6 Lessons learned from advertising (recent edition)

One of my final year modules for my degree was “Behavioural aspects of Marketing”. This was, without doubt, my favourite module in my entire degree. It provided an interesting insight into the minds of consumers- and more often than not a rather more disturbing insight into the minds of advertisers- and basically revolved around using psychology to make people buy your stuff.
Usually, you can see the thought processes of the marketers at work in adverts, you can see how they use attractive models- whom you wish to associate with- eating a KFC or other equally unattractive meal, and it makes you want to buy it. In theory.
However, some of the adverts seem to be making a fairly concerted effort to dissuade you from purchasing their product, by clearly aiming their advert at the wrong audience, or just by being so odd or useless that you sort of forget what the advert is actually for. There are some absolute classics from the past (The Flintstone’s flogging cigarettes anyone?) but I’m going to attempt to write only about adverts you’re likely to see in an ad break this evening. I'm also going to try and avoid going into great (and often rather boring) psychological detail.
6 Lessons learned from advertising (recent edition)…


1: The Lesson: People can’t tell the difference between an actual sporting hero and a terrible 128-bit rendering of them

Learned From: Gillette Fusion



There isn’t anything fundamentally wrong with this advert. I think Gillette’s strength of branding- and frequent use of Tiger Woods, Thierry Henry and Roger Federer- is good enough to overcome this utterly bizarre change of direction.
The previous Gillette adverts featuring the sports equivalent of the super friends (assuming that the super friends was based around Superman and company mildly inconveniencing people until they ditched their old razors) were not bad. They showed a particularly mercenary side of Woods, Henry and Federer as, in the pay of the Gillette corporation, they used their not inconsiderable collective sporting talents to force one poor bloke into ditching his razor- completely ignoring the risks of hitting balls at a guy with a razor sharp, er, razor to his face. But, after their initial success getting this man to adopt the Fusion (having confronted him in a public restroom), something odd happened.
Perhaps it was a member of the Wilkinson Sword faction enacting some devious plan (straight out of a terrible comic book from the mid-60s), but all of a sudden Tiger Woods and Roger Federer were both replaced with what appears to be Playstation 2 generated doppelgangers. And there seems to be a bitter rivalry in the place of the co-operative (albeit slightly malicious) spirit of the former advert.
As I said at the beginning, there is nothing wrong with this advert; it’s just that it makes absolutely no sense considering the previous advert. And in the English version (it’s the American ad featured above) they aren’t even shown jumping out of the television, so there is no clear reason why two of the best loved sporting heroes of this generation are suddenly rendered in awful 128-bit shadows of their former selves.


2: The Lesson: Clearasil: May cause confidence, also rape.

Learned From: Clearasil



Ok, admittedly this sounds like an extreme and irrational conclusion to make- largely because it is. But I'll stick with it anyway. In this advert, having used his daily cleansing solution, this teenager has come over all ‘confident’ and ‘capable of talking to women’. It’s sickening to see.
In order to show off his newfound confidence and his lack of spots he approaches a girl putting on lipstick before going into the cinema and asks if he can borrow some. Being a generous and kind hearted soul, she obliges, albeit whilst wearing a quizzical expression.
But as she hands the lipstick to him he lunges towards her, in an attempt to place his lips upon hers. Now I’m not a fancy big city lawyer (nor am I above quoting the Simpsons), but I’m fairly certain that there is a law against forcing yourself upon someone without their prior consent. I was genuinely hoping to see him dragged off her by cinema security and delivered to a police station.
Then, as the scene cuts to a judge, he is sentenced to a couple of years in juvenile detention. And then 2 months into his 2-year sentence, covered in spots having been cut off from his precious supply of Clearasil he is shivved by a 12-year old arsonist for taking the last of the Apricot Munch Bunch. Fade to black. Admittedly this probably wouldn’t have sold any more Clearasil, but at least it would have been gritty and realistic.
Hell, disregarding the sexual assault, it’s not even a very good line.


3: The Lesson: The internet is a good place to find romance.

Learned From: eHarmony, Match.com

Good news! eHarmony, the website responsible for setting up 2% of marriages in America is coming to the UK! eHarmony is a business (I find that it sounds much more romantic if you put it that way) responsible for matching people together using some sort of complicated algorithm which compares their interests and beliefs and stuff like that.
Admittedly, if I were the sort of person who would be tempted by some sort of online dating service- which I’m really definitely not- I would probably appreciate the use of “science” (or at least someone’s ability to match up favourite films or books) to find me a match.
In fact, I am actually quite tempted to sign up on there. Posing as a staunch anti-Semite whose favourite film is Bambi, and who passionately loves Belle and Sebastian. Also enjoys weekends away on his 42-ft yaught, during which he throws kittens in bags overboard. Loves dogs. Go on eHarmony, find a woman with flexible enough morals for this fictitious man.
Also worth a mention is match.com, with their brilliant(ly lazy) approach to tv advertisements. Every few weeks they flip between having too many men, and having too many women. To be fair, this probably is the case; after all, if there are more fish in the sea and less anglers attempting to catch them, you have a better chance of hooking a really hot fish even if your rod is useless. So there will be more people going out attempting to be fishermen, so the fact that they're suffering from stock problems (I find it more romantic if you think of people as 'stock') shouldn't really come as a surprise.
Crumbling metaphors aside, I just think this is a fairly lame approach to marketing, surely match.com wants to be showing off the vibrancy of its clientele? Focusing on how wonderful they are, rather than just repeating an identical advert every 4-6 weeks and drawing attention to the fact that they’re not particularly discerning when it comes to screening. I wonder if they’d happily accept my neo-nazi-kitten-drowning profile.
Perhaps in both of these cases I’m just being rather petty because I’m fundamentally opposed to dating websites. I actually enjoy getting to know someone though conversation, and if every minutia of someone’s interests and beliefs is clearly spelled out in their profile, then that experience is lost. Nevertheless, it seems to be an increasing trend in America, where 1 in 8 marriages are between people who met online (and 4 in 8 marriages result in divorce), so the UK will no doubt be close behind. But yeah, I'd still prefer to date someone the traditional way...


4: The Lesson: ED is the most uncomfortable thing on television

Learned From: 40over40.com



Whilst on the subject of uncomfortable social situations involving love, let’s talk about erectile dysfunction in over 40s. Sure, it may be a prevalent problem, but if you’re wishing to show someone being a formerly-impotent-person-who-suddenly-has-a-new-lease-of-life, surely it would be better to have someone more, well, attractive.
If 40over40 had come to me to design this advert, I would have got George Clooney in (sure he can impregnate a woman just by exhaling within 30 feet of her, but that doesn’t matter. He's an actor. He can act impotent), doing some sort of car chase- driving into a tunnel, diving into some water, perhaps kissing in front of a fountain. Basically I'd fill it full of rich, disgusting imagery. Perhaps have Julia Roberts in there somewhere in a bikini. I'd more or less just be condensing the 3 ‘Oceans’ films into a 30 second spot.
As it is, there is still some sort of imagery- only in this event it involves some unattractive 40-something bloke shuffling around uncomfortably with his wife in a manner akin to dancing, whilst bolero plays in the background.
Actually thinking about it, I think this advert is brilliant. So many people are going to be permanently turned off by it, sales of whatever they’re selling will rocket.


5: The Lesson: Actually…

Learned From: Bird’s eye salmon fingers



First of all I’d like to doff my cap to Birdseye for trying to make fish fingers sexy. Secondly I would like to severely chastise Birdseye for trying to make fish fingers sexy.
I first saw this advert a couple of weeks ago, whilst my parents were in the room. Its 30-second duration was so heavilly laced with innuendo that I found it very difficult not to burst out with laughter at how plain horrible it was. About fish fingers.
It was frequently touched upon in the marketing units of my degree that humour is a good way to convince people to buy things. Typically with things like chocolate bars, or alcohol (where strict guidelines mean that they can’t actually sell the beer on its own merit as encourages alcoholism, so they have to focus on the brand) this works well.
I’d say this doesn’t work so well with fish fingers, to be honest I was mainly disturbed by the fact that they were a) animate and b) possessing some sort of libido. This advert caused me to yearn for the days when Captain Birdseye would roam around his little boat, looking like John Peel after a few years at sea. Then he'd give frozen goods to children, without being hideously unpleasant.


6: The Lesson: It sounds scientific, it looks scientific, so it must be scientific.

Learned From: Any cosmetic product







Cosmetics adverts are possibly the most transparent of all advertisements when it comes to using psychology to make people buy things. They use celebrities on the grounds that people want to emulate them and have hair just like Davina, or a face just like Andie MacDowell’s when they’re 50 (although its probably easier to look prettier when you’re 50 if you’re a famously attractive person who used to earn millions of dollars for her film roles). Then they use make up science to substantiate their claims.
This is possibly the best known of all of the sneaky tricks that businesses use to sell products, they use long words which the average layman won’t understand (pentapeptides anyone?), then they show diagrams of blue dots melting into the hair follicles and making them stand up, or showing little white orbs filling up gaping crevices in an elderly woman’s face.
Then they bring in studies that have shown (usually quite inconclusively if you read the small white text, using a very small sample group) that 82% of people agree that their wrinkles ‘appear’ to have been reduced. This rather ambiguous language allows them to get away with boasts which otherwise wouldn’t be allowed through the Advertising Standards Authority.
All of this gives a façade of the product being good (according to science, no less), despite the fact that typically it’s not hugely different from the regular Tesco shampoo or conditioner. Except, of course, for the price tag.
Still, I can’t complain too much about cosmetics products. Were it not for Pantene, there wouldn’t be this advert:

6 Lessons learned from Tim Minchin

This (much like my last post) is probably going up fairly late (although I do have a legitimate reason this week other than a lack of ideas- but hopefully it wasn’t too blaringly obvious).

Anyway, the excuse this week is that I spent the weekend (including my usual Saturday evening writing/lamenting my lack of social life time-slot) in Norwich, going out, clubbing on Saturday night and seeing Tim Minchin on Sunday evening (usually when I go through the arduous task of attempting to edit my posts), the gig was amazing, and I contemplated doing some sort of review of it, but figured that rigidly adhering to the 6 Lessons format was more important (and more interesting for the 6 billion people who didn’t attend the specific Tim Minchin gig I went to last night).

I’ve also found through my miscellaneous ramblings that I find it fairly difficult to write about something inherently funny without inadvertently pilfering their jokes and ruining them with a lack of comic delivery and timing- its far easier to take a cheap shot at The Daily Mail.

So whilst I would love to regale you with how amazing Tim Minchin was last night (very), perhaps steal some of his jokes, and subsequently rob them of their humour, I will instead be using him as some sort of framing device. Or something a lot like that... 6 Lessons learned from Tim Minchin (complete with videos!)…

1: The Lesson: Socially responsible anthems don’t have to be completely didactic

Learned From: “Canvas Bags”

I’ve never had a particularly comfortable relationship with socially responsible songs (I must have had a bad experience- aside from having to listen to Bob Geldof- in my youth when “Do They Know Its Christmas?” came on one Christmas in the mid-90s), I always find them to have an astonishingly patronising tone, and in order to keep the general message of the song intact trade offs have to be made which causes the song to suffer somewhat.

When I saw Greenday play headline the Reading festival in 2004, they played a lot of material from their (then) upcoming album, American Idiot. In between this they were frequently saying how they were going to vote Bush out of the white house upon their return to America, everyone cheered and 8 weeks later, when the elections were over and American Idiot had been released to commercial and critical success, George W. Bush was still president.

And the album, whilst not saving any children in Africa, was meant to be conveying some sort of message (War is wrong? Suicide is bad? The destructive ‘Punk’ approach vs the ‘Hippie’ love approach?), and although I was glad to see that the world valued more than just simple three minute long pop songs, as far as I concerned, whilst the album was an interesting exercise in making an album based entirely on a theme- which had already been done 30 years before by The Who and Pink Floyd- it lacked any of what made Greenday truly brilliant (namely their simple three minute pop songs).

Tim Minchin originally became widely known for fronting a campaign for canvas bags, with his song, er, “Canvas Bags” but far from being a typical socially responsible replete with preaching tone, it managed to be amusing whilst conveying the message. I now own a canvas bag.

2: The Lesson: How to take criticism in a calm and mature way

Learned From: Song for Phil Daoust

3 years ago, Phil Daoust wrote a really rather scathing 1-star review of Minchin’s set at the Edinburgh festival. This included some fairly personal slights about some reasonably significant aspects of Minchin’s set. Understandably he was hurt by this, and has penned a hilarious song (for Phil Daoust) about forgiveness.

I hope when (and for that matter I hope it’s when rather than if) I have anything notorious enough to be graded with a 5 star rating system- or even a percentage system, I’m not picky- that if I were to get a poor review, I would be able to take criticism in the same way that Minchin does…

3: The Lesson: Its possible to be critical of the perception of what love is, but still be quite romantic

Learned From: “If I didn’t have you”, “You grew on me”,

A couple of months ago I wrote about romantic comedies, and it’s quite possible that I came across more than a little critical of them. Despite really liking them. It’s quite difficult to live in a world where there is a plethora of awful, predictable and far-too-watchable romantic comedies suggest with certainty that there will be some sort of positive resolution. Particularly when half of those marriages would end in divorce. I bet it’s the ones with Hugh Grant in, I reckon when he’s not pleasantly befuddled he’s no longer attractive.

Tim Minchin has a number of songs that are critical of the notion of love at first sight and how it is typically more valued by Hollywood producers than “the creepy uppy kind of love” he discusses in “You grew on me”.

Anyway, I came up with a theory why people are so desperate to believe that this specific brand of love exists. And it’s only slightly misanthropic. People are lazy and pathetic. They want to be able to gain the benefits of being in a relationship (which according to scientific studies, include living longer and being more likely to get employed as well as all of the obvious stuff) without the effort or risk involved in the typical rigmarole associated with clumsily stumbling into a relationship. But perhaps that’s just me.

Obviously it’s a good thing as far as Hollywood’s concerned; they only have an hour and a half to two hours max in which to build up the appearance of a meaningful relationship. It’s just easier to have a couple of lingering shots of smouldering gazes whilst Damien Rice plays in the background.

All spoken like a true cynic, still, it appears that despite Minchin’s similarly critical views of the portrayal of love in films and Mills and Boon novels (if indeed, they can be called that), he’s been in a relationship with the same woman since he was 17. That’s half his life. Which strikes me as pretty romantic really.

4: The Lesson: The distribution of talent in this world isn’t fair

Learned From: Any Tim Minchin song

Not a whole lot to say about this really, as you can probably tell from the videos featured so far (and if you haven’t been watching them as you’ve gone along, and I’ve gone on and on, shame on you, go back and do it now), Tim Minchin is a brilliant pianist, a superb singer, and he can write brilliant, funny and nonetheless, thoroughly intelligent lyrics. It’s just not fair.

Watch the solo in this song, and just the general diversity of his voice.

5: The Lesson: Its hard to get noticed on the Internet

Learned From: “The Youtube Lament”

Something I’ve noticed from the few weeks I’ve been maintaining this blog and generally trying to gain some sort of presence on the Internet is that it’s difficult. The most success I’ve had so far is this article on romantic comedies (done off the back of that first post a couple of months ago), which has managed to gain over 1200 hits.

On the other hand, this video of a kitten, with bad grammar and a blocky face has been on youtube (where there are many videos of kittens for it to compete with) for two days, and has already amassed a view count of 2,000.

But look at its little legs. Aww.

6: The Lesson: The notion of an omnipotent god is a little silly

Learned From: “Storm”

I recently made the leap from agnostic to full blown atheist (and to show true commitment to this decision I changed it on facebook and everything). Agnosticism is a wonderful, comforting position for people to take in the grand religion debate. It is non-committal (my favourite argument was to say that humans couldn’t possibly even begin to contemplate the sheer scale and awesomeness of a god as good as religious types are keen to tell me about), and means that tirades at parties (both religious and anti-religious) are less likely to be directed at you (unless you're the only agnostic at a party full of ravenous atheists).

This was a position I was content to take for many years, until I listened to “Storm”, which details a dinner party where Tim Minchin locks horns with a hippy girl about her support of alternative therapies and eventually goes off on an extended rant taking in many aspects of religion and spirituality.

This led me to give more consideration to my long term, comfortable position, I’ve always found science great, without it we wouldn’t have cures for deadly diseases, we wouldn’t have the ability to experience and immerse ourselves in the staggering beauty and the cultures of the other side of the world, without science, I wouldn’t have electricity to run my xbox on.

Despite this appreciation (and occasionally, even an understanding) of science and all it’d done for me, I was content not to ponder the existence- or lack thereof- of god, homeopathy or Santa.

However, hidden within the comical stanzas and couplets of “Storm” are a number of incisive and, most importantly, rational arguments against not only specific facets of the alternative lifestyle- such as psychics- but also the nature of faith and the terrible fact that these fictitious characters, fabricated beasts and dubious activities ultimately distract us from the beauty of existence itself (and Jungles and fish and grass and Velociraptors, even though they technically no longer exist). It was hard not to take note of such humorously composed and eloquently voiced arguments and not agree.

I’m aware of the irony that being indoctrinated into this set of beliefs by words and nice chord progressions bears a startling resemblance to joining a cult. In fact, whilst sat in the theatre last night, with a thousand people laughing in the simultaneously and singing along together, there were some very definite comparisons that could be drawn between a religious service and the gig.

This wasn’t lost on Minchin himself, who laments the loss of coming together to share music and sing together in a more secular society, and proceeded to lead the audience in singing a song about loving Jesus. It did feel like joining a cult. And now I’m indoctrinating you.

6 Lessons learned from The X Factor (and similar shows)

So its finally happened. I have hit rock bottom. This Saturday night, in lieu of going out and socialising- financial constraints put that idea out the window- I stayed in and was subjected (I will insist to the end that I had absolutely no choice in the matter) to The X Factor. Then the Xtra factor.

And the worst part is, this isn’t even an isolated incident, it appears that my mother is already undergoing a hefty dose of senility, which means that she procures enjoyment from the X Factor’s flashing lights, the contestant’s flat tones and (somehow) Dermot O’Leary. If this continues, I may have to prematurely put her in a home. Not to for the sake of her sanity, but for the sake of mine.
And whilst on the subject of cruelly and callously taking advantage of the mentally ill in order to elicit a cheap laugh; 6 Lessons Learned from The X Factor (and similar shows)…


1: The Lesson: It doesn’t really matter how talented you are

Learned From: Chico

In a surprisingly large number of cases it seems that there is little connection between the talent of the singer and the round they eventually reach. Yes, in the early rounds the terrible singers generally go out, and the good singers mostly stay in.
However this isn’t always the case, more often than not the judges will put through someone who butchers the original melody of the song with excessive use of vibrato (which I suspect they imagine makes them sound like Christina Aguilera rather than a cat being run over by a variety of different sized vehicles) and this seems a trend that is likely to get worse with the new format featuring the public (who will clap anything approaching warbling) in the early stages.
It’s not just the Aguilera wannabes that get through to later rounds despite sounding terrible. If you’re capable of posing like Mick Jagger in the final of a musical statues competition with Michelangelo’s David, that should at least see you to a level of some success before the nation snaps to its senses.
Except for in the case of Chico, who even had time to release a number one single before people realised he couldn’t sing. Proving that the record buying public of the UK need a collective lobotomy. But more on that later.


2: The Lesson: There is a strong positive correlation between the number of relatives killed by cancer and singing ability. But this adversity also causes reverb.

Learned From: Roughly 3 or 4 contestants a week

It’s a fact of life that people love a tragic songbird. This is more or less the only possible reason to account for the popularity of Amy Winehouse. She could die at any time.
But so unquenchable is the thirst of Joe Public for tragic songbirds that Cowell and company deems it necessary to turn anyone who has undergone any struggle into a heart-rending story of some poor unfortunate’s conquering of hardship.
First comes the VT, in which they talk at great length about their deceased brother/mother/dog and how there is some tenuous link to their singing talent. Then they come on and sing. And they’re good. Really good.
Or so it seems, more often then not when they start singing they have huge cavernous voices. This is assisted by hefty amounts of reverb- something the awful contestants don’t typically tend to get. Some uplifting music plays in the background, and the audience is whipped up into a frenzy. And never so much than in the case of one Susan Boyle.


3: The Lesson: Ugly people cannot possibly have any other redeeming talents.

Learned From: Susan Boyle

Susan Boyle made headlines all over the world this year. In the 2009 Britain’s Got Talent, she got the full ‘uplifting music’ treatment, complete with VT showing how sad and miserable her pathetic life was, but mostly how inexpressibly hideous she was.
The audience was initially somewhere between apathetic and hostile, this horrendous looking woman had dared gatecrash their stage- reserved only for the beautiful people. Then she started singing, and the music began and everyone (quite literally in some cases, for this was quite clearly the single most significant televisual event ever to take place) completely lost their shit.
From this point it was like a fairy tale, it turned out that the grotesque ogre had a soul and a beautiful singing voice, Americans came across the channel to patronise her, like in this rather repulsive video of some bint from Good Morning America.

Hollywood wanted to make a film chronicling her depressing life, and charting her meteoric rise to fame. She seemed on the brink of international success. She was going to be bigger than John Lennon being bigger than Jesus. Then she had a breakdown, came second in the show and everyone started asking questions about the efficacy of the psychological tests applicants for talent shows undergo.


4: The Lesson: Deranged people are ok to laugh at if its packaged along with bright lights and VT demonstrating how good they think they are.

Learned From: 90% of contestants in the early rounds

The auditions in the early phases of the competition have some hilariously bad people singing. I’m not for a moment going to suggest that I’m above laughing at them. The Pope wouldn’t be able to stop himself. Even Ghandi would have trouble stifling a giggle.
Still, when I stop sniggering, I find myself feeling like a cog in a terrible machine which chews up, swallows, then violently projectile vomits over a 6 million strong crowd. Ok, not a great metaphor seeing as I’m both a cog and crowd member, but I feel like part of the blatant exploitation of some people who really don’t seem all there.
There was one contestant, a few years ago (I spent ages searching for this on youtube to no avail) that brought in a tape that they’d remixed of a John Lennon song. Then he sang (quite terribly, I might add) alongside it. At no point in this audition did I laugh.
As it went on, and the contestant said that he thought it meant that John Lennon would be able to release some more records, it felt increasingly like I was in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, watching Leatherface’s family insist that he was not a murderer, but a nice boy. It was like watching someone desperately clutching at the final vestiges of hope for a better life, then watching said remnants slip into an overflowing gutter, and missing by mere inches in an attempt to grab them before they are lost to a drain and oblivion. Basically it was really uncomfortable.
Then watching Cowell and whomever they had on the show pick him apart was worse still, this poor delusional guy was having his idea, which he’d clearly put an absurd amount of work into mercilessly torn asunder by some cackling idiots, whilst more cackling idiots watched on from the comfort of their homes.
Many contestants get riled up and lash out, or cry hysterically, but this guy seemed like he would go home on the bus in silence, microwave cook his final ready meal, write a hastily scribbled note to no one in particular making apologies if he causes a powercut, before taking his tape player into the bath.
This admittedly probably didn’t happen, but it still seems a little bit horrible to laugh at the dreams of others being crushed in such a way, particularly when some participants seem fairly unstable.


5: The Lesson: Water is a more effective form of revenge than, say, a fist to the face.

Learned From: Several contestants who we barely learn the name of.

It is indicative of the mental instability of X Factor contestants that the way they want to inflict revenge on the judges for not putting them through is to throw the judges’ water on them. Like this woman attempted to:

I was under the impression that having your dreams crushed in front of a national television audience, in a prime time slot on a Saturday night (and lets not forget youtube!) would probably warrant a little more than a mild inconveniencing, and in a worst case scenario, a dry cleaning bill.
I’m not saying it has to be a full on Kill Bill rip-roaring tale of revenge (although I’m all for that), but surely someone could at least threaten to kill Simon Cowell’s dog. and possibly follow through with it.

Unless they were expecting this to happen:

6: The Lesson: The record buying populace in the UK are idiots

Learned From: The last 4 year’s Christmas number ones

I shall forewarn you, this is the most depressing point on the list (which takes some doing). The fact is that people are largely aware of how exploitative the X Factor and similar shows are. They are aware of the fact that none of the acts apparently have any songwriting talent of their own and solely depend on covers in order to win over an audience who couldn’t possibly take hearing an original song. They are aware of how shamelessly manipulative the programme is. They are aware that phoning in and voting fuels Simon Cowell’s jet, in addition to his ego.
And yet, week in, week out they watch and they vote. And then, after buying their favourite star (or at least the star most favourably portrayed in the final edit) to pole position in the final, they go out and buy the single when its released at Christmas.
And then, having spent all this money and time on this person, they apparently completely forget about them- possibly passing comment when the follow up single reaches number 22 in the charts and little more- before getting hyped up come August the next year (or sooner it Britain’s Got Talent Is On). And it has happened. For the last 4 years. The last song to top the charts at Christmas that wasn’t performed by an X Factor contestant was Band Aid 20’s “Do they know its Christmas”.
Last Christmas, someone took a stand against this trend and attempted to get Jeff Buckley’s (far superior) version of Hallelujah to number one, instead of Alexandra Burke’s version (incidentally, both are covers of Leonard Cohen’s original). Unfortunately the idiots rallied and ensured that Burke’s version became the fastest selling single ever released by a woman in the UK. Meanwhile, Buckley’s came second, with 80,000 sales. Some 496,000 sales behind Burke’s.