Bookmaker Paddy Power is the master of “guerrilla marketing”, where a brand sneakily cashes in on an event’s popularity without paying it any money to do so. PP has been at it for years. It gets loads of coverage and pisses people off in the process. So it’s no surprise to find that, in order to get its nose in the Euro 2016 money trough, it has appointed itself representative of the entire nation of Scotland.
Scotland, you see, were the only home nation who failed to qualify for this summer’s football jamboree. PP has made an ad in which Scots (including Michelle McManus and the Krankies) march through a glen singing new words to the crap English anthem Vindaloo. They don’t care about the Euros, they sing, because they’ve got deep-fried Mars Bars and, anyway, betting against England will give them all the happiness they need.
The question it all begs is: is this ad insulting to Scots? On the one hand, the idea of an Irish company defining what’s Scottish might be galling. On the other, while the joke is cheap, the Scots seem to be entirely in on it. In fact, the ad is less about hating the English, and more about celebrating their own crapness. Which is pretty much as Scottish as it comes.
Source: The Guardian
