Amigo Loans And Their 'Ultimate Guide To Life' Can Take Long Walk Off A Short Cliff

In terms of laughable PR fails, ‘The Ultimate Guide to Life’ has got to be this week’s winner right?

If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, congratulations.

You are both in the one per cent whose lives are not governed by the Facebook overlords, plus you’ve been spared from a rather nauseating marketing stunt.

To maintain a healthy level of ignorance, stop reading now…

This week, Amigo Loans proved that some companies will do just about anything to a) grab your attention and b) play on your insecurities just enough to make you consider using their services.

Thanks to Twitter though, the joke is on them.

‘The Ultimate Guide To Life’ is an infographic, created by the lending company, which appears to show at which age we ought to be hitting a number of major milestones.

To make matters worse, they’ve coupled it with their handy ‘Guide to Life’ quiz, which lets you assess for yourselves just how miserably you are measuring up against everyone’s expectations.

Naturally, for a campaign which seems to suggest that if you haven’t moved out, lived solo, bought a car and gotten engaged by the age of 25, you’re somehow failing at life, there has been quite a boisterous backlash.

In a fairly amusing sealing of their own fate, Amigo Loans is now using their Twitter account to furiously backpeddle.

Representatives from the loans company are enthusiastically trying to claim that, in fact, they never meant to suggest that these milestones were either realistic or achievable.

Some poor mug is, as we speak, glued to Twitter, pleading with people to understand that their infographic was actually meant to somehow highlight the unfair amount of pressure that we place on ourselves to achieve all our ambitions.

Right…

That’ll be why they called it ‘The Ultimate Guide To Life’ then…

What’s Really Wrong With It

Well, besides the fact that the infographic and subsequent quiz are founded on some questionable research - reportedly, a panel survey of 2,000 people between the ages of 16 and 65, which doesn’t seem to take into account regional cultural differences, varying levels of education and, indeed, a pool of people bigger than a small thimble – there are a number other problems with marketing of this nature.

Regardless of the number of times Amigo Loans attempts to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the results of their survey, it is precisely their accusatory language (“how successful are you in life?”) and their unequivocal message (“25 milestones of life and the age we should achieve them”) which makes them a poster child for the sort of brands which pray on people’s insecurities in order to make a sale.

Brilliant move for a brand that was just won a “treating customers fairly” at the Credit Today Awards.

Well, the people of Twitter have spoken… they’re not happy. And contrary to popular belief, not all publicity is good publicity. Just ask Gerald Ratner….

S*** Your Milestones

To match the level of painstaking research that went into Amigo’s campaign, we conducted a straw poll in the office, to figure out some realistic milestones for people between the ages of 18 and 30.

And here are some of the more realistic (read: entertaining) suggestions that the Yahoo editorial team came up with:

Age 18: Drunk.

Age 19: Get a questionable tattoo to celebrate first taste of freedom from the parental home! Instantly regret it.

Age 22: Finish university, fail to walk breezily into dream job. Move back in with parents and hope for the best.

Age 23: Realise the bar job you've found yourself in is not making best use of the thousands of pounds you threw at a University education. Jack it in and go travelling in a bid to find yourself / figure it all out.

Age 24: Come home from travelling none the wiser. Move back in with parents and get sixth bar job in one lifetime.

Age 24: Move out, but get kicked out of your house by your flatmates for bringing home a kitten without consulting them.

Age 24 1/2: Move briefly into a commune with kitten and enlist the help of half the commune to hide kitten from the weird man who lives there and is scared of cats.

Age 25: Go to Disneyland for your birthday because F*** adulthood.

Age 25: Congratulate yourself for getting into your first serious relationship. Break up with him because he buys you a toothbrush.

Age 26: Buy your first bed. Panick about the committment involved in buying first bed. Send bed back.

Age 27: Realise that hangovers have become two-day affairs.

Age 28: Realise that hangovers have become three-day affairs.

Age 29: Get a kitten because F*** having ACTUAL CHILDREN.

And there you have it. We don't all have it together, nor should we be made to feel bad about not having it all together.

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Do you have any realistic milestones you'd like to share with us? Let us know @YLifestyleUK. Better yet, tweet @AmigoLoans with your suggestions, we bet they'd LOVE to hear them...