life proceeds will be shared with Comparethemarket.com, which owns the rights to the character, ad agency VCCP, the campaign creator, and ghost writer Val Hudson.So why the concern? Well, a clue is in the examples of other campaigns:
Gio Compario Invented by the meerkat's rival site Go Compare, and played by Welsh opera singer Wayne Evans, the character releases a Christmas single this week: a cover of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town. At least this is for charity: Mr Compario is donating 25p from every single to Teenage Cancer Trust.
Churchill The nodding dog from the eponymous car insurer has been available for almost 10 years, costing £15.50, coming in hard or fluffy versions and saying "oh yes". Churchill, which owns the rights, donates £1.99 to the Dogs Trust for every sale and, last year, licensed the hound to 22 pantomimes, where he agreed with both Shane Richie and Linda Lusardi.
/facepalm
Oh my God. People who make and sell something, wanting to keep the money.
ReplyDeleteHow terrible. NOT!
Julia,
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure you'll find this is the loon with the 'eastern european' girlfriend who once claimed on CIF that the whole ad franchise is racist because the meerkat's voice stereotypes his missus, and besides if he didn't do something she wouldn't put out for a month.
DSD
No, I was wrong. It was another white middle-class male who bears a quite astonishing resemblance to Armstrong. Do you think the Graun has a cloning facility of some kind to produce these nutballs?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/22/advertising-racism-meerkats
DSD
What a load of tat.
ReplyDeleteThe TV/advertising character that me and my kids want is the Birds Eye polar bear (voiced by William Dafoe, allegedly). The one who hides in the freezer and says things like: "Newsflash, Laura. Prawns."
I wonder if 'grooverider' is paying royalties to the estate of Tommy Cooper for the use of that avatar.
ReplyDeleteWV: tractine. I must say Blogger's word verification algorithm comes up with some jolly good words, some of which deserve to have a meaning. Tractine is redolent of some particularly messy and violent mediæval theological dispute.
The Guardian might reasonably ask who took huge wedges of cash from the British people in the period 1997-2010 and wasted it.
ReplyDeleteOr who exactly pedals the global warming scam and lines their own pockets while we shiver in yet another cold spell?
No, I didn't think they'd ask difficult questions like those either. So much easier to froth over trivia than face reality.
PS I liked Edwin Greenwood's Tractine word verification, but mine is Scurdo, who sounds like a devious Italian thug.
The record I'd like to see this christmas is the one where the meerkat has Gio Compario's testicles in his teeth while the fat welsh tenor attempts to blast him away with a twelve bore.
ReplyDeleteBut I've never been known for my christmas spirit.
Oh, and if we're doing wvs then mine is 'oriested' which is almost what will happen to those Dublinners marching agains the Oirish budget.
My VR is "ingsh".
ReplyDeleteSounds like a vaguely Jewish expression of disgust or indifference.
"What do you think of that Sol?"
"Ahh, ingsh to the lot of 'em"
"I'm pretty sure you'll find this is the loon with the 'eastern european' girlfriend who once claimed on CIF that the whole ad franchise is racist because the meerkat's voice stereotypes his missus..."
ReplyDeleteI did wonder, but it doesn't appear on his list of articles.
Mind you, it garnered such a response that I wouldn't be surprised if it's gone down the CiF memory hole...
"The TV/advertising character that me and my kids want is the Birds Eye polar bear..."
Oh, yes! I'm surprised no-one's cashed in on that already. You can buy a special pack of PG-Tips with a toy Monkey, I see...
"WV: tractine. I must say Blogger's word verification algorithm comes up with some jolly good words, some of which deserve to have a meaning. "
I'm sure someone's working on an add-on for that... ;)
"So much easier to froth over trivia than face reality."
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty much CiF in a nutshell...
"The record I'd like to see this christmas is the one where the meerkat has Gio Compario's testicles in his teeth while the fat welsh tenor attempts to blast him away with a twelve bore."
Oh, indeed! No-one would remember what the advert was FOR, mind...
I think regulars here ought to always post interesting WVs. More interesting probably than CiF waffles.
ReplyDeleteMy WV: Slikance, or looking at an icy patch before walking on it
JM, re the Bird's Eye Bear, me and my lass saw a woman pushing a buggy a couple of weeks ago and her child had one.
ReplyDeleteI suggested to the lass that we run after her and nick it, but she chickened out.
But hopefully it has a string you can pull and it then alternates between saying "Newflash, Laura: prawns!" and "No Laura, nobody does."
Snedhewa
ReplyDeleteThe sound made as your posterior hits the ground following a slikance