Pieces of advertising material that have recently annoyed me. Part one of at least three.

A billboard for one of those firms that are sort of to do with money, but not a bank: a hedge fund tracking facility or a financial extrapolation service platform provider, or whatever the hell. Slogan ‘Challenging times mean a great deal to us’. Ok. Good. I imagine they do. Not sure why that means I should give them my money to look after (if indeed that is what they want from me; I have no idea) but maybe they can persuade me with some telling imagery. So, what picture have they opted for to drive home their message of challenging-time-meaningfulness-capacity?Ah. A zebra looking over its shoulder.

I mean, what? Is this some obscure extension of the already quite weird financial/animal symbolism system I’ve not come across? ‘Bull = boom; bear = bust; retrograde zebra = vague expression of foreboding’? Or is the zebra supposed to be clocking his own challenging times approaching from behind, and about to mean a great deal to him – an enormous lion in full pursuit, for instance? In which case, he seems a bit fatalistic about the whole thing . He’s certainly not making any effort to run away. So the company is representing itself as akin to a soon-to-be-devoured ungulate with a death wish. And frankly that doesn’t inspire me to tie my basket of tracker bonds to their base rate. Or whatever it is they want me to do.