What's in an ad?

Let me put things into context. I haven’t lived in the UK for nearly 3 decades. I’ve visited. The annual trip in the summer to catch up with family and friends. But as I spend most of the time abroad, I am not really in touch with the predominant feelings and mood of the country. The zeitgeist as the German’s call it.

So one of the ways I try to keep up with things is by watching UK television. It struck recently the the kind of things that are being advertised there might give some sort of insight into what life is like.    

Having seen many ads over the run up to Christmas, I sincerely hope that this is not the case!

Why?

Because there seem to 3 main themes to what is being pushed, none of them particularly positive and they may well be connected.

I bet you can’t guess the first one.

I have never seen so many ads for betting sites. There’s Padddy Power, Bet 365, Ladbrookes, William Hill, Bet Fred, Coral - just to name a few.

But it not so much the number of bookmakers that concerns me (although it is quite alarming), but more the way you are being encouraged to bet. 

I remember the days when you used to bet on the outcome of a game or maybe even the final score. But now? It seems the possibilities are endless.  

You can try to predict when there will be a corner or a yellow card. You can predict a no ball or a wide.  

You can take a punt on who will be the first and last scorers - in fact pretty much anything that happens in a sporting event is now there for you to gamble on.

So what is the reason behind this? I would bet (pun very much intended) that it is to encourage you to gamble more often and lose more money. 

Very few people win over the long term when they gamble. I don’t have any figures to back up my hunch, but I am pretty sure that the average spend per punter has increased as a result of these options. 

Plus, I suspect that even people who would not normally gamble as they don’t know enough about the teams or current form, might be tempted to “have a flutter” on something not related to studying form or having specialist knowledge.

The result will be a lot more people losing money that they can ill afford to lose.

This may have a direct bearing on the second group of ads that proliferate our airways - pay-day loan companies.

These are generally despicable organizations that are targeting those that seem to have difficulty making the money last from one paycheck to the next. 

They show a variety of everyday events that can financially stump us (the cooker breaking down or emergency car repairs) and after a moment of panic, the pay-day loan company is a knight in shinning armour that swoops in to rescue you.

The only problem with this is the repayment rates they charge. The good ones start at a couple of hundred percent and the worst run into the thousands!

If you bear in mind that they are aimed at people who are having trouble making ends meet anyway, these ridiculously high payback rates mean it is almost inevitable that many customers will not be able to pay them back immediately and therefore end up paying an extortionate amount compared to what they have borrowed.  

I wonder if there is any data to show how many who use these services need to do so as they have lost too much to some of the aforementioned betting sites?

And finally the third category/. Now I know it is Christmas so this last group might be over-represented at this time of the year, but nonetheless, there are many of them.  

What is this category? Helping the homeless. 

The Salvation Army, Shelter, Crisis and many more are not just asking for our help, they are trying to change our attitudes by showing that these can be ordinary folk like you and me that have just fallen on bad times.

If fact there was a record number of deaths amongst the homeless in the UK in 2018 and record numbers reported living rough.

That may well be the case in some part due to gambling and legalized loan sharks when you get into financial trouble.

The UK seems to be sending very contradictory messages at the moment. It has become very politically correct in terms of what you can say about each other and the various ethnic groups that live there, but the authorities allow these irresponsible advertisements knowing full well the damaging impact they can have on a person’s life.

If the government was to crack down on the first 2 groups of ads, perhaps we wouldn’t need  as many of the 3rd!