OK, so it’s a little off-piste compared to our usual topics of diamonds, jewellery, and weddings, but I was travelling home from Earls Court in London this week when I was irritated by some of those tricksy little things that are dreamt up by marketing types.

By ‘marketing’ I mean not just advertising, but also all the other things that are designed to make us feel warmth or admiration or loyalty to brands/products/companies, but in my experience they just backfire because we recognise them for what they are: marketing tricks.

Having said that, of course we all respond in different ways, and I’m probably not the target audience for this stuff. Perhaps there are lots of people out there who are totally persuaded by it. Perhaps.

Anyway, here’s my list of ten marketing tricks (in no particular order) that I find irritating.

1. When passengers become customers. This transformation now seems complete – you can’t get on a train/bus/plane without being referred to as a customer. It would be a bit more convincing if we were more often treated like customers.

2. “A normal service is operating…“. They’re always telling us this now on public transport [like I said, I put this list together in my head whilst travelling on the London Underground]. So you want us to feel good about your service just because it’s operating normally? i.e. doing what it should be doing anyway? No: you don’t get kudos just for doing your job!

3. “Now with Special Active Ingredient 101X!“. OK, so it’s hardly original, but don’t you just hate those products that try to blind you with some spurious made-up ‘technology’? Most often seen in things like shampoos, cosmetics, cleaning products…

4. Over-hyped eco-credentials. If there was ever a bandwagon to jump on, this is it. Energy/oil companies and car manufacturers are especially guilty here. Just because you are spending a little bit of tokenistic money on an alternative energy source, that doesn’t make you eco-warriors destined to single-handedly save the planet.

5. Over-familiarity. I’ve had lots of phone calls from people trying to sell me stuff, and they often insist on repeatedly calling me by my first name. That’s because they’ve been told in their training that using first names is a speedy way to build a trusting relationship… so they can sell you more stuff.

6. Spending + Inconvenience = Investment. Back to public transport (and other infrastructure): they close down transport networks and roads and tell us it’s for our own good because it’s ‘investment’. See also government ministers and council officials who boast about spending more of our money, and then sugarcoat the pill by calling it investment.

7. Irritating jingles. “We buy any car” anyone? I would rather listen to fingernails being dragged across a blackboard. But it’s infuriatingly catchy, so of course it works, damn them!

8. Advertising to win awards. Sometimes advertising isn’t designed to persuade us of anything, but to impress other marketing types. That way it gathers critical acclaim and wins awards for its creators, along with more work and increased rates for the agency, but it doesn’t actually sell any more product. Yes Guinness, I mean you.

9. Tag Cloud Advertising. Do you notice how advertisers have taken to imitating the appearance of Tag Clouds (or the ‘Buzzing right now’ type of layout that you see on Twitter)? This involves pointlessly using fonts of different sizes to emphasise key words in their copy, thereby trying to appear hip and trendy because they – you know – ‘get’ social media and the digital ‘space’. Pathetic!

10. Really bad puns. Not entirely the fault of marketers: all sorts of businesses do this and often it’s the business owner who comes up with it. Hairdressers are famous for it: ‘A Cut Above’, ‘Curl up & Dye’, ‘Grateful Head’, ‘Hairdotcomb’, etc.  Other notably punsome business names include: A kennel called ‘Citizen Canine’. A bakery called ‘Leaven & Earth’. A flooring business called ‘Lino Ritchie’. A chippy called ‘The Codfather’. Another chippy called ‘Salt & Battery’. A bakery called ‘Agatha Crustie’. And finally, a couple of restaurants: a curry house called ‘Balti Towers’ and a Thai restaurant (in Belfast, obviously) called ‘Thai Tanic’.

Well that started out as a bit of a rant and turned into some Friday fun. But if you’ve got any examples of irritating marketing – or indeed of funny/punsome business names – then please feel free to comment below.