Amazon ad campaign fails to impress

Online bookstore Amazon.co.uk has made such an embarrassing stab at making itself sound hip and trendy it's enough to make you cringe. In a series of three radio ads a spokesman for Amazon.co.uk tries to find an alternative location to store its 1.5 million books. Bemused and slightly hacked off receptionists at Strangeways Prison, Heathrow Airport and Wembley Stadium try to explain to the annoying caller that their prison/hangar/sports stadium are unsuitable as a book warehouse. The sorry truth is, with-it Net company Amazon.co.uk keeps its books in an anonymous warehouse in Slough -- a town that has only marginally more of a personality than the semiconductor industry. The Register asked the man on the street - in this case a barber in Hampshire, called Nick, who's a dab hand with a cut-throat razor and listens to the wireless all day - for his opinion on the Amazon ads. He said: "It's not as if they're even witty." (We couldn't find a London cab driver to ask - Ed). Nuff said. ® Click here to email Tim Richardson