The Sainsburys advert

After seeing English supermarket chain Sainsburys new ‘christmas advert’ I can only guess at the ideas that didn’t make the cut:

British prisoners of war line up in single file, emaciated and weary as the SS officer walks amongst them. As he points them individually towards the labour camp or the mass grave a rustling can be heard as one cheeky soldier munches away on Sainsburys Ready Salted crisps, now with 33% extra free.

Helmand Province, an infantry patrol approaches a suspected Taliban-held village. Suddenly an IUD is triggered, three men are hit. The medic rushes towards the worst hit soldier and pulls new Sainsburys basics cheesecake from his pouch. The injured man nibbles away and his maimed leg miraculously heals as “Buy one, get one free” scrolls across the screen.

The young brigadier kicks his spur into his mount, the cannons loom in front of him as the Light Brigade tears into the valley. His men fall, screaming from their horses, all around him come the cries of the dying and the roar of cannonfire. The officer reaches into his jacket pocket and admires the swanky new packaging on his Sainsburys Lime Cordial.

Yes, please give money to and honour our veterans, but please don’t try to sell shit or make war pretty.
As Robert E.Lee once said “It is well that war is so terrible, or else we would grow too fond of it…nearly as fond as I am of these Sainsburys bourbon biscuits!”

6 thoughts on “The Sainsburys advert

  1. I agree wholeheartedly. No matter how hard they try to appeal to are emotions, it just screams ‘spend,spend,spend’, to me. As the big department stores battle each year, I dread to think what ever will be next, Anne Frank fronting John Lewis? We’ll see! Well written! 🙂

  2. As you might have seen from my blog, the First World War is a very sensitive thing for me and so I did feel much the same way about that ad.

    Incidentally, it was friends with similar circumstances to mine who showed me the ad. The reactions were mixed but there was a general feeling they’d gone too far with this ad for most of them.

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