Wednesday, February 4, 2009

This ad stinks

Get it, stinks?



Pepe Le Pew. The most romantic character in all of media. The first thing I think of when I think of Valentine's Day. I mean, right?

Assuming you even remember Pepe Le Pew at all - given that his heyday was in the 1950s, although obviously Warner Brothers cartoons of that era have been fairly ubiquitous over the past half-century - you might remember that he really isn't a romantic character. He's a would-be romantic character, a stalker and borderline sexual predator who holds no attraction to his prospective conquests in all but a couple of cartoons. AT&T takes this even further by giving him dialogue that barely rises above the level of "conversation heart." Is "I MEES U" (would he really misspell words just to match his accent?) the best we can do here? Is that really driving anyone wild with passion? "You miss me? Take me now, you Gallic stud!"

AT&T also seems to be taking pointers from US Cellular.

Voice-over: "Only AT&T lets you connect this Valentine's Day..."

Are all other carriers going into some sort of freeze I don't know about?

Voice-over: "...with the new Samsung Propel."

A phone that can text message? Be still my heart! Anything else distinguishing about it we need to know? No? Okay. Show me some more amorous cartoon cats. Yes, the phone has a sliding QWERTY keyboard, which is shown though not mentioned out loud, but there are plenty of phones these days that offer this feature. Also, if the big deal is that the phone has a QWERTY keyboard, why is Pepe stuck typing the absolute most basic of text messages? "I miss u" might have been the first text message ever sent from a phone. Do you need a QWERTY keyboard for that?

Also, I don't know if you've heard, but Propel is already a product. Have we really run out of words that soon?

3 comments:

Quivering P. Landmass said...

It's like whoever wrote this ad had never seen a Pepe Le Pew cartoon before. It's just not representative of the Le Pew oeuvre.

Anonymous said...

Didn't the cat hate Pepe Le Pew too?

capewood said...

I saw Propel and I saw Pepe and I thought well that's appropriate that Propel water really stinks. 30 seconds into the commercial I'm thinking, ok, so where's the product. Then I realized the phone was the product. A phone called Propel?