BT Broadband takes annoying adverts to the next level: total broad-brush

Broad-brush (adj: lacking in detail or finesse)

I think it's fair to say I've been a little underwhelmed by BT's slightly strange broken family ads, starring Kris Marshall. They've always struck me as fitting into that category of adverts made by companies that haven't really got a unique selling point for a particular product, so instead make a generic "we sell this stuff" ad that doesn't really say very much at all. 

The classic example was the Nescafe series, which BT has clearly been influenced by. Nescafe is very ordinary and pretty cheap instant coffee, which sells by the truck load to people who should probably just buy the supermarket's own brand. How do you make that into a successful ad campaign? By going completely off topic, that's how. Genius.

And while all these types of commercials bug me, the new BT ad really gets on my nerves. For the uninitiated, the latest instalment has our heroine sitting at home surfing the web from her BT home hub, while our hero is with an estate agent looking at houses. She is clearly meant to be flitting from web page to web page like a surfing Usain Bolt, while our hapless laptop-toting salesman struggles to get a connection at all.

But what are we really comparing here? It talks about "consistently faster broadband throughout the day" with BT's new "up to 20Mb speeds", and encourages people to switch to BT Total Broadband. But consistently faster than what, exactly? If you look at the small print on the ad, it invites you to go and check the difference between its new ADSL2+ offering and the old BT 8Mb ADSL service. But the 20Mb is a free upgrade fro those lucky enough to be in areas that have the new service - you don't need to pay extra for this speed boost.

Also, you have been able to get better speeds than this via your BT line in many exchanges for ages, by signing up with the likes of BE Broadband, O2 Broadband, TalkTalk etc. Now, with the exception of Post Office, Madasafish and AOL, which are still at 'up to 8Mb' speeds, everyone else you can compare at Broadband Genie has at least one 20Mb offering going down the BT pipes. And, of course, Virgin Media's cable service is already up to 50Mb, so that's not it either.

So what terrible internet service is the estate agent using? On the evidence that he is going house to house with a laptop, to places that don't look occupied, I can only assume that he is using a mobile broadband dongle, or MiFi unit. As we all know mobile broadband pootles along at an average of about 1Mb, it's fair to assume a home 20Mb connection would out do it for pace. But what kind of comparison is that? It's not as if our poor estate agent can take a fixed-line connection with him, is it?

Also, it's a kick that mobile broadband doesn't deserve. As we're at pains to stress here, mobile broadband is a brilliant service in certain circumstances - on the move, for example, or on holiday in the UK - but a reliable and speedy service it's not. You could quibble that the estate agent wouldn't even be trying to look this kind of thing up on the web anyway (he'd probably know the houses, and have a BlackBerry, and couldn't just go on a whim to many of these places anyway - it's nonsense on so many levels).

This strikes me as the worse kind of TV ad - it doesn't compare like with like in any meaningful way, while seeming to suggest that by signing up to BT Total Broadband you'll be better off, without actually showing you a genuine reason why. I've got nothing at all against BT, or its products and services - in fact my landline bill is still paid to them direct and it has a good customer service record, compared to many of its rivals. But many more commercials like this one and I'll be off.