Tag: Adverts

Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Shop For Car Insurance

Auto insurance is not typically a product people buy for enjoyment. But since it is required in 49 of the 50 states, drivers have to buy it and driving without insurance can lead to financial ruin. Well, at least it is more fun than paying taxes.

With that out of the way, here are our top seven reasons to shop for car insurance:

1. Because The Cavemen Told You To. If you spend any time watching television, listening to the radio, or been online, you have likely been inundated by insurance ads. There are quirky women, presidential-like men, bald, aging men, geckos, and cavemen all pitching you insurance. Car insurance companies spend billions of dollars a year on advertising. Don’t just go with the big companies. Smaller to medium sized insurers that don’t advertise may be able to offer you a better combination of price and coverage.

2. Because You Like Overpaying. Comparing rates between companies is key. Sure, it is easy to stay with your same company and just pay their new bill but if you have not shopped for insurance in the past 6 months, you are likely overpaying. Rates change frequently and can vary significantly by company. But don’t compromise on coverage.

3. Because Your Insurance Needs Never Change. When you drive, you put yourself at financial risk. If you are at fault in an accident, you could be personally responsible for all financial damages caused to others. You want to make sure you have the protection necessary to cover the value of your home and other financial assets. Make sure you deal with A.M. Best Rated insurers for maximum protection.

4. Because You Hate Discounts. Many insurance companies offer a wide range of discounts for customers. However, don’t think you are getting a better deal just because a company offers you a lot of “discounts”. Take the time to shop around and see whose “discounts” are best.

5. Because You Got Out Of Dodge. When you move, it is highly likely your insurance rates will change. Certain neighborhoods are statistically more risk for insurance companies than others in terms of the volume of claims. Rates can change significantly when you move to a new state so investigate this in advance. Moving is a good opportunity to shop for the best rate for your new location.

6. Because Your Car Is A Piece Of Junk. If your car is a piece of junk, you still need insurance but you may no longer need collision or comprehensive coverage to protect the vehicle. You will still need liability coverage at minimum and in some states, personal injury protection and uinsured/uninderinsured motorist coverage may also be required. But, if your car is a real piece of junk, you need a new car and will need new insurance to protect it.

7. Because It’s Fun. Auto insurance shopping is no party but it is fun to save hundreds of dollars on your rates. Take the time to comparison shop. It could go a long way towards paying for your next party.

January 15, 2012
7 Reasons According To Them

Everywhere you go, celebrities are endorsing something or other. Now it’s our turn.*

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"7 Reasons wanted to stop me. They failed. Now I'm going to crush them in my giant hand."

"We will be judged by 7 Reasons. When they want to inflict great pain on the world they will stop writing."

"I've bought a komodo dragon, a cross-eyed opossum, a Kim Jong Il and I've urinated in a policeman's helmet. Thank you 7 Reasons."

"I adore 7 Reasons; it's an absolute joy to read every day. It's an essential lifestyle guide that has taught me so much about cats and biscuits. Both of the team seem lovely, but I especially like the tall, grumpy one with the spell-check facility. And thanks to the other one, I'm planning a trip to Whitstable."

"I'm a devotee of 7 Reasons and can categorically state that it is NOT a cult. Not even close."

"The 7 Reasons Marc Fearns picture book gets me hyped."

"I read 7 Reasons and now I'd give my right arm to beat the French. At anything."

*Only words and pictures have been altered and fabricated in the making of this post. Everything else is real.

June 5, 2011
It’s That SPAM Again

It’s Sunday today, so we’ve taken our traditional day away from the reasoning-mine and, as they are often wont to do, our thoughts have turned to food. Now, some time back we brought you what we considered to be the ultimate SPAM recipe – Planked SPAM – but now we’ve unearthed something that has easily trumped Planked SPAM and knocked it into a cocked hat. Whatever that means. Brace yourself! It’s…

Yes, it’s SPAM ‘n’ Beans which is, apparently, exactly right for Saturday night (which is rather a shame as I took my wife for cocktails and to a really good concert in Northern Europe’s largest Gothic Cathedral last night (if only I’d seen this first)). It seems delightfully simple to cook, consisting as it does of two ingredients; SPAM and baked beans. Simply place slices of SPAM in baked beans and cook them on the hob, then serve in some sort of dirty brown pot with congealed sauce oozing over the side. Who wouldn’t be overjoyed to be served this? It seems that the simplest recipes are often the most delicious.*

*Sadly I’m the member of the 7 Reasons team that doesn’t eat meat and – as SPAM is a distant relative of meat – I can’t try it myself. Any readers care to give it a go?**

**7 Reasons will be back tomorrow, without any tummy trouble whatsoever.

May 8, 2011
7 Reasons to Shop With 7 Reasons

You’ve laughed with us, you’ve cried with us, you’ve watched us, you’ve read us, you’ve heard us, you’ve written for us, you’ve tweeted with us, you’ve got engaged with us, you’ve had a baby with us and probably other stuff too. And now, in a new and exciting development, you can shop with 7 Reasons. And here are seven reasons that you should.

1. Be Unique. Everyone wants to feel distinctive, unique and a bit special. And, if you purchase a 7 Reasons t-shirt, the chances are very high that it will actually be unique. After all, how many people are you likely to bump into in your local pub wearing the same Haystack Poking Patrol t-shirt as you? And even in the unlikely event that you did meet someone else in a pub wearing that same t-shirt, you could just say, “Hello Marc” and I’d probably buy you a beer. You’ll be unique or you’ll get beer. That sounds like a good deal.

2. To Marvel At The Emporium. The 7 Reasons team have (amongst other things) expertise in web design and the retail sector. You might think that this would make putting together an online shop easy. But you’d be wrong. Because in typical 7 Reasons style, the one with the retail background did the web design and the one with the web design background is in charge of the retail side of things (and did everything else). So if it does crash or start randomly giving away free merchandise you’ll be there to witness/benefit.

3. Because Our Wares Are Really Jolly Good. I didn’t have anything to do with the design of the lemon t-shirt (God or Darwin, depending on your viewpoint, designed the lemon and Jonathan Lee did the rest), so I can say this. It’s bloody brilliant. Look at it! Just look at it! It’s really a beautiful piece of design. It’s a pop-art pie-chart in lemon. Who wouldn’t want to wear that, other than the abjectly wrong and gits? No one.

4. Innovation. Because the product range will grow as we think of more things to add. We’re already looking into producing 7 Reasons Inspirational Beer-Mats, calendars and fridge-magnets, so you’ll never know what you might find there: A 7 Reasons horse; a 7 Reasons handbag; a 7 Reasons his and his voodoo doll set; a replica 7 Reasons sofa. Anything. Or if you don’t find what you want, you might eventually, because…

5. We’re interactive. We can’t think of everything. We’ve tried and have gotten distracted by girls and tiramisu and things. But we love great ideas and, if you’ve thought of something you’d like to see in the 7 Reasons shop that isn’t there, you can email us and, if we think it’s a good idea, we’ll look into making it. And we’ll probably put your name on it too, unless it’s something really small – or embarrassing – in which case we won’t. Or if you have a really long name like Bartholomew Constantine Washington Penderghast the third, we might not. But if you’re called Jennifer Aniston we definitely will, and that’s a promise.

6. Incentive. Has any other website ever encouraged you to invade a country? Yes, probably, but only evil ones. We’re nice chaps though, and we’d like to encourage a more benign, civilised, conquest: So the first five readers that are photographed standing atop the Eiffel Tower waving a Union Flag and wearing one of our France Invasion t-shirts will get the money they spent on the t-shirt refunded.*

7. Because We’re Very Excited. So excited, in fact, that we spent a couple of hours putting this post together about our shop and forgot to include a link to it. So here it is (this is the link). Now go and shop till you drop! Or at least until your arms are very full and you feel a little faint.**

*We can sometimes tell the difference between the Blackpool and Eiffel towers and we’re also quite good at spotting things that have been photoshopped so no tomfoolery, please.

**I – Marc – would like to thank my colleague Jonathan Lee for all of the effort that he put into the shop and the merchandise (and for fielding slightly ranty emails about World War Two font styles and spacing without ever losing his cool). Never let it be said that he doesn’t work very, very hard indeed.

April 8, 2011
7 Reasons That The Correct Font is Important

Fonts: Sometimes we don’t pay enough attention to them, but choosing the correct one is vital for your project; be it a full blown advertising campaign, a sign for your office, a Christmas card or a publicity photo. Here are seven reasons why.

1. Playfulness. Kristen is a lovely, whimsical, childlike font which, when used correctly, imbues the work with a sense of playfulness and naivety. When used incorrectly however, it is not as effective:

The message Drive to the East was intended as a call to invasion and conquest. This poster may still encourage people to drive East, but now they’ll be doing it in Smart cars whilst drinking Innocent smoothies and listening to Death Cab For Cutie. The Kristen font is too jaunty for Hitler.

2. Menace. Similarly, Fraktur is a font associated with much Nazi propaganda and many of their legal notices. When used in this context however, it rather blurs the message:

Even the sad face can’t rescue this one. The font exudes menace and it makes it appear more of a threat than an appeal: That if you don’t give them money, ranks of jack-booted stormtroopers will goose-step on poor Flopsy. :’-( Still quite an effective message though.

3. Cool. Some fonts – Sidewalk in this instance – are rather cool and edgy and, when used sparingly, can really make an impact.

When making a sign for the office kitchen though, they tend to work less well. The thoughts of the users of the office kitchen will probably range from, “What in god’s name is that abomination on the wall?!” to, “Wow! Emma’s like the coolest person ever to have put up a sniffy notice about washing teacups. Ever.”

4. Minimalism. The moon: A cold, empty, stark place which requires an appropriately minimal font and, when putting together an article on whether man will return to the moon, it’s important to use one. And not this:

French Script really isn’t doing this picture any favours. It’s over-elaborate, cluttered, and just not spacey enough. And it’s French. They’ve never been to the moon. They rarely go as far as Sussex.

5. Seasonality. Christmas: Evocative of roaring fires, presents, carol singing, peace, goodwill and happy families spending quality time together at home.

But when your Christmas card features the Digital Readout Thick Upright font, you introduce the spectre of The Terminator into the traditional family Christmas, and that doesn’t seem like it will go well. Even if he does bring presents from the future.

6. Clarity. Clean crisp fonts such as Gill Sans exude class. With a plain, unfussy font your carefully chosen words are showcased to their best advantage. The BBC use Gill Sans, and the famous Volkswagen Lemon advert used a similar font. Sometimes though, it’s not a good idea to go minimal:

Because the reader’s attention is drawn to every error and mad utterance in your crazed internet rant. And yes, I did cut and paste this from a comment on one of our posts. Answers on a postcard?

7. Gasp! There’s a lot of snobbery around the use of MS Comic Sans. And many perfectly reasonable people say that it should never, ever be used; there are websites and Facebook groups that campaign against it. But they’re wrong. Because I’ve found a use for it:

You can use it to take perfectly good, artfully shot publicity photos, and make them funnier. I’m so happy with this one that I’m not even going to charge for it. Finally, a use for Comic Sans.

October 26, 2010
Russian Roulette Sunday: A Recipe

It’s Russian Roulette Sunday again (and ordinary Sunday too) and we’ve realised something: We’ve never given our readers a recipe before. We’ve requested them when under pressure; we’ve offered general lifestyle advice on how to do food correctly; and on how food should be consumed, but we’ve never been specific about how to prepare it. Until now.

This isn’t our own recipe, it’s one that we stumbled across on the internet while doing something else. But it’s safe to say that we were amazed by it. Flabbergasted. Dumbfounded. It’s a perfectly genuine recipe that features in an advert for the main ingredient and we haven’t in any way made it up.

In the past, we may have created and altered posters and passed them off as genuine, but we did that because we didn’t think that anyone would believe us, and we certainly didn’t imagine that thousands of people around the world would download those posters, presumably to use in essays and school projects. In fact, we feel fairly confident that, as World War II recedes further into history, and internet content becomes ever-more readily-accepted, those posters will come to be seen as genuine, and we – in our usual hapless manner – will have inadvertently caused a revision of history. We’re actually dreading the day that one of our posters turns up in a newspaper, or a book. Anyway, we’ve learned our lesson, and this poster is categorically not one of our creations.

You’re probably feeling a little peckish by now so, Ladies and Gentlemen, discerning readers of 7 Reasons (.org), we present to you, without any further ado…Planked SPAM.

Now, to some people, a meal consisting of SPAM on a plank might seem a little unconventional or unappetising, but rest assured: When you unveil this culinary master-stroke with a flourish, it will be “…greeted with cheers” by your jubilant dinner-guests. The advert says so, so it must be true. We’re not sure what wood the plank should be made from, though pine would probably be nice and fragrant, and less tough than oak. But you can experiment with your own planks, we wouldn’t want to ruin the fun. Let us know how you get on.

September 26, 2010
Russian Roulette Sunday: Advertising Take II

Hi! Marc here again. Last week, as you may recall, we blew our entire advertising budget on a film by Pearl & Dean. To be honest, we were a bit disappointed by it. We were so disappointed, in fact, that we thought we could probably do better ourselves. We reasoned that with my capacity for historical perspective and Jon’s talent for understatement and his innate modesty, it wouldn’t be too difficult to put together a simple and cheap – yet memorable – advert for our website. Here it is:

7 Reasons Advert II

So, in conclusion, please send donations to:

The 7 Reasons Advertising Fund

7 Reasons Towers

London

W12 7RJ

May 9, 2010
7 Reasons Australians Shouldn’t Make Television

1. The Weather. It must be quite easy to present the weather in Australia, it’s always “nice” there, so you probably don’t have to be too bright to do it. That would explain this weatherman being outwitted by a pelican then.

2. Wipeout Australia. In Britain, we have Total Wipeout, a programme in which pudgy, potato-faced middle-managers from Droitwich lumber around a ridiculous assault course. Wipeout Australia uses the same course, except everything is harder and the machines go at about five times the speed. The people they send around don’t seem any leaner or sportier though, that wouldn’t be any fun.

3. Skippy. In Britain in the ’60s, men whistled at attractive young women in mini-skirts. In Australia in the ’60s, they whistled at kangaroos. Still, they seem quite happy.

4. Advert. Halfway through, so it’s time for a break. Would you like one of these? It’s undetectable, you know.

5. Soaps. The bush, mushrooms, a mysterious pig, a flaming hand – it has to be a soap opera. Obvious, really.

6. Marriage. This sort of thing never happened on Richard and Judy.

7. The dream. Okay, you knew it had to turn up somewhere didn’t you? That classic Neighbours dream sequence which came out of left-field and astonished the audience. No, not that one, this one. The accents are spot on, by the way.

Okay, it’s time for an admission. I was wrong. All of this stuff is awful, yet somehow brilliant. I’ve had so much fun putting this post together that I’ve become convinced that Australians should make more television – perhaps even all of it. As long as I don’t have to watch Paul Hogan again I’d be quite happy. I might even buy a hairpiece.

March 2, 2010
7 Reasons To Have Milk

1. You can play professional football. Or at least you can play for Accrington Stanley. A club whose trials – according to Ian Rush – include the ability to pass, shoot, head, tackle, swear at the referee and drink milk.

2. It stops you falling over. Milk makes your bones strong. Strong bones mean standing up straight. No one will laugh at you if you stand up straight.

3. The Milk Moustache. I don’t have to put my contacts in to realise that Elizabeth Hurley is a splendidly attractive lady. Though I did have to put them in to work out what was on her top lip in this ad. It’s milk. Definitely milk. I’ll be honest with you, it does something for me. Even more impressive is the choice of glass. Note it’s Hurley-esq shape. Clever. Anyway, drink milk to make a milk moustache and send the photos to us.

4. You’ve just won the Indy 500. Since the late 1930s, the winner of the Indy 500 has been given a bottle of milk to celebrate with. The driver even gets to choose from three different varieties. Whole, 2% or skimmed. I can only assume that caps react in different ways depending on the fat content.

5. You’ve got a banana. Don’t you just hate it when you discover a banana on your person, but no bottle of milk?

6. Play catch-up. Now, whether you think Margaret Thatcher was right to stop free milk for school children is an entirely different debate. Which is probably just as well seeing as I can only think of two reasons why it was a good idea and one reason why it was not. That’s well short of the seven reasons I need. But I digress. The fact is that Maggie did stop the milk. And as a result millions of children missed out on a pint of the white stuff every morning break. It’s time to play catch up before it’s too late.

7. You’ve been lied to. You see those white marks on your fingernails? Well that is leukonychia. The result of a lack of calcium. Or so my parents told me when I was a child of the eighties. I am now 26 and I have just found out that this was a lie. A lie! A lie to make me drink more milk. In the last twenty years I have milked dozens of cows dry just to try and get rid of the imperfections. (The marks on my nails I mean, not the cows). And today, just after I have bought another eight pints, I find out that the white marks are just a result of trapping my finger in a drawer about six months ago. I’m incandescent with rage.

January 20, 2010
7 Reasons TV Adverts Annoy Us

1. Interruptions. Let’s start with the obvious. Ads interrupt programmes. And just when you are getting into them as well. Now you have to wait five minutes to see if the bloke is dead or not. Then you find out he isn’t and curse the show for being unrealistic. He shot him in the head for goodness sake.

2. Voiceovers. That famous bloke is doing the voiceover for a financial advert. You just can’t place the voice. You spend the whole evening trying to work out who it is. You can’t sleep. You are tired the next day. The presentation goes badly. You get fired.

3. False Advertising. Some of the claims that adverts make are quite frankly bollocks. Take Gaviscon for example. ‘Oh no! I have heartburn. I won’t be able to save the stranded hiker using my rescue helicopter. I know! I’ll have some Gaviscon. That’s much better. Now I can save lives.’

4. Michael Winner. If Michael Winner is not annoying enough, it’s his bloody stupid catchphrase, “Don’t worry dear, it’s a commercial”. Twat.

5. Dubbing. It’s an advert for some sort of grooming product. Probably a razor. Or Just For Men. The gaudy font clearly shows it’s an American advert, so why have they employed some Brits to dub over the top? And why does it never sync properly? It’s just very, very poor workmanship.

6. They’re loud. Because everyone knows we go to the kitchen during the break, the ads are 50db louder than the show you are watching. Naturally, you turn the volume down as the adverts start. When you get back in the room you forget to turn it up again though. As a result you miss the really important conversation that explains how Inspector Frost knew the murderer was the one with the wooden leg and the false eye lashes.

7. They can’t keep it real. Not all adverts are bad. The spectacularNicole and Papa ads for Renault Clio had the British public on tenterhooks. I don’t know how many Renault Clio’s were actually sold, but that is hardly the point. Nicole was fit. As this – one of the first ads in the series – proves.

As the series went on we fell in love. With Nicole, Papa and the Clios. So much so that 23 million of us tuned in for this – the final outing. But, of course, the advertising agency just had to ruin it for us didn’t they?

Reeves and Mortimer? What the hell were they thinking? A nation mourned and Nicole ended up working for Rover. She was made redundant in 2004 and now sells ice-cream from the back of a burger van.*

*This is not true.

I feel much better now. Amazing to think I used to be in advertising really

November 10, 2009