This guy is haunting my dreams at the moment. He advertises cheap credit for the WBK bank in Poland.
There is something a bit pre-recession U.K about these images.
He is literally giving money away.
Here is a youtube video of the TV advert. Same idea as all the credit adverts you see: buy now, pay later, enjoy a new big screen TV, a holiday, sexy ladies and money raining from the ceiling.
While I was looking for these, I found a few adverts made by Danny DeVito advertising the opportunity to win a million Zloty with the bank.
And a John Cleese advert for a loan, which is surprisingly funny considering how often he offers himself up to advertising 'opportunities'.
Poland didn't suffer as part of the global recession of 2008. It was the only member of the EU that didn't have a decline in GDP.
The reasons for the recession are complex, as are the different effects in different countries. For the UK, the collapse the sub-prime mortgage market in America started a credit scare which pushed interest rates up on loans and credit cards, which in turn, hit individuals who had taken out money when credit was cheap and could not afford to pay it off at a higher rate.
Poland is an economy on the rise - you see it everywhere in Gdańsk, clean streets and shiny malls, building work everywhere, a bid for the Capital of Culture 2016. For me, all I can think about when I see adverts like the ones above are pre-2008 economies based on a credit bubble - like the UK's, or a property bubble - like Ireland's.
It doesn't bode well that they've chosen an actor who looks like a 70s pimp.
