Toothpaste advert will prove fruitless

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GEORGE Orwell once said that the genius of advertising was that it not only sold you the solution but that it sold you the problem too.

I was reminded of this on the bus to work today when I saw an advert for a toothpaste that protects against fruit.

Maybe this isn’t a shock to you. Maybe you already knew about the harm that fruit can cause.

But surely we are more in need of a toothpaste that protects against Irn Bru than pineapples.

To my mind this billboard completely and utterly sums up why people who work in advertising are generally the world’s biggest morons.

Having got bored of scaring us into selling our houses to people who’ll rent them back to us for 6 months before flogging them off or, or using Paul Daniels to bedazzle us into buying insurance they are now trying to give us nightmares about bananas attacking our mouths in our sleep.

I’m not an expert in dental hygiene, as anyone who has kissed me or indeed even seen my teeth can testify, but I’m fairly sure brushing your teeth twice a day is going to be enough to keep them fairly healthy.

I’m also fairly sure that the dentists of Great Britain aren’t mopping their collective brows going, “thank god the truth about the danger of fruit is out there”.

I mean it’s hard enough to get us – the fat, slovenly, chip eating people of the UK – to eat fruit as it is , and now that some money grabbing, care – free idiots are running a scare campaign that says an apple a day may keep the doctor away but it’s going to result in all sorts of root canal nightmares it could be even harder.

Will it be long until: “No mum, I won’t eat my greens because that could result in me having to have a filling and spend thousands of pounds on falsies” echoes around the nation’s dinner tables?

It’s hard enough to get a dentist and now thanks to this company there will probably be a run on NHS dentists by those lucky enough to have them by people concerned that they can feel the enamel rot off their teeth after eating a particularly viscous satsuma.

For me, the worst thing about advertising is when you watch a beautiful, lovingly-filmed advert and it ends up being for something ridiculous.

The little robot who turned into a boy dancing in the puddle said something about how we mollycoddle our children, too scared to let them graze their knees.

It was an appeal to the parents of Britain to let go of their fears. Getting dirty and hurting yourself is all part of growing up. Properly beautiful. And then it turned to be for a new type of conditioner.

A little bit of me died when I saw that.