On adverts, how the product looks is a pretty central concept. Making the product look boring, fat and stupid, is generally not considered a standard approach to attracting customers.

It reminds me of the 'Top Gear' episode where Jezza Clarkson had to make an ad for VW.
Terrible.

We get an advert on Sky Sports every new season. This is expected.

This sort of argument is akin to "Huddersfield bring out a new away kit promoting the club and people start moaning about what it looks like..."

If it could have been better (which this one certainly could have been), then people are entitled a good moan.
If we only had a few options, or people have no alternative suggestions (ie. the Stobart deal), then that's a different story.

The central idea is that watching RL makes you tougher because it is a tough sport.
Unfortunately the only things that show the fat hairy bloke is tough is having his back hair waxed and banging his head on car bonnet.


He could have been a well toned builder driving a nail through his hand and having a girder dropped on his head.

Same theme completely different way of presenting it. Alternatively you could have had a go looking WOMAN in exactly the same scenario

Exactly. There's tonnes of options here, and they've picked a terrible one.

At least it isn't as bad as the BT Infinity advert!

I'm sure the makers of advert are delighted as its caused a debate. It is crap on its own, but wouldn't be so bad if it was part of a larger promotional campaign. However if you compare it to the Union adverts, where they make such a dull game seem like an epic battle and the players super human, its rather embarrassing and sells the game short.

I really liked the intro to the games last year with the iron men, something along those lines would have been brilliant rather than a sterotypical type fan.

The advert should have shown Sam busting through against Hull. Burrow darting through in the GF. Danny Brough tearing saints to bits, and then Ryan Hall try at Wire in the play-offs. Various images of all 4 tries at once then all 4 players going over the line at the same time. A few big hits. SUPER LEAGUE IS BACK.

In a completely different way, still a stereotypical advert, better than the current one yes but still a no from me.

The advert is total garbage, try watching it without sound, you wouldn,t have a clue what it was advertising.

Johnny Vegas would have done a much better job, and he would have done it for nothing.

seems like an advert for personal injury or accident insurance

If you're going to advertise usin a lardy RL fan, you might as well use a famous one.

I hate those kind of adverts, I find them tedious. Having said that, I've seen the current advert a couple of times since I bizarrely suggested it was quite good, and it is, after all, rubbish.

They've tried too hard to make it funny, and in doing so have completely forgotten to give any sort of mention to the fact that he's watching rugby.

Like someone else said, if you were watching that in the pub with the sound off, you wouldn't have a clue it was for the rugby.
And like I said, if you didn't know what Super League was, you wouldn't know it was a rugby advert. Could be the Netball Super League for all we know (they say wearing pink makes you tough*, so maybe watching netball does as well).

So apart from attempting humour and not exactly getting many laughs, forgetting to show any rugby, portraying a stereotype that we'd like to move away from, and completely missing any points at all for what the advert was supposed to be advertising, it's quite good!



*I do not subscribe to this belief for the record!

I've just seen it and I quite like it.

Great tag line but storyboard bad: perhaps the bloke could have got tougher over the season rather than end on eating an apple? Omisson of footage a mistake - Alan Sugar would have pointed out the product was never on show! It is more a reminder for those already fans than an advert to draw in a new audience.

They've done ok with the 'catchphrase' but it was pretty much all down hill from there.

It could have still be the same type of settings and acting, but with actual rugby happening in the background so the viewer could see the tele, not just him.
Someone getting a dart stuck in their back in the pub while watching the big screen, but where we could see the big screen with the action on or something. Plus that scene could have the pub kitted out with a signed/framed shirt etc in the background for a certain Club, just to give it a bit of branding.

I think it's supposed to be an onion.

Do you mean Rooney and Ferguson?



As for the advert....

We can argue all day about whether the joke works (it doesn't) and whether having these stereotypes advances our image to new markets (it really, really won't) but for me te cardinal sin is there is no actual rugby on it! What were they thinking?

Theyve gone for the ' subtle ' approach, and failed, RL should be in your face

That's my main issue.

The football advert with the two dating has football on show.

Definitely worse adverts on the TV though. I cringe everytime the BT Infinity advert comes on. Awful advert.

No expense spared on that one! Marketing and RL remain great strangers.

Indeed - it's not exactly Saatchi & Saatchi is it?

Not that it needed to be of course; a bit of heavy metal music, some big hits and silky skills, intercut with fireworks, cheerleaders and small children with their faces painted. SL advert - done.

All done after having somebody opening one of the new rolling billboards, ie this is what we are delivering to your door

Or a bloke ordering Sky Sports then cut to a Stobart truck pulling up outside his house, with the Wigan & Saints teams piling out the back and knocking the bejesus out of each other on his front lawn.

It's really not difficult.