I know this may be covered elsewhere, but much like Overused Music Video Effects I thought it would be good to have a list to contribute to.

Basically I'm talking about the stuff we see in adverts, and the things the advertisers do to make their products look as appealing as possible.
Call me pedantic for noticing all this, but some of the lengths they go to borders on ridiclulous.

  1. Crisp Packets - (Bags of potato chips to the Americans.) In every advert, the crisp packet is perfect and uncreased. It looks like somebody ironed it, it's immaculate, even around the top where you have to open it.
  2. Fast Food - Seeing as I live in the UK, Burger King and McDonalds are the main culprits. When was the last time that big juicy burger on TV was anything but limp and soggy in reality? If you actually look closely at Burger King posters you can see that the burgers are actually put together in a photo editing program ingredient by ingredient.
  3. Beer - This shows how stupid it gets. The adverts show whatever celebrity is flavour of the month (nothing new) drinking beer with a perfect head. It would cut after they started drinking, and then come back showing them pulling away, but the head was still untouched. They soon realised how stupid this looked, and so they made sure that whoever was drinking had a frothy lip or nose. They couldn't leave it there though, no, the frothy lip wasn't perfect enough. So now they do the same old cut as they drink, and we re-join them with a ridiculous make-up applied beer moustache.
  4. Toothpaste - I can't remember the last time I actually saw an advert for toothpaste where someone actually used the stuff.