Sir, - I think I've just seen the single most offensive television advertisement in all my 20-plus years of adult viewing. It's a winter's day, and a shiny new saloon of a certain well-known luxury brand sails by a queue of people at a bus stop. Three women stare forlornly after the car: one in her twenties, one middle aged, and one elderly. All are clearly meant to be understood as being "poor".
Suddenly the youngest starts to sadly sing an old Janis Joplin song, which begins, '`Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?/ My friends all have one, I must make amends." The middle-aged lady takes up the song, in the same sad, hopeless manner. The implication is clear: these people will never have a Mercedes Benz, because they are losers (their use of public transport, and their dowdy clothing marks them out as such, in the language of advertising). To be a winner, get a Mercedes Benz.
What a typically 1990s barefaced appeal to our lower instincts of one-upmanship, and what a grotesque insult to anyone not wealthy enough to escape the horror of having to wait for a bus. The morality of today's advertising industry: poverty considered as an interesting (or even amusing) element in a marketing campaign. - Yours, etc.,
Colin Rothery, Ashfield Road, Ranelagh, Dublin 6.