PRIVATE VIEW: Malcolm Duffy, the creative director at Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy.(evaluation of recent ads and the difficulty in getting consumers' attentions)(Editorial)(Column)

It has been reported that we are exposed to at least 3,000 different advertising messages per week. It's now Thursday, so let's see how message numbers 1,710, 1,711, 1,712, 1,713, 1,714 and 1,715 have succeeded in grabbing the nation's eyeballs.

In the battle for our attention, it seems that comedy is still the creative departments' weapon of choice. And, not one to disappoint, Fray Bentos provides us with a whole host of belly-laughs. It sends up the Coke/Levi's/Top Gun macho guy as we swap the Hollywood world of six-packs for the real world of whopping waistlines. It's a funny ad based around an incredibly audacious strategy, namely eating lots of pies makes you fat. If fortune favours the brave, then Fray Bentos has shown that it has got an awful lot of guts.

Jobability.com has succeeded where many an ad agency has failed - it got Ricky Gervais to do its commercial. And a good choice he is, too.

Ricky delivers the goods as the factory manager betraying hidden prejudices towards employing disabled workers. The script is a good one. But just one word of caution - I just hope that the irony works. Harry Enfield dropped his Loadsamoney character because the figure he was trying to ridicule ended up being loved rather than loathed.

The Mini press ads are just plain silly, and thank goodness for that.

A spot the difference competition between an elephant and a car. A family hugging their Mini. And a Mini covered in bubble wrap. It's not the type of campaign that would work for many car manufacturers, but it's a perfect fit for the fun-loving Mini. I can't see them troubling the jury, but they make you smile, which is more than can be said for most press ads out there.

Marmite is having more fun with its love it/hate it strategy. This time, we're at the beach. A lifeguard, in mid-Marmite munch, goes to save a drowning swimmer. Kiss-of-life turns into snog-of-life as the rescued bather gets a taste of that delicious/fucking awful (delete as appropriate) Marmite and plays tonsil tennis with the lifeguard. It's a funny gag, but as part of the strength of the Marmite campaign is its very Britishness, I think it might have been funnier if it had been set at a bog-standard council swimming baths instead of Baywatch-on-Sea.