Now I am fortunate to run an advertising agency based in Brighton called Nexus and we have a mix of clients, not all of which have the tremendous budgets for advertising that SC Johnson (a family company) do and still we wouldn’t dare put this crap (pun still intended) in front of a client as a demonstration of creativity.

So with the power of YouTube I did a little digging to see if Glade ads had always been stinkers and guess what………they have:

1962

At least in the ads of 40 odd years ago they weren’t as vulgar and left it to our imagination what smells we might want to mask. I have to say that trying to make out that kids are the cause of unpleasant bathroom smells is a bit low. Honesty is not always associated with advertising but come on Glade, those angelic kids (usually boys because obviously girls must smell like roses) don’t need to freshen the air afterwards…..it’s us big people!

There are a number of parodies on the net which is usually a sign that an ad is brilliant or that the ad men have got it completely wrong and in Glade’s case I think that it is the latter:

Do us poor commercial viewers a favour Glade and next time you are going to spend money on TV advertising have the decency to invest in some creative ideas that don’t involve smelly kids.