Tuesday, 26th April 2005.

The Importance of Being Ambiguous

In other news, but still car related...

Has anyone seen that commercial for the breakdown service? I think - although correct me if I'm wrong - that it's for the RAC. Said commercial features a well-to-do woman sitting behind the wheel of her car in the middle of the night, in a rainstorm. The surrounding scenery is dimly-lit and the whole thing is really rather eerie. To be honest, you half expect the Evian to start shaking in its cupholder, as an ominous pounding grows in the background, before an enormous dinosaur stares in through the window.

But what actually happens is far less interesting. "You don't expect to break down," she says, turning more or less to camera. "But you also don't expect your breakdown company to be able to track your location from your mobile phone. You don't expect them to be able to pinpoint your exact position from the surrounding landmarks. Or for them to be able to guess what's wrong before they even get there. And you certainly don't expect to get all this for just thirty-five pounds."

So far, so good. Cut to company logo with meticulously tiny small print at the bottom, and another soundbite: "Get the service you expect with RAC."

And therein, of course, lies the problem. At no point have the company promised you any of these things - in fact, by guaranteeing the service you expect, aren't they promising just the opposite? Was this a genuine mistake, or a subtle way of boosting their customers without breaking the advertising standards code? And moreover, does this in fact foreshadow a whole new generation of commercials that manage to not only exaggerate (as is normally the case) but outright lie, purely by being clever?

I think we should be told. It's a classic case of how a badly-written pitch can confuse your audience, but the truth is that it took me three or four viewings before I actually realised something was wrong, and even then Emily had to narrow down the specifics. As John said this afternoon, "You're going to have to learn not to take your subediting home with you..."