'What’s the most annoying financial advert?' poll discussion

Former_MSE_Lawrence

Poll between 8-15 February 2010:

What’s the most annoying financial advert?

Advertisers are adopting ‘lets be funny with money’ techniques, and these ads are so often repeated it can feel like there’s no escape. So this week for a bit of fun, we want to know which of the following current ads you find the most irritating.

Where available, the ads are linked to below.

A. Barclays' Piggy Savings with Stephen Merchant voiceover - 1% (170 votes)
B. Barclaycard’s Waterslide/Rollercoaster through town (view it) - 2% (243 votes)
C. Compare the market’s compare the meerkat (view it) - 6% (758 votes)
D. Confused.com’s ‘It’s so easy to use’ vox pop (view it) - 5% (675 votes)
E. Direct Line’s red phone ads with Paul Merton/Stephen Fry voiceovers (view it) - 2% (292 votes)
F. GoCompare’s Opera Singer - Go Compare (view it) - 53% (7157 votes)
G. Halifax’s radio-presenting staff playing Spandau Ballet’s ‘Gold’ (view it) - 21% (2763 votes)
H. HSBC’s ‘we’re the world’s local bank’ (view it) - 1% (115 votes)
I. ING Direct’s cushion the blow airbag savings (view it) - 2% (288 votes)
J. Mastercard’ s Priceless campaign – Mastercard (view it) - 0% (43 votes)
K. Moneysupermarket’s Haggle Hero with Omid Djalili (view it) - 3% (336 votes)
L. NatWest’s MoneySense free financial ‘help’ - 4% (590 votes)

Voting has now closed, but you can still click 'post reply' to discuss below. Also, read Martin's musings on whether annoying ads are really a bad thing. Thanks

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Robgmun

G is the worst

K is by far the best

eileenfromplaistow

Love the meerkats, hate the smug Nat West "advisers", in no small part to their actor customers (think I recognised one from the tv)

LimeLight

Where's the option for 'all of them'?

wildthing01

i voted halifax - those adverts are really smug (plus i dislike halifax as they did me out of my 'windfall' money when they became a plc, and were really unhelpful to me when i had been a loyal customer for years)

i love the meerkats!!! their website is hilarious!

irishwench69

Hi

'G' (Halifax) is by FAR the worst - it is so bad, I have actually considered changing accounts away from them (damn their regular savers for being so good )

I love that song, but ARRRGGGGHHH.......

However, there are soooooo many annoying ads on that list - the confused.com vox pop and opera singing one are very high up on the ARRRRGGGGGHHHHH scale......but I don't mind mastercard or the barclaycard rollercoaster one (that could be because of the great song though - and at least this one doesn't have a smug t**t in scarily tight shorts like the swimming chute one!!!!)

Thank goodness for sky+ and being able to skim over ads

IW x

SarahNeedle1872

F is definately the worst, closely followed by G.

Would love a go on B, and K is brilliant!!

MothballsWallet

All of them except B. At least they picked a decent tune; Halifax just butchered Spandau for me (just like Cowell & Co's version of REM for Haiti).

Billco_2

I'd happily watch them all time and time again over any of those swiftcover adverts....god I hate them....

Go Compare was funny the first couple times, 1000x later however, its annoying.....

I voted for the Halifax one though, thats just irritating and like someone else here said, "smug"

[Deleted User]

Go compare and Halifax are equally as annoying.

gilligansyle

Halifax add is really smug, but then I've never really like Halifax ads. The whole, 'these are real people' thing annoys me.

But by far the most irritating is definitely 'Go compare'.

As someone has said, a lot of them are OK first few times and then you just want to strangle them.

Would definitely have voted 'all of the above' if it had been available.