ADVERT DIFFERENCES

There is a big difference in adverts between the U.K. and Denmark, which I noticed the last time I was back in England and listening to the radio in my hire car or watching the television in my mother's house. The adverts themselves are very similar; the difference comes at the end. In Denmark, they just stop. However, in the U.K. the voice-over proceeds to read - very quickly, since it's long and boring - all of what I would term the small print, finishing off with a standard "terms and conditions apply".

I don't know why they do this in the U.K., not least because the monotonous reading of legalese usually manages to puncture the mood that the advert has worked so hard to create. I also don't know why they say terms and conditions. In English law, a contract has terms; and these terms are divided into conditions (essentially hard terms) and warranties (softer terms). The phrase terms and conditions is, therefore, a bit of an oddity.

Walter Blotscher