Waterstones, the high street chain of bookshops, has rebranded. Serifs and capital letters were soooooo 20th century, and with that in mind, they are no longer to be found anywhere near a new Waterstones logo. Looky here:

Heaven forbid a capital letter or a serif should make itself into a company's logo in the 21st century.

As part of this amazingly radical image change, which is sure to put the noses of hardcore Waterstonian traditionalists out of joint, Waterstones has a new slogan. It is – (drumroll please) – “feel every word“.

I would imagine that the marketing team wish for a full stop and dramatic pause after each word in their new tagline.

I mean, look at “feel every word”. What does that actually mean? That when you read the word “and” as a connective in a poorly written sentence of a poorly written book, your toes will curl up in irrepressible ecstasy because you bought the title from Waterstones?

Waterstones is precisely the place where you’re less likely to ‘feel every word’ of a book than anywhere else. You have more chance of feeling the words, whatever that actually means, if you amble down to an independent bookshop with a limited range, and pick up a book which a member of staff may well have ordered in themselves, and might have something to say about it.

Waterstones stores are positively sterile compared to independent book shops. You would go there because you can probably find the title you’re looking for, because it probably is a reasonably popular book. It will cost a reasonable price – probably about average. Everything about Waterstones is reasonable and average. The extreme high of ‘feeling every word’ can not be found within its identikit confines on the high street of anytown.

Put simply, Waterstones know that they’re lying if they suggest that by purchasing your books through them, as opposed to anywhere else, you are more likely to engage in textual intercourse with the book you’ve procured. The slogan is a feeble attempt to address the exact deficiency you’re met with by shopping at a standard chain retailer.

I cannot be bothered to sift through the numerous other examples of laughably misleading slogans, but I wish they were as honest as Pepsi’s slogan in the Ricky Gervais flick The Invention of Lying. It was this: “Pepsi – for when they don’t have Coke”. Spot on.

As a general rule, advertising consists mainly of crap. Most adverts contain statements that are, if not an entirely untrue fabrication, at the very least somewhat misleading.

To draw upon a current example, Listerine seem to be running an advert which suggests that their mouthwash is similarly powerful as the might which Moses biblically used to part the Red Sea in Christian mythology. It is mouthwash, for Christ’s (or indeed Moses’) sake. It might clean your mouth a little, at best.

There are plenty of adverts, past and present, which can be deconstructed without needing to resort to the specificity of nitpicking. The deception of most advertising is blindingly obvious, but companies rely on us suffering a bombardment of ludicrous statements until we simply believe their un-truths.

I hardly think that the “seven signs of ageing” are likely to hold up against scientific research. Nor do I think that women tend to enjoy their lunch break marvelling about the wonders of a new product which will relieve them of constipation.

Anyhow, it is Vodafone that are currently confusing the heck out of me with their current advert. This is the one.

So, right at the end, the narrator makes two comments. His first, in a gruff but emotional voice which conveys the sincerity of their pitch, is “People depend on our network”.

Fair play – I think some people would be stranded if their Vodafone mobile suddenly refused to make or receive calls.

The second statement, retaining the gruff emotion, says “Power to you”.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Vodafone have tried to be profound and concise, but have produced an advert which makes no sense whatsoever. It’s a complete paradox. If people depend on their network, that rather puts them in the position of power. If we could cut off Vodafone at will, then I suppose it would be ‘power’ to us.

It simply is not possible for us simultaneously depend heavily upon a mobile network, and be considered ultimately powerful because of this.

Stoopid Vodafone.

(Oh, and the main female actor is wholly unconvincing).

Last night I was in the Dadmobile as he turned round on Meredith Road in Ipswich, to get the car refuelled. A van turned the corner at a stupid speed, and due to the icy conditions, slid onto the wrong side of the road. Thankfully, nobody else was in that bit of road at the time; they would have been obliterated if they had been.  The guy driving was clearly an idiot, lacking the mental capacity to develop an ounce of common sense.

Anyhow, having turned round (which we had to do because the entrance was initially blocked by cars on the other side of the road) and entered the petroleum-vending establishment, I sat in the warmth of the car, listening to Heart FM pump out some quality adverts. To my great amusement, one of them began along the lines of “Hello, it’s your freezer here”.

It continued: “I need to be defrosted regularly so I can do my job properly”. “I am more energy efficient if you defrost me”. I’m paraphrasing, but this is pretty much the gist of it. I couldn’t help but feel that the people who made the advert had a very low estimation of the listeners’ intelligence.

How stupid do they think people are, that to tell them it’s wise to defrost a freezer, they have to make an advert wherein a freezer itself  talks to the listener? And then I realised, we live in a world where, in incredibly icy conditions, people bomb round residential street corners in a large van. Where people tailgate you in even worse conditions on a less-than-ideal stretch of road between Ely and Cambridge. People are that stupid. Even if their freezer became a big ice-cube, it wouldn’t occur to some people to defrost it. I take back my initial reservations; the advert was targeted perfectly.