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Vicious Satire

Entry 333, on 2006-05-22 at 16:22:23 (Rating 4, Comments)

I love "vicious" satire directed against iconic institutions and people. For years, many people have held up New Zealand's major telecommunications company as a great example of private enterprise. How wrong can you be? Recently people are beginning to see them for the dishonest incompetents they are, and satiric advertisement are being distributed on the Internet, which take one of their real ads and changes the words. Its a great example of how attitudes are changing.

The original of this ad is truly sickening. It involves a whole bunch of cute kids telling us how great the future will be with Telecom. The music is inspiring and the message is that Telecom are a great company who are just there to make things better for their customers.

But the spoof ad is a lot closer to the truth. It starts with a quote from Telecom's CEO, Theresa Gattung, admitting that telecommunications companies (presumably including Telecom) use deliberately confusion to keep the price of their services up, but the customer has caught on.

Instead of nonsense in the real ad about how great Telecom services are, the satire has the kids saying something much closer to the truth...

I'm not going to take it any more. I feel ripped off.
I've been well and truly shafted.
My business is down the toilet.
Telecom have tricked us, and that's really f***ed.
This phone's costing me a fortune.
And I can't get access to the Internet.
Finally we're going to get what we want.
Because we're telling Telecom we're leaving.
So... are you coming with us.

The last line is the same as in the original ad, but the meaning has been totally reversed.

The ad closes with "If you're pissed off with Telecom, do something about it. Close your accounts, and take your business somewhere else." Maybe, now that the government has broken Telecom's monopoly we finally might be able to.

This movie is very nice work! Now, I'm not saying the alternatives to Telecom are much better. I use Vodafone for my cell phone and my overall rating for them would be "almost useless", but at least they are a whole lot better than Telecom!

Link at: http://www.youtube.com/results?search=Telecon&search_type=search_videos&search=S

Comment 1 (201) by OJB on 2006-05-25 at 12:36:07:

It seems that the ads are now gone, probably due to pressure from Telecom. Of course many people will have downloaded their own copy to enjoy at their leisure!

Comment 2 (202) by Anonymous on 2006-05-25 at 12:41:38:

Your link doesn't work. There are no Telecom movies at youtube.

Comment 3 (203) by OJB on 2006-05-25 at 18:49:44:

Indeed. The movies have been removed. See blog entry number 335.

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