Who Are The Ad Wizards Who Came Up With THAT One?

Full of the milk of human creepiness

2011-10-19T18:56:00.003-05:00

If you think about it, if you only include national advertisements, how many brands do you really see ads for on even a yearly basis? I'm guessing it's less than two hundred. And whenever you see an ad for a brand you've never seen an ad for before - especially if it's a product you had heard of despite not seeing any ads - doesn't it always seem a little strange? Like, "Oh, I guess they're advertising now." That's how I felt about this Muscle Milk ad, right after I got done hating the shit out of it.

No.

Host: "So! All-Star left fielder. What's on your mind?"

We're just dropped into this, so there's really no explanation for why the host is such a complete freak show. But if you pretend for a second this is a real show, would Muscle Milk really want to sponsor it?

Ryan Braun: "A female doctor asked me to take my shirt off yesterday... for an eye exam!"

Ladies and gentlemen, the Friar's Club Roast of Ryan Braun's Pecs! Seriously though, is that a zippy one-liner or what? And delivered with such verve!

Host: "Ryan, a little lesson. Life is like a river. But for guys like us, life is like a river that's also a hot tub!"

At this point he pulls his shirt out and rubs his stomach. The guy is in average shape, I guess you'd say, but I think clearly the idea is that he's supposed to be unappealing. Or is it?

Host: "Now! It's clear to me that you drink Muscle Milk after you work out. And you are just going to have to deal with women trying to get into your hot tub river!"

Cut to the guy in a hot tub with two women. Cut back to the guy on the set making a creepy noise. Fin.

I mean, what the fuck was that? Look, Ryan Braun is clearly not an actor, but if that's all you're going to do with him it seems pointless to even have him in the ad. At least he seems like a likable guy, unlike the actual pitchman, although who wouldn't seem like a cool dude next to this lunatic? (By the way: bargain-basement Ed Helms. Tell me I'm wrong.)

This ad is obviously aimed at men, so they don't really care if their attitude towards women is a little questionable. But who is watching this and thinking, "I want to be like that guy! I bet he's a big success with the ladies." No one. And I don't think this guy is supposed to be cool or attractive. Look how confused Braun looks when the guy starts pulling his shirt out. But with that being the case, WHY IS HE YOUR PRIMARY PITCHMAN???? For a product that is trying to associate itself with being hot and in great shape????

The last couple years have seen a lot of products using really unappealing spokespeople. I didn't get it when Toyota did it, I didn't get it when McDonald's did it, and I don't get it now. I mean, obviously this is just supposed to be funny, but (a) it isn't, (b) it's trying way too hard, and (c) the goal, ultimately, should be to sell product, not just be funny. Aside from making you aware of the product's existence, I don't see how this ad moves product. At least in that McDonald's ad, you could imagine people recognizing the main character as an exaggerated version of how they feel in the morning when they haven't had their coffee. Who is going to identify with this shithead? "Muscle Milk: preferred protein shake of creepy guys with hairy stomachs who make gross throaty sounds to indicate they're happy with something!" Yeah, uh, pass.

Bad ads at Ridgemont High

2011-10-18T12:00:00.001-05:00

The Dr. Pepper Ten ad that briefly set the internet on fire last week - including this very blog - was roundly denounced as being sexist. But I don't think that everyone caught that the ad was, really, just as sexist against men as it was against women. Women, in fact, got off pretty easy - all they were told was that Dr. Pepper Ten was not "for" them. (Oh no!) Men, by comparison, were told that they were more or less obligated to like action movies, hate romantic comedies, and refuse to pick up any soda with "diet" in the name - or they simply were not real men.

Well, welcome to Ad World. As many ads as are sexist against women, there are just as many that negatively stereotype the hell out of men. For instance: men cannot cook! No, seriously, men cannot fucking cook. Men are romantically incompetent. Men are total douchebags. Men are slavering pigs who lose control at the sight of an attractive woman. Etc.

The irony, of course, is that while most commercials that are actively sexist against women are marketed towards men, most of the commercials that are actively sexist against men are ALSO marketed towards men. For proof, let's just look at the latest example of this phenomenon, from JC Penney:

I didn't look very closely, but it seems like there's some discussion in the YouTube comments over whether the ad objectifies women.

Yes. It does. I mean, of course it does. How could you even dispute this? In case you don't know, in the film from which the clip is taken, Fast Times at Ridgemont High - by the way, this film is nearly 30 years old, so way to stay relevant there, JC Penney - Phoebe Cates actually opens her bikini for a topless scene which is taking place in the imagination of the main male character, played by Judge Reinhold. For him, she is absolutely a lust object and little more. In the film, however, Reinhold gets his comeuppance when Cates walks in on him masturbating to this fantasy. Nothing like that happens in this ad, nor really could it. So, yes, it's obviously objectification, or at any rate the male viewer is invited to objectify Phoebe Cates.

But - and I'm sure you already guessed that I was going here - the ad is in many ways at least as offensive to men.

Kenny Mayne: "JC Penney understands that you don't like advertising for clothes."

I... I don't? I must admit, this is a new stereotype of men to my ears. Men hate advertising for clothes? They're just making stuff up now, aren't they? "JC Penney understands that you hate oak trees! I mean, fucking acorns, right?"

Mayne: "Who does?"

Honestly, who likes advertising of any kind? Why do you think people get so excited about DVRs and internet browsers with ad-block functions? But really, who thinks enough about advertising for clothes not to like it? There have been about 380 posts in this site's history and I think three of them talk about an ad for any kind of clothing.

Mayne: "Tell you what, though - if you look at these smart fashion choices from Van Heusen, we're gonna show you this. That way everybody wins."

Nine seconds into the spot and out comes the Fast Times footage. Here's the thing, guys: if the expectation is that men will be looking at the footage on the left, that means NO ONE IS LOOKING AT THE FOOTAGE ON THE RIGHT. You really can't focus on two things at once, and if it was true that men hated clothing ads, why would they even bother trying to look back and forth between them? And especially consider that Phoebe Cates is wearing a bright red bikini, whereas the clothes on the right are in fairly nondescript colors and the prices are in white text on a white background! You couldn't sufficiently check out the clothes offered in this ad if you wanted to.

So, sure, it's kind of a sexist ad. But maybe the real problem is not just that it's sexist but that it is so exquisitely committed to being sexist at the expense of even trying to sell the product. There are eight million ways you could make a commercial for men's clothing that featured a hot female sex object, and literally all 7,999,999 others would do less to completely distract the attention away from any and all information about the men's clothing that was ostensibly the point of the spot than this one does.

And that's really where you get into the area of "reverse sexism." Hey, men - you don't care about clothes, right? You'll probably just wear whatever your wife buys you or something. So, we're going to pretend we're running an ad for clothes you might wear - but we both know that's ridiculous. So check out these sweet tits! Don't get me wrong, I like that sort of thing as much as the next (straight) guy, but I know when I'm being pandered to. This ad isn't going to endear me to JC Penney and it does nothing to sell the product in question. And as it turns out, the only thing it was effective at was being quickly pulled from the airwaves due to complaints of sexism.

Mayne: "JC Penney: It is seriously hot in here."

"JC Penney: You are seriously dumb in here."

Tacos are for closers

2011-10-17T20:45:00.001-05:00

During last year's baseball playoffs, Taco Bell managed to come up with an ad that actually was not completely stupid.

Sorry about the video, but I couldn't dig up a better example on YouTube. Anyway, that's not too bad, right? You could argue that Joe Girardi and Mariano Rivera aren't famous enough to lead a commercial like this, but it did play mostly during baseball games, and obviously that audience is going to recognize two well-known Yankees figures. Rivera's acting is pretty bad, but hey, he's not an actor, nor is English his first language, so I think we can cut him some slack. The concept of the ad is moderately clever, it's not overwritten, and there's some amusing little touches like Rivera taking a last sip of his drink before running over. It's not some masterpiece, but given how bad most ads are, I can live with one like this.

Unfortunately, this year Taco Bell did this instead:

The weird thing is, I'm quite sure I saw an ad with Brian Wilson in it this year where he was basically doing a similar thing to what Rivera did last year - "hey, I'm the closer, I'm here to finish your overly large chalupa." That's the whole joke, after all, since Wilson only gained fame as the closer for the Giants during last year's World Series. But I can't find that one on YouTube, and it seems like it didn't run very much, almost like Taco Bell felt like they needed a pretense to get to this one but liked this one so much more that they abandoned the pretense as soon as possible.

Why is this ad so bad? Well, perhaps the biggest problem is that it seems like Wilson wrote it himself. For God's sake, Mariano Rivera, the best closer in history and certainly one of the most famous, gets two lines in his ad. Yet here's Wilson, unaccountably given nearly every line in the ad in spite of the fact that he's less famous than Rivera, is also not much of an actor and comes off like a total maniac. (That was likely the point, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea to do it.)

The whole "let's go meta on our own ads" thing is pretty trite, too. And since the only point of having Wilson there is to continue the "you need a closer to finish this huge chalupa" theme, and since Wilson, no matter how much of a character he is by baseball standards, is not a professional comedian and therefore incapable of selling a pretty dire script, it makes no sense to change the entire concept and yet STILL KEEP BRIAN WILSON IN THE AD.

I mean, "black ops?" "Inner deliciousness?" Really? What's with the props? This is like the world's most sedate Robin Williams routine, only performed by a baseball player and even less funny. Nothing Wilson "comes up with" ties into the idea of the chalupa being especially large - which, again, is pretty much the only reason these ads exist in the first place. I guess there's the "these monsters are stacked" line, but compared to everything else he says that's basically a non sequitur, so I'm not even going to count it.

Really, I imagine it would have cost Taco Bell a lot less to cast any old commercial actor in this spot, cut out the "Brian Wilson just decided to change the concept" framing device and shoot it as some wacky doofus vamping around while his friend attempts to eat the XXL Chalupa. Would that have been fucking retarded? Of course it would have. But so is this, and if you're going to insist on making a stupid ad, I'm guessing not paying whatever Wilson's endorsement fee is would at least have been cheaper.

The vegetarian's nightmare: sentient produce

2011-10-15T14:39:00.009-05:00

Jewel-Osco is the branch of Albertson's that exists here in the Chicagoland area. YouTube suggests that this ad runs in all their markets with the different store names subbed in, but this is the one I've seen so this is the one I'm posting. I'm also posting it because GODDAMN is it creepy.

Here is what the description says on YouTube (emphasis mine): "By popular request, here is our newest TV commercial featuring our lovable Fruits & Vegetables! Enjoy!"

Okay: I cannot believe that people actually called, or e-mailed, or whatever the fucked Jewel-Osco and demanded that this commercial go up on YouTube. I mean: this commercial? I'm not sure I can think of ten more boring ads in existence. It's not like it's funny, or raunchy, or even particularly interesting - the reason ads usually get posted online. If you read the comments on YouTube, people seem to be talking mostly about how much they like the song - which is appropriate, since it's a cover of "Fresh" by Kool and the Gang, a song that was a top ten hit... in 1985. Of course, it's pretty obvious that most of the people commenting on this ad weren't born yet in 1985, so that probably explains a lot.

Lovable fruits and vegetables, though? That is weird. That is creepy. Some (though certainly not all) vegetarians don't eat meat in part because they can't bear the thought of a living animal being slaughtered for their consumption. What kind of heartless bastard tries to freak them out by making their vegetables (and fruit) into a singing, dancing nightmare straight out of the uncanny valley?

Honestly, look at these things. They're fucking terrifying.

By the way, sloppy bagging job, whoever.

I'm not sure what exactly it is that creeps me out so much, although it might be the lack of noses on the faces of the fruits and vegetables. Or maybe it's just THE FACES ON THE FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. Good Lord. This is a crime against nature.

But is that the weirdest part of the ad? Not quite. It's more the way the fruits and vegetables are gleefully singing about THEIR IMMINENT DEMISE. There are other commercials out there like that (see this post and my comment below it), and sure, it's weirder when it's animals practically begging you to eat them. But this isn't much better. I mean, think about the contrast of some of the shots in this commercial for a second.

"Ba ba ba, we're the singing tomatoes... we're hanging in the store just singing our song..."

"OH DEAR GOD WE'VE BEEN CHOPPED IN HALF AND OUR INSIDES ARE VISIBLE! THIS IS LIKE THE WORST KIND OF MEDIEVAL TORTURE!"

"Peppers / just a bunch of singing peppers / what in this life could be better / than to be a singing pepper..."

"OH FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY THEY CUT OFF THE TOP OF OUR HEADS AND STUFFED US WITH RICE!!! WHAT KIND OF CRUEL GOD ALLOWS THIS TO HAPPEN???"

'Cause if I were an Oscar Mayer wiener, buns would all be having sex with me

2011-10-14T22:37:00.005-05:00

The GrubHub ads on the CTA have really been getting more and more questionable. They started off depicting people pleased with the fact that they can order food from just about anywhere. That's fine. Then they turned a corner with one that showed what was clearly intended to be a post-coital couple in bed, with the woman's toplessness blocked only by her laptop as she declared her desire for "something spicy!" A bit much, but I guess workable. But now... there's this.

I really don't know how many times I can keep saying this. But I guess I'll try again anyway.

Ahem.

THINKING ABOUT THE FOOD I'M ABOUT TO EAT AS THE PRODUCT OF A SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP IS NOT APPETIZING.

I mean, this just doesn't seem like that hard of a concept. I don't care how phallic hot dogs already are - I don't need an ad for your food-related service that shows a hot dog attempting to bed a hot dog bun, with the bun thinking "I hope he brought condiments!" That is gross. Surely there is no one out there who sees this ad and thinks, "Oh man, that hot dog and bun are about to GET IT ON!!! Shit, I just got hungry."

Yes, I know it's supposed to be a joke. Ha ha, hot dogs kind of look like penises! And the word "condiment" sounds like the word "condom!" The phrase "do it" could be a generic description of performing an action, but it could also refer to fucking!!!

But even if it were funny - and it's not - it's utterly lazy and just wrong for the product in question. Look, I'm capable of enjoying sex-themed jokes. But they have their place and this ain't it. All I see is an online menu service making a cheap fuck joke because they think it'll make their brand seem cool. "Oh man, can you believe what GrubHub got away with putting in the train station?" Is that really as high as our standards are?

Oy Ge-Volt

2011-10-13T23:07:00.004-05:00

"Use our product and be the subject of mockery and annoying questions everywhere you go" is probably not the exact sales pitch I would use to sell something, especially something as expensive as a car. But sure, Chevy Volt, give it a shot.

Kid: "Hey, I thought these were electric."

Big ol' editorializing right off the bat. What's this kid, 12? He really recognizes the Chevy Volt on sight? Whatever.

Guy: "Uh, it is, yeah, it's a Chevy Volt."

Hey, genius, the kid obviously knows it's a Chevy Volt. And yes, I know they have to get the product name in there, but why not just have the kid say it? I'm pretty sure you can write an ad that makes sense and still get the car's name in there.

Kid: "So what are you doing at a gas station?"

I really find the writing in this commercial to be almost embarrassingly clumsy. First of all, there are various things you can do at a gas station besides buy gas. Second of all, wouldn't it make WAY more sense to have the guy putting gas in the car and the kid being like, "Wait, you're putting gas in there? I thought it was electric?" Oh, but then the commercial would just be a straightforward description of the car and wouldn't get to include a hilarious joke about the bathroom.

Guy: "Uh, well, it, it still takes gas, to go farther."
Kid: "But you're not getting gas."
Guy: "True! Not this time... uh, don't have to gas up very often."
Kid: "So you have to go to the bathroom."
Guy: "...no."

The BATHROOM, you guys! The bathroom. God, the humiliation associated with having to urinate in a semi-public area. I should probably lie to this sixth-grader so he won't think I'm doing something that literally everyone on the planet does, multiple times every day.

Kid: "Yes you do."
Guy 2: "I thought these were electric!"
Guy: "Yes. It's a, uh, it's a Chevy Volt."
Guy 2: "So what are you doing at a gas station?"

The slogan on the screen is "Electric when you want it, gas when you need it." On the one hand, it's smart of Chevy to address what I would assume are concerns that a lot of people have about electric cars, stuff like "what if the battery suddenly runs out" or "how powerful can it really be?" On the other hand, the attitude of this ad is "But you're probably going to want to stop only at gas stations where no one else is, because otherwise, HOLY SHIT are people going to annoy you."

Guess what, though. It gets worse.

Guy 2: "I thought these were electric."
Guy: "Uh, yeah, it's a Chevy Volt."
Guy 2: "So you're just here rubbing our noses in the fact that you don't have to buy gas?"

What? Is there a person on the planet who would say this? Seriously, everyone knows that YOU CAN DO OTHER THINGS AT A GAS STATION, right? This can't be that hard of a concept. Also, what the fuck is wrong with these people?

Guy 2: "Just plug in and go? That makes you feel better?"

Better than what? This ad was written by someone raised by wolves, with no concept of actual human interaction, right?

Guy: "Well, I still pay about a dollar fifty a day in electricity... on average..."

Not the response I would have gone with. I think "IT ALSO TAKES GAS, FUCKWAD" would have been the way to go here. But I guess they used that feature up in the other spot.

Kid: "You know, he's just here to use the bathroom."

"He thinks he's better than us, but he's not. That filthy gas station bathroom will bring him down to our level."

Attendant: "Customers only. No gas, no bathroom."
Guy: "Okay, I'll buy gas!"

OR BUY A FUCKING BAG OF SKITTLES BECAUSE THERE ARE EIGHT GODDAMN MILLION THINGS YOU CAN BUY AT GAS STATIONS THAT ARE NOT GAS.

Some Other Guy: "Whoa, what are you doing? I thought these were electric!"

That's right, America: the Chevy Volt. Prepare to get bombarded with stupid questions, harassed by smug pre-teens and denied the right to perform basic excretory functions, all because you have the good sense to drive an electric car. Now there is a flawless sales pitch! Honestly, short of running an ad that shows a Chevy Volt broken down on the side of the road, could you have made the ownership experience look any less appealing?

Dr. Pepper Ten is more sexist than regular Dr. Pepper

2011-10-10T08:29:00.006-05:00

Oh, what the FUCK, you guys.

Honestly, how much sillier would this commercial have to be before you would just think it was a spoof? Maybe five percent?

[Action film stuff is happening. Big tough army guy is running through the jungle.]
Tough Guy: "Hey, ladies. Enjoying the film? Of course not!"

Of course not! Women don't like action movies, or so goes the stereotype. And this commercial does nothing if not ridiculously pander to stereotypes.

Tough Guy: "Because this is our movie!"

Here we go again.

In a time where ABC's fall comedy lineup includes not one but TWO sitcoms premised entirely around the idea that the "male identity" is under some kind of confusing external threat, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by ads like this. And yet I am, every single time. Because in the world I live in - rather than the one depicted in TV commercials - you can be a man and have no interest in muscle cars. You can be a woman and enjoy watching action movies. And, for fuck's sake, you can be a man and pick up a can of soda that says "Diet" on it without recoiling like it was an erect penis. (Because no homo, you guys, seriously.)

Tough Guy: "And Dr. Pepper Ten is our soda!"

No, I guess you can't. "Hey, I know Diet Dr. Pepper tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper, but fuck THAT shit. Diets are for women."

Tough Guy: "It's only ten manly calories, but with all 23 flavors of Dr. Pepper."

Diet Dr. Pepper also has those flavors. It's a key part of your advertisements for that product. So the difference between men and women isn't taste - no, it's TEN CALORIES. High fructose corn syrup - which is the sugar component in Dr. Pepper Ten - is four calories a gram (as carbohydrates are). So the difference between the manliest soda alive and a diet drink that's just for GIRLS is a big two and a half grams of sugar.

Wait a second... two and a half grams... Two and a Half Men... are you guys thinking what I'm thinking here? Cross-promotion! The original manly men's sitcom (it's right in the theme song!) and the new manly men's soda.

Tough Guy: "It's what guys want!"

Yeah, aren't you always hanging out with your bros, and then one of them starts complaining that there's only Dr. Pepper and Diet Dr. Pepper in the cooler, and that as a MAN who is totally super MANLY but is ALSO concerned about his calorie intake, what he wants is the incredibly masculine taste of Dr. Pepper Ten? And then you pointed out that he was the one who brought the cooler full of nothing but Dr. Pepper in the first place, and that you all know that he's Dr. Pepper's brand manager and could he please just talk about something else for two goddamn minutes.

Tough Guy: "Like this!"
[throws can, springs trap on pursuing motorcyclists]
Tough Guy: "Catchphrase!"

By the way, Dr. Pepper, don't think it's not obvious how much of this ad was clearly ripped from those Old Spice commercials everyone liked.

Tough Guy: "So you can keep the romantic comedies and lady drinks. We're good."

Diet Dr. Pepper: lady drink. Do not ever purchase this product again, people with a Y chromosome, or Dr. Pepper executives will be waiting at the checkout to call you a fag.

Tough Guy: "Dr. Pepper Ten: It's not for women!"

Hear that, more than half of the US population? Don't even THINK about buying our product! We are marketing exclusively to tough guys who are worried about their weight and also totally insecure about their masculinity and who ALSO love Dr. Pepper and refuse to drink anything else. So to Steve Johnson of Seattle, Washington and Bill Smith of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: there's finally a soda for you! Get to the store right now and pick up some Dr. Pepper Ten, before this ridiculously clumsy sales pitch ensures it vanishes from shelves forever!

Yogurt, lies and videotape

2011-09-22T22:45:00.003-05:00

I know this ad is a few years old. Is it ever too late to write about a total piece of shit? (Answer: no.)

First things first. Is there some compelling reason why this woman would be lying to her friend on the phone about her diet? I mean, once you've stated you're, you know, on a diet, it's kind of already out there. Why then go on to pretend that you're some sort of magical person who can eat a million desserts and lose weight?

The counterargument, I guess, is that she's not lying - the friend knows she's naming Yoplait flavors and it's just the dumb, sweets-craving husband who's confused. But if that's the case, why does she describe apple turnovers as "sort of my weakness?" Really, one random flavor of this 100-calorie cup of yogurt is your weakness? Come on.

Woman: "My diet? Well, yesterday I had an apple turnover. Mm-hmm. I know, it's sort of my weakness."

I mean, if the friend knows she's talking about yogurt, what could POSSIBLY fill the gaps in that conversation?

Woman: "My diet? Well, yesterday I had an apple turnover."
Friend: "You mean a cup of Yoplait yogurt flavored like an apple turnover, whatever that means beyond just 'tastes like an apple, more or less?'"
Woman: "Mm-hmm."
Friend: "Good for you, I guess?"
Woman: "I know, it's sort of my weakness."
Friend: "Am I even part of this conversation? God, shut up."

Woman: "I always keep it in the house."

The use of "it" here is, I suppose, evidence that the friend knows she's talking about yogurt, because it's a weird pronoun choice to refer to apple turnovers, in my opinion. But it's more likely that it's evidence that this ad was sloppily written, as if we needed much more of that.

Woman: "Well, that, and Boston cream pie, white chocolate strawberries - yeah, yeah! - and, mmm, key lime pie."

I honestly have no idea what to make of the "yeah, yeah!" part, which really could go either way as far as proof of what she is supposed to be talking about. But I've also lost interest because there isn't enough evidence to discount my original theory, and based on my original theory, fuck this woman.

By the way, check the bottom of the screen at this point in the ad for some truly awesome fine print.

Woman: "Yeah! Mm-hmm, I've already lost some weight!"

Fine print: "As part of a reduced calorie diet and regular exercise."

So basically what you're telling me is that the yogurt has effectively nothing to do with it. Good to know!

This series only gets worse, by the way, and the people in it only get more obviously full of lies. Check out this piece of shit:

Am I supposed to like the main character of this ad?

Woman: "Could you take all of these in for me, please?"
Seamstress: "All of them?"
Woman: "Well, it's the Boston cream pie, and the apple turnovers, and the white chocolate strawberries, and the key lime pie."

Didn't you say you have fourteen flavors? FUCK YOU for using the same four in every ad.

Seamstress: "So you need them let out."
Woman: "No, no, in."
Seamstress: "Out."
Woman: "Uh, in."

This goes on forever, while wacky French music plays in the background. Seriously, though: am I supposed to like this woman? She's a bitch. She goes into this shop, lies like she's been eating a lot of desserts, then treats the seamstress like a fucking moron for being "confused" about the issue. For good measure, this ad ends with a "joke" so bad I'm not even going to repeat it here. I can't believe someone got paid to write this and that it was filmed and aired. It's awful.

There are other ads in this series, like a follow-up to the first one where the husband is busy bragging to someone about all the desserts he's eating and yet staying thin, and the lying becomes more and more blatant. What's Yoplait's angle? "Our product is so bad you'll want to lie about eating it?" "See if these flavor compounds can distract you from the fact that you're eating a soul-crushing cup of diet yogurt?" Yoplait: It is so not worth telling anyone you ate it.

The rapping bird gets the worm

2011-09-20T21:19:00.004-05:00

The Aflac duck commercials must be one of the most prominent series we've never mentioned on this site, because while somewhat dopey and tedious, they've really just never been worth commenting on. Well, that streak is over.

If you're wondering why the pigeon is rapping, it's because this is a follow-up to this commercial... not that it made any fucking sense that time either.

Kid: "Why do we have Aflac-"
Duck: "Aflac!"
Kid: "And major medical?"
Pigeon: "Major medical, boyyyyy, yeah!"
[Frogs lay down a beat]

I sort of thought that commercials based around rapping clearly written by a forty-something white guy who has heard a grand total of one rap song in his life went out of style in the mid-nineties, but it looks like I was wrong.

Pigeon: "I help pay the doctor, ain't that enough for you?"
Dad: "There are things major medical doesn't do."

Also fun: when you decide to build your commercial around a rap song, then hire the whitest guy ever to stiffly speak half the lines in it.

Duck: "Aflac!"
Dad: "Pays cash so we don't have to fret."
Baby robins: "Something families should get!"
Worm: "Like a safety net!"

Then the mother robin CASUALLY TOSSES THE SINGING WORM TO HER HUNGRY OFFSPRING, WHERE HE IS INSTANTLY DEVOURED. This might be the most sadistic commercial I've ever seen. I hope that worm had some form of life insurance. Thoroughly unfazed, the mother robin goes on to the next line:

Robin: "Even helps pay deductibles to cover your back, with-"
Duck [using lily pads as turntables]: "A-a-a-a-a-aflac!"

This song was ghostwritten by Jay-Z, right? You can tell me. I'd recognize Hova's style anywhere.

Just for good measure, after the Aflac logo we get a scene of the worm doing the worm while the duck, frogs and robin beatbox. Here's the question: is this supposed to be the same worm? We just saw him become breakfast for those robins. There's no way he's not dead. Maybe the end scene is actually out of chronological order, Pulp Fiction-style (which would fit well with the embarrassingly 90s tone of the rest of the ad), and depicts the worm attempting to impress his various potential predators with some hot breakdancing moves. Sadly, as we know all too well by this point, it didn't work; the mother robin simply waited for an opportune moment to pounce. Perhaps the worm's line in the song was a last-ditch effort to prove to the other creatures that he was too talented to be eaten. Good try, pal, but those hungry chicks are a tough audience.

There's always room for creepiness

2011-09-13T23:00:00.005-05:00

I've talked before about how much I hate it when advertisers of products that are really geared toward children try desperately to pitch them to adults instead. Well, it probably shouldn't surprise anyone to see this, since Jell-O is a Kraft brand.

First of all, dude, you're an adult. Buy a big tub of whatever brand of chocolate pudding strikes your fancy and eat out of it to your heart's content. By no means are you confined to eating from tiny little two-ounce or whatever pudding cups.

Second of all, "pudding face" is goddamn horrifying and I can't believe Jell-O built an entire campaign around it in the hopes that this would move product. I first came into contact with this campaign via their series of horrible billboards which, I assure you, are like 500 times creepier than this ad is.

These things are fucking terrifying. This is apparently supposed to represent happiness? Unrestrained joy? Guess what, Crispin Porter + Bogusky (yeah, I know, who would have believed they'd be behind another terrible ad campaign) - that's not what I think of! The guy on the right looks like a serial killer. The kids on the left look like evil ventriloquist dummies from some creepy B-movie.

But hey, we're here to talk about this TV ad. So I guess we might as well.

Daughter: "Didn't we have some Jell-O pudding?"

I know this is just something commercials do, and I can't expect them not to, but: no one says the complete brand name of a product out loud like this. Ever.

Daughter: "Dad? Did you eat my Jell-O pudding?"

Did you buy it with your own money? When did this go from "hey, we had some of this product in the house, right?" to "IT IS MINE WHO TOUCHED IT?"

Dad [unconvincingly]: "No."
[Daughter walks over and pulls the paper away from his face.]
Daughter: "Pudding face!"
Dad: "No... I'm just... happy."
Mom: "Only pudding gives you pudding face."

Fuck you, Kraft, you editorializing pieces of shit. Your shitty products are not this good. Also, this guy? Does not look happy. He looks absolutely miserable, but with a grotesque forced smile wrought across his face. Jell-O pudding is apparently now a Batman villain.

Dad: "I'm sorry."
Son: "You don't look sorry."
Dad: "You're right, I'm not."

"Maybe because I paid for that fucking pudding. You hear me, grade schoolers? If I want your pudding I'm going to eat it and you're not gonna say shit." Honestly, what is Crispin Porter's obsession with trying to turn adults into the Trix rabbit? If, for some reason, adults want to eat the mediocre pudding you've been pitching to children since time immemorial, and if you're trying to sell it to them for that purpose, why is the pitch here seemingly intended to shame the adult for eating a kids' snack? Do you want me to buy it or not, assholes?

Announcer: "Get your pudding face on with oh-so-cool and irresistible Jell-O pudding."

Uh, Jell-O? You don't really get to take credit for the pudding being "cool." That's the refrigerator's job.

Obviously I don't expect Jell-O to under-pitch their product. But when you go way, way overboard, that's just annoying. Of course, that isn't nearly as big of a problem as is the fact that there is nothing even remotely appealing about "pudding face." It sounds awful. The way this spot treats it as a scarlet letter is bizarrely counterintuitive. And, most damningly, it looks awful. This is, seemingly, a condition to which I should aspire! I should want that horrible, contorted grin that looks more like the result of weeks of Clockwork Orange-style torture than the result of eating something delicious to be plastered across my face. I mean, what, was Crispin Porter so upset that Burger King phased out the King that they decided they were going to get something even creepier on the air? If so, I'm scared to think what kind of ads we're going to see when "pudding face" inevitably runs its course.

Worst threesome ever

2011-09-09T22:18:00.002-05:00

Oh, the awkwardness of high school reunions. Being forced to make small talk with people you haven't seen in decades... getting hit on by old classmates who are like totally bald now... having old friends surreptitiously unzip your clothes... you know, all the normal stuff.

I think there's a reason we don't normally see Coldwater Creek ads on television.

Man: "Sooo... are you seeing anyone?"
Woman: "I'm married."

Boom! In your face, guy! Guy who has not at all been calculatedly paired to make this already quite-attractive-for-her-mid-40s woman look even better than she does by virtue of being balding and awkward!

Man: "Oh!"
Woman: "Yeah."
Man: "Lucky fella."
Woman: *chuckles patronizingly*

Why is either of them still standing there at this point? Really, why was this entire first exchange even necessary, other than to fill time?

Woman 2: "Oh, my - Jennifer?"
Woman: "Elizabeth?"

"We're wearing nametags that identify us, so I'm not sure why we sound so shocked."

Woman 2: "You look amazing! And this dress, wow! It is so good to see you!"

Then, while distracting Woman 1 with her uncomfortably long hug and thoroughly pat small talk, Woman 2 fucking unzips Woman 1's dress so she can look at the tag to see what brand it is.

I mean, this isn't a thing that happens, right? No one would ever do this. And why would they? You could, you know, ASK WHAT BRAND THE DRESS IS. The person who bought it is right in front of you. Or is that an etiquette faux pas? Even if it is, is it more of an etiquette faux pas than unzipping someone's clothes while they're wearing them? I say no!

And then Woman 2 just walks away without saying anything else, while the guy stands there with a look on his face suggesting he's totally going to be using that hug as the starting point for some furious masturbation in his lonely Holiday Inn Express room later that night.

I guess the ad does an okay job of getting the brand across by the way it just plops it on the screen at the end there, but really this whole thing is just forced and uncomfortable, to say nothing of the fact that it seems like it was pulled directly from an unaired sitcom pilot from the year 1997. The overall pitch - "Hey, 40-something ladies, prepare to wow everyone at your 25th high school reunion" - makes sense enough, but could it have been executed more questionably? I doubt it.

Women: can't live with 'em, totally can't live with 'em

2011-06-07T19:26:00.002-05:00

Hey guys! You know what I, as a man, can't stand? Listening to women. Like, about anything, ever, particularly if some form of sporting event might be on in the immediate vicinity. And especially because women never have anything important to say. Why would they? They're women! If a woman is talking to me and I'm listening to her it's due to one of three reasons: (a) she's asking me what I want her to cook me for dinner; (b) she's telling me how her bra unhooks; or (c) I'm going to get a Klondike bar (manliest food on the planet!) as a reward.

Now who can't relate to that?

Announcer: "New Klondike Mint Chocolate Chip bars present: Five Seconds to Glory! Mark versus Actually Listening to His Wife!"

At least this isn't one of those ads where the guy with utter contempt for his wife's presence is also married to someone who is way too hot for him. Minor point in Klondike's favor.

Wife: "...beautiful, beautiful yellow squash. And I thought, we could potentially paint our foyer yellow. What do you think? I know, it's yellow, I know..."
[bell rings]
Mark: [jumps up] "YEAAAHHH!!!"
[confetti falls, models run in]
Jingle: "What would you do-o-o for a Klondike Bar?"

In addition to the obvious problems with the depiction of a relationship in this scene, isn't this just dumb? I mean, has anyone ever had to do less for a Klondike bar? Yet it's treated like Mark is having acupuncture on his penis or something. Oh man, listening to a woman for five seconds, you guys! That shit is hard! Because women, you know? They're like all boring and stuff. Unless they're models who bring you ice cream and don't talk.

I'm sure this post will yet again get me accused of having no sense of humor, as though "having a sense of humor" requires finding anything funny as long as it's trying to be. Sorry - this is a major failure. Let's ignore the ridiculously casual sexism for a minute - what exactly is "funny" about this commercial? The only possible "punchline" is Mark's wildly outsized celebration at accomplishing an incredibly easy task. But here's the thing - the commercial does not present the task as incredibly easy. It implies that it's difficult; Mark's facial expression suggests that it's difficult; and given that Mark is rewarded with the sponsoring product, this certainly suggests that Klondike is of the opinion that this is a difficult challenge. In other words, Mark is given a tough task, achieves it, and celebrates. That isn't humor. The only real "humor" is intended to come from the hilarity of Mark having to "actually listen to his wife" for five seconds - because if your wife is talking to you, it's boring and inconsequential, and thus paying attention to her is just all kinds of a chore. Haw! This brings us back around to the "sexism" part on the Möbius strip of shittiness that is this ad.

And if you still can't see the sexist subtext (though I hesitate to even call it subtext) in this spot, watch this other Klondike ad and tell me it doesn't have a homophobic subtext. Then tell me you'd put sexism past the troglodytes in charge of marketing at Klondike. The hilarious part is that, as a chocolate-and-ice-cream confection, doesn't it seem like Klondike should be advertising to women as much as men? It's not like they're advertising beef jerky or energy drinks or something that has a market of mostly 18-49 males. Instead, here's Klondike dumping all over at least half of its potential audience. Good work, guys.

Every kiss begins with cats

2011-05-02T12:00:00.001-05:00

I don't know what kind of TV loyal reader Tyler watches, but he sure finds some weird stuff to recommend to us. Case in point:

What the fucking shit is that?

There must be a trimmed-down version for actual broadcast, because at a minute long this is a waste of my fucking time. The first 25 seconds tells us nothing except that these two are dating and that she likes her family's cat. Yawn. Then there's the creepiness/utter insanity of the rest of it.

No one's house needs a goddamn cat room. Okay? It just doesn't. Especially if the cat is the size of a gerbil. (I know, I know, it's going to get larger. Still doesn't need its own room.) But that's nothing next to the idea of using a kitten to propose, creepy on a number of levels. First of all, he apparently thinks that just because she loves her family's cat, she'll love any cat. It's not clear to me this follows. Second, he's basically using cuteness to guilt her into this engagement. "Well, if you won't marry me, will you at least marry Mr. Snuggles and me?" Third, that poor kitten looks terrified while she's holding it. And fourth, the ad ends with what looks like "Our Wedding Album, Brought to You by Fancy Feast."

And Fancy Feast has FUCK ALL to do with any of this. What's even the pitch here? Feed your cat Fancy Feast or you don't love it? Feed your cat Fancy Feast or you don't love each other? Only Fancy Feast is good enough for your cat when the cat is the fulcrum on which your relationship balances? And, fuck, are there really people who feed their cats from fancy glass dishes? God, I hope not. Really, the idea of pretending that canned cat food is fancy when it looks like shit and smells like a wet pile of rotting fish just annoys me. But when you go out there and try to sell cat food with a treacly human story... that's just retarded.

Domu ads. Stupid. Annoying. Chicago.

2011-05-01T17:28:00.010-05:00

This probably falls into the category of "stuff only I care about," since unless you take public transportation in Chicago you're never going to see these things. But they've just been blanketing the El and buses lately, which means I'm stuck learning two unlikely things about some total stranger I couldn't care less about.

Because there's no way I'm going to get a picture of these things from a moving train, I'm stuck with the ones inside cars or at stops I actually use. So trust me when I say there are way worse ones than the ones below. For instance, every male appearing in these ads seems to have come right out of "Look at This Fucking Hipster" right down to the clearly ironic ridiculous facial hair.

I mean, look at these fucking things. So, okay. Presumably the idea is that you're trying to sell the viewer on the product by showing a wide range of people who use the service (right down to the varying of the neighborhoods, which is probably the most important part anyway). But how does it help to go with weird, ridiculous, unrealistic and/or esoteric professions and interests? Take this one. Slam poets and urologists? Both of them? Did they meet at a urology convention and realize they both loved slam poetry, or did they meet at a slam poetry session and discover they both happened to be urologists? I mean, come on. It would be hacky enough to make some ad be all "Hey, wouldn't it be super funny if this person was a slam poet and a urologist?" But pretending that this describes two people living together makes me absolutely incapable of taking this bullshit seriously. Is this supposed to be lighthearted and I'm thinking too hard about it? Probably. I don't care. It's stupid and I have to see shit like this eight times every day. If they weren't so ubiquitous I'd have snorted and moved on.

"Muse?" Guess what - go fuck yourself. Is there a single noun you could use to describe a person that would make them sound more insufferable other than obvious pejoratives? I say no. And while this might be stereotyping, is there a universe in which this woman looks like, of all things, an air traffic controller? She looks more like a waitress at a vegan restaurant who goes to art school during the day.

Thanks (I guess) to what appears to be the website of the woman who took the photos, I was also able to get a hold of this one. Holy shit, LOOK AT THIS FUCKING HIPSTER. Worse yet, this appears to be part of maybe the most bizarre viral marketing attempt of all time - that Twitter account has been posting for several months, mostly about podiatry, but if you read the thing it's pretty clear (I think) that it's being ginned up by someone who isn't a real doctor, it links only to Domu.com and gives no actual links to or contact info for the supposed business, and Google doesn't give any indication that anyone named Sven O. Svenson is actually a podiatrist in the area. Also, if I walked into a doctor's office and they looked like this motherfucker, I'd be out of there faster than you can say "This is the weirdest fake shit I have ever seen in my life."

According to Liska + Associates, the agency responsible for this nonsense, "For the next evolution of marketing, Liska worked with Domu on a series of ads that feature the human side of Domu—the cool, interesting Chicagoans who use the site." Here's the problem: it's hard to feature the human side of something when you use humans who are so obviously fake, and when half of them have goofy, esoteric jobs or interests that virtually no one can relate to, and every picture is the most hipster-looking douchebag available. I can't recall seeing a single one that's just a normal looking dude in a business suit. They all have to have weirdly teased-up hair, or stupid ironic beards, or be dressed like they're on their way to a poetry reading in 1997. None of these people look "cool" or "interesting" unless you're already that kind of a schmuck, which means I'm forced to assume that Domu decided that their only real audience, I guess the only people currently renting apartments in Chicago, was hipsters. In which case, I guess, mission accomplished?

Dear advertisers: making the people in your ads into ridiculous extremes of human behavior does not make them seem more real (because how could I possibly come up with a person who was a slam poet and a urologist???). It makes them seem fake as shit. Even if these were all real people and were accurate recountings of their jobs and passions, I would have come up with some other people whose descriptions were closer to the peak of the bell curve, not several standard deviations toward the far end. Because these ads are stupid unbelievable bullshit and don't sell me on a fucking thing.

Forget smartphones, get a smarmphone

2011-03-25T13:14:00.005-05:00

Leave it to Apple to concoct the smarmiest, most defensive ad campaign of the year.

Smug Douchebag Announcer: "If you don't have an iPhone, you don't have iBooks. So you don't have your favorite books in your pocket."

The emphasis on "your" there is weird, like if you buy an Android Phone it jams a hundred books you don't like down your pants. "Hey! Get out of there, the complete Dean Koontz oeuvre!"

SDA: "And you don't have the iBook store, an entire bookstore in your pocket."

Just in case you couldn't figure out what "the iBook store" could possibly be referring to, here's another whole clause!

SDA: "So whether you're looking for a certain author or a New York Times best-seller, a good book is just a tap away."

Certainly not true of any other product!

SDA: "Yup, if you don't have an iPhone, well, you don't have an iPhone."

Tautology moves a lot of product, let me tell you.

The whole series of these ads is so obnoxiously smug that, frankly, it completely turns me off from ever wanting an iPhone. And it's not just that they treat themselves like the hottest shit on the planet. Take this ad, for instance - the iPhone is trying to throw its body in front of e-readers like Amazon's Kindle, Barnes and Noble's Nook, and etc. And that's all well and good, I guess, except that the iPhone isn't really a competitor to those products. It's a phone. It's great how much other stuff it does, but if I want to read a book and don't want an actual book, I'm going to get an e-reader. The iPhone screen is like four inches! Yeah, can't wait to be hunched over Moby-Dick on a screen that size. It's like that T-Mobile commercial that brags about the phone that comes preloaded with Inception, as though anyone is excited to watch Inception, a film noteworthy for its visuals, on a tiny screen in the palm of their hand. I swear, sometimes I feel like the more things they make smartphones do, the less excited I am about it. I want a phone that makes calls and can surf the internet. I don't need to watch tiny, tiny movies or read tiny, tiny books. There are other devices that can do those things on the go in a way that isn't completely stupid, and if I need to do them that badly, I'll get one of those devices.

Are there 80 million variants on how much of a stupid jerk you are for not having an iPhone? Of course there are.

SDA: "If you don't have an iPhone, you don't have an iPod in your phone."

A necessary thing that everyone should have! Also, pretty much every smartphone plays music, asshole.

SDA: "With your music, and your playlists."

Again with the overemphasis on how this will be stuff you like, as though it's not true of anything else. Windows Phone finds out what music you like and then deliberately recommends completely unrelated tracks. Android phones come preloaded exclusively with fifteen remixes of "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas. I know the idea is how great it is that the iPhone can sync to iTunes, but really, BFD.

SDA: "And you don't have iTunes on your phone, the world's #1 music store."

Hey, have you heard of iTunes? No? Well, apparently it's some kind of music store. Good thing they told us that, or this ad would have been really confusing. Now it's time for some applesauce - open wide for the airplane!

(My phone, which is not an iPhone as you can probably guess, comes with direct access to the Amazon.com MP3 store, which is basically the exact same thing as the iTunes store. So... no, Apple, I really don't care.)

SDA: "With Genius, that recommends new music based on the songs you already have."

Do not care. At all. Every online music company in the world recommends music based on your established likes. And who buys songs on their phone based on a recommendation without even listening to them first?

SDA: "Yup, if you don't have an iPhone, go fuck yourself."

Well, maybe he didn't say that. But he may as well have. I find the tone of ads like this completely counterproductive. It's 30 seconds of telling any iPhone-less viewer that they're an idiot for not having one because it's just that great. Why would you want to talk down to consumers? Unless that was the point...

Adman 1: Okay, time to get to work on the new iPhone commercial, guys. What should we focus on?

Adman 2: All the great features!

Adman 3: The ways in which it's better than other phones!

Adman 4: The douchey self-satisfaction you get from owning one!

Adman 5: The inherent superiority of iPhone owners to other humans!

Adman 1: Those are all pretty great ideas. Anyone have a slogan?

Adman 4: "If you don't have an iPhone, go get one right now, you stupid twit!"

Adman 5: "If you don't have an iPhone, you probably also don't have a BRAIN!"

Adman 1: Okay, um, not bad, but maybe a little bit too on the nose. We don't want to insult potential customers.

Adman 5: We don't?

Adman 4: The iPhone is still made by Apple, right? I mean, have you ever seen an Apple ad before? Those Mac vs. PC ads are classic examples of insulting the consumer!

Adman 5: Apple products sell themselves by word of mouth. The whole point of the TV ads is just to make people who already own Apple products feel even more satisfied with themselves than they already do. They're like "attaboy" pats on the back for people who own Apple stuff.

Adman 1: Wow. Okay. What about something like "If you don't have an iPhone, you don't have an iPhone?"

Adman 4: ...maybe. But can you get the guy talking to sound like he's much, much better than anyone who doesn't have one?

Adman 5: Gotta have that sense of superiority. It justifies the inflated purchase price.

Adman 1: Okay, I think we're all done here.

The iPhone! If you don't have one, how are you supposed to feel like a better person than all the other losers?

What the Hawk?

2011-03-13T00:30:00.003-06:00

I sympathize with makers of local commercials. You're tasked with standing out amid a sea of high-budget national ads that never fail to make your spots look even cheaper than they already would. With that in mind, I can see why a company might opt to borrow ideas from a national campaign for their local ad. However, the eTrade baby is not the one I would have gone with.

Baby: "I'm looking cool in this car! This thing is a stroller magnet! I should work on my pick-up lines."

First of all: no. You should not do that, because you are a baby. Also, note that the baby's body never moves, which is kind of disturbing and just makes him look like a tiny quadriplegic.

Baby: "Hey girl, you need a nap? 'Cause you been crawling through my mind all day."

As awful as the eTrade ads were with their implications of babies having sex with each other, I'm not sure this isn't more blatant than any of those. Baby pick-up lines? Someone really thought this was a good idea?

Baby: "Wow. I'm slaying it!"
[Mom in front seat rolls her eyes]

"Ha! Man. My infant son thinks he's, like, the hottest shit. And he's so not. I would never fuck him if he used that line on me."

Baby: "How about, dang, girl! That diaper's looking good on you."

How about not? How about I'm three seconds away from clawing my own eyes out and shoving them into my ears?

Baby: "What are you, a size 18 months? Yeah, I like my girls a little chubby."
Announcer: "You want some chubby?"

What? What the fuck are you talking about? If this is reliant on me having seen previous ads in whatever fucking series this is, or knowing Hawk Ford's shitty dealership slogan, that is a BAD idea, because I live in Chicago, watch a lot of TV, write about ads as a hobby, and yet can't recall ever seeing one of their ads before. If it's not reliant on that... WHAT?

Announcer: "Chubby discounts. Chubby savings."

WHAT. THE. FUCK. ARE. YOU. TALKING. ABOUT.

Does Hawk Ford know that "chubby" is also a slang term involving the penis? Were they going for that pun? When the baby says that he likes his girls "a little chubby," is that intended to be a play on words, in that he might also have a "little chubby?" Because if so, I want to drive down to Oak Lawn and light that entire dealership on fire.

And if they don't know that, and they weren't going for that pun... what in the hell were they going for?

By the way: "Chubby discounts, chubby savings" isn't even Hawk Ford's normal slogan, as evidenced by these other ads in this campaign. So... a baby calling another baby fat was just so hilarious we had to alter our whole ad to be built around it, in spite of the fact that it makes no goddamn sense? For fuck's sake, at least those other ads use the baby for semi-legit reasons. With this one it just seems like there was a bet in the office about how horrible a commercial they could make and still get it on the air.

It's Greek to me

2011-03-01T21:06:00.007-06:00

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, as the old saying goes. I guess we can modify that to "Beware of Greek grandmothers bearing hummus."

Ye gods. Time for a team effort!

Windier: It's entirely possible that this ad would be hysterically funny if I were Greek, or Greek-American, and had a grandmother like that. But here's the thing. I'm not, and I don't. And the exact same is true of, oh, about 99% of the population (according to Wikipedia, the State Department says that about three million Americans claim Greek heritage). So while I'm sure Jennifer Aniston and Tina Fey find this ad funny and relatable, I'm of the opinion that you kind of need to think of the broader audience. And as a member of the broader audience, I am baffled as to how this is supposed to sell me anything.

Bizarrely smug announcer: "Hey, Michelle! Whatcha doing?"
Michelle: "I'm serving delicious Athenos hummus to my friends! I've got-"
BSA: "That's great! Let's see what Yiayia thinks!"
Yiayia: "You dress like... a prostitute!"

Windier: I have an idea! What if we just totally shit all over someone for using our product? "Ladies, do you like Athenos hummus? Well, so does this old Greek lady, and she also thinks you look like a whore." If you're a woman, and you have a Greek grandmother - or, I suppose, any grandmother from the "old country" who's all "set in her ways" and shit and is also excruciatingly frank - then I suppose you've already been in a situation like this and it's funny. But I must stress again that most people don't, and to those people, I'm guessing the idea of being called a prostitute is about as funny as the actress playing Michelle makes it look. Which is to say, not at all! What was the point of this ad again?

Knitwear: It's hard for me to understand how demoralizing a woman for wearing a perfectly normal dress in a perfectly normal way would help you seem likable. It's unkind and it borders on misogynistic, unlike this other ad in the series for Athenos hummus, which leaps over the border to misogyny land and breaks some plates on the floor, as parenting is a second-class job, a wife is a second-class citizen, and if you're a man, your children should laugh at you for bothering to take a role in raising them. At the same time, this company is attempting to move product. Are you secretly trying to neg these people so that they'll buy more hummus to get back into your good graces? Notice also how cavalierly the announcer dismisses Michelle's plans for the evening - in spite of the fact that Michelle is the customer surrogate in this ad. He wants her (that is, you) to buy the product - but he doesn't care what she (that is, you) thinks.

Michelle: "Did she just call me a prostitute?"
BSA: "No! Yiayia would never do-"
Yiayia: "Prostitute."
BSA: "Never mind that, Michelle! At least Yiayia approves of you serving Athenos hummus!"
Yiayia: "Mmmm!"

Windier: All that I'm really getting out of this ad is the following:

(a) Old Greek women are kind of horrible.
(b) Old Greek women like Athenos hummus and apparently nothing else.
(c) Therefore, you should like Athenos hummus, because it's the only way you're ever going to win the respect of this awful crone.

Sold! Let me run right out and purchase every container in the store! Because when I think delicious food products, my mind goes right to old women who will casually demean you if they don't like your outfit. Here's the official description of the video on YouTube, by the way:

"Yiayia (Greek, for grandmother) is a fan of simple, respectful food made the Greek way. That's why she approves of ATHENOS. And that's why she doesn't approve of anything else."

First of all, what is "respectful food?" I fucking hate shit like that. Don't take adjectives and dilute their meaning by forcing them into completely inapplicable situations. (Also, I think it's pretty clear that if there's one thing Yiayia has absolutely no use for, it's being respectful.) Second of all, what the fuck is this, Life cereal? "Give this Athenos hummus to Yiayia, she doesn't like anything. She likes it! Hey Yiayia!" And I still don't see how this is going to encourage me to purchase the product. You can just see Michelle in the last scene thinking how quickly she can get to the store for some Tribe or Sabra or whatever.

Knitwear: Third of all, let's not pretend that hummus is some sort of classic Greek food. I'm sure you could find it in a grocery store somewhere in Greece, but it's not like you're going to unearth some sort of ancient pottery shard depicting Zeus with a big platter of hummus and pita.
Extensive research went into making sure this ad "properly reflected Greek culture," so I'm glad they went that extra mile to include both an authentic Greek food and the special importance placed on nurturing your children (or not).

Windier: Here's the slogan this ad probably should have ended with, for consistency's sake: "Athenos Hummus: So authentically delicious, it'll be just like a Greek woman is horribly insulting you while you're eating it! Mmmm. Pick some up today!" You're already in your car on your way to the store, right?

This isn't the only ad in the series, as Knitwear mentions above. In addition to the one where Yiayia suggests that being a stay-at-home dad is unmanly, there's also one where she tells a couple living together but unmarried that they're going to Hell. For real. But hey! She loves Athenos products! So, um, enjoy! This hummus will surely distract you from your sinful modern lifestyles! I don't care how much like anyone's grandmother this woman is - why would I want to buy any product she's endorsing? If this is "Greek authenticity," I'll be fine with a less authentic brand, thanks.

Knitwear: And it's Greek authenticity only in the most calculated way imaginable, which is probably my favorite part. "Athenos! We're Greek! Greeky Greek Greek! (Kraft.)" Anyway, despite the controversy following the first airings of the ad this week, the company stands behind their commercial. Kraft, meet Groupon. Groupon, Kraft. I'm sure you two will have lots to talk about.

StopDaddy

2011-02-22T07:15:00.000-06:00

Three guesses as to what you will see if you go online to "see more now" at the end of this ad, and the first two don't count.

If you said "Danica Patrick and Jillian Michaels are NOT naked," you're right! (If you additionally said, "It's excruciatingly unfunny and you will instantly regret watching it just to remove the 0.0000000001% of doubt you had before posting this," you are also right.)

Don't you wonder why GoDaddy is still making ads this way? At first, I get it. You want to get your name out there. But everyone knows who GoDaddy is by now and yet we get functionally the exact same thing every year - the ad implies that if you go online for the full version you will see nudity or at the very least something extremely risqué; you of course will not; and for some reason GoDaddy refuses to cast anyone who would be worth the effort anyway. For crying out loud, I could type virtually any sexual term into Google and find video of a more attractive woman than Danica Patrick doing unspeakable things inside of thirty seconds.

Just for good measure, this year's spot adds Jillian Michaels, because two passably attractive brunettes are better than one, even if neither of them can act worth a lick. Neither Michaels nor Patrick is hot enough to justify appearing in these spots, right? Surely you could find someone around their level who could act, or at least find someone hotter who can't. Maybe it seems kind of sexist for me to harp on this, but come on - their entire premise is "We're using hot ladies to sell domain names." You can't do that and then not provide hot ladies.

If you hate yourself, do be sure to check out the full online spot, which ranks right up there with the worst associated web content to a televised ad I've ever seen. Although it is sort of impressive how many people they managed to cast who lack the ability to competently deliver a line.

Making bad ads isn't exactly rocket science

2011-02-21T12:25:00.000-06:00

Last September I mentioned a Honda Civic ad that I hated and wanted to write about but was unable to find on YouTube. Well, guess what I just found.

Come on.

Applicant: "Mr. Stratton, thank you."
Stratton: "We'll be in touch."
[Applicant leaves]
Stratton: "Seems bright."
Tom: "I don't know, Hank."

What is with the crazy low-angle shots here? Did I need to be able to see all the way up that guy's nose? Was Verne Troyer the cameraman?

Stratton: "Tom?"
Tom: "I think we just found our next rocket scientist."

They looked out the window and saw that the applicant dude drives a Honda Civic. And that pushed him over the top! As if this makes any sense at all. "Sure, your qualifications are impeccable... but I don't know, is that a Ford Taurus you're driving? I'm sorry, I think we need more of a Honda Civic man for this job." Alternately, what if this guy isn't even qualified to be a rocket scientist? "Well, we reviewed your application, and it says that your only previous work with rockets was 'shooting off some bottle rockets on Fourth of July 1997.' So I'm afraid that... wait a second, is that a Honda fucking Civic?"

Announcer: "It can take you farther than you think."

See, I could write the whole thing off as a joke - a really awful, stupid joke, but a joke - if they didn't have this line in there. They are serious! They are legitimately claiming that if your potential boss appreciates your taste in cars, you will get hired. And why?

Announcer: "The best value of any car in its class for the past 23 years."

Okay, first of all, out of context that really doesn't mean much. Second of all, does an appreciation of value make you a better rocket scientist? Wouldn't this make at least a little more sense if he was being hired as an economist or something? Oh, but "economist" isn't a profession that is widely used as shorthand for "genius-level intelligence," so we can't go with that. We need everyone to understand that buying a Honda Civic is proof that you are so smart that you can design spacecraft. And if you don't buy a Honda Civic? Well, I think Arby's is hiring for the night shift, jerkoff. The irony of the whole thing is that "rocket scientist" is probably a pretty high-paying job - what are even the odds that this guy would still be driving a Civic within five years?

Sub-Optima

2011-02-20T09:02:00.002-06:00

This isn't some ridiculously terrible commercial or anything. It's just kind of a mess.

I suspect this is what happens when there are six ideas in the pitch meeting and they just decide to use them all. My prevailing thought about this ad is that the first piece of the plotline, which depicts a couple handcuffed to a cop's motorcycle as the cop drives away in their Kia Optima, would probably have been sufficient by itself for the entire ad. You start with the couple driving, cop pulls them over, cop looks the car over and is taken by it, cop has the couple step out of the car, then hops in and drives away. Gets the point across, doesn't make wild, random lurches between events in something that can only charitably be called a narrative, and is at least conceptually amusing.

But does this ad stop there? No. In fact, it doesn't even start until right at the end of that piece of the plot. Instead, we move on to a helicopter grabbing the car with a giant suction cup and flying out across the ocean to deliver the car to some rich guy on a yacht. (Apparently this takes place in an alternate dimension where there is only one Kia Optima in existence, because surely with a base MSRP of around $20k, dude could afford his own. Hell, hiring that helicopter and fitting it out with the suction gadget probably cost more than that.) But does the yacht get to the rich guy? No. Because - watch the ad, this actually happens - fucking Poseidon pops out of the ocean, knocks the helicopter away, and examines the car.

Okay. I say this a lot on here, perhaps too much, but it's too often applicable: I know this is supposed to be funny. Or something. But I just find it stupid and "lookit me!" What use does Poseidon have for a car that he's like 20 times larger than? Or at all? Maybe it's just going to be a present for his daughter's Sweet Sixteen - not to drive, mind you, because they live under the sea, but to add to her collection of human items. She can admire the car as it slowly rusts, all the while humming "Part of Your World" and combing her hair with a dinglehopper. Or maybe this is kind of retarded and could just as easily have been left out, except that Kia apparently really wanted to show off more of their mediocre CGI.

Then aliens zap the car away, but they lose it as well, as the car is pulled through some sort of wormhole and ends up in Mayan times, ready to be worshiped as some sort of god. Okay. How do the Mayans know what a car is? What are they going to do with it?

So in 60 seconds the car is possessed by six different entities (I'm including the couple at the beginning, who technically have already been dispossessed before the 60 seconds start). Doesn't this seem a little frantic? Am I the only one who finds it sort of distracting and muddled? You'd think the idea of an ad like this would be to focus on the car, but in sixty seconds it seems to me that only about seven of them - 0:05 to 0:08, when the cop is driving, and 0:37 to 0:41, when the alien is driving - really show the car doing anything besides being pulled from one place to the next. A 60-second car commercial and barely more than 10% of it actually shows the car in action? (It could be worse, of course.)

That might even be okay if there were anything particularly distinctive about the Kia Optima... but it's a mid-size sedan, a.k.a. the most conventional automotive category in existence. Virtually every car in that category looks at least 80% like all the others, and the Optima hardly looks like an exception. It's not a hybrid, it's not electric... the only thing we know about it is that everyone in this ad wants it, which is hardly a convincing argument. Shit, even that awful Cruze ad cited the car's MPG. The only thing we get at the end is the starting price (which is only if you want it in manual, by the way). I mean, for all I know there are lots of awesome things you can get with the Kia Optima - for six million bucks, plus whatever it cost to produce, is it too much to ask that this ad mention any of them? Or should I just be thankful that no more hamsters showed up?

Coffee-mating ritual

2011-02-19T11:48:00.000-06:00

Holy shit, Coffee-Mate. Really?

Express yourself! Reveal your true self to the world... by adding flavored creamer to your coffee. For real. Drinking flavored coffee is the equivalent of writing a song, or painting, or dressing in interesting clothing to stand out. Never mind that no one else will have ANY IDEA what flavor is in your coffee unless you tell them, and hey, that wouldn't be weird at all.

Office Worker 1: Morning, Bill.
Office Worker 2: Morning, Tom.
Office Worker 1: So, how are things?
Office Worker 2: Not bad. Especially since I'm drinking this... [holds up mug] ...hazelnut coffee! [takes sip] Mmm. You know, hazelnut-flavored coffee really speaks to me as a person...
Office Worker 1: Well, gosh, I would love to stay and chat, but I'm late for my exit interview!
Office Worker 2: You're leaving?
Office Worker 1: I am now!

Honestly, I would buy Miracle Whip as the edgy youth condiment before I would buy Coffee-Mate as an expression of self. Plus, what if you like your coffee black?

Office Worker 2: To me, hazelnut speaks to my artistry. I don't even feel like I can create until I've had at least three cups... but once I have, the creative juices start flowing and I feel like I can do anything with the canvas.
Office Worker 3: I hear you. I could barely muster the energy to press the keys on the piano until I had my second cup with the Cinnamon Bun flavor, but once I did, I was ready to knock out a concerto.
Office Worker 4: Morning, guys. Mind if I squeeze through to pour a cup?
Office Worker 2: Of course not, fellow coffee aficionado! So what'll it be for you today?
Office Worker 4: Um, coffee?
Office Worker 2: Well, of course. I meant what flavor of Coffee-Mate?
Office Worker 4: Oh, I just like it black.
Office Worker 2: I'm sorry?
Office Worker 4: Black. You know, no cream, no sugar, just straight?
Office Worker 3: I don't understand.
Office Worker 4: ...well, see, I'm just going to drink this...
[He puts it to his lips, but Office Worker 3 slaps it away.]
Office Worker 3: Good God, man! Do you realize what you almost did? There's nothing in there! No French vanilla, no amaretto, no gingerbread... it's just... it's just...
Office Worker 4: Coffee?
[Office Workers 2 and 3 shudder.]
Office Worker 2: I don't even like to think about it.

Coffee-Mate! Life needs flavor! Specifically, mass-produced flavor that you can pour out of a plastic bottle. Be your own person and express yourself by purchasing goods from a major multinational corporation!

(By the way, Coffee-Mate's website has a whole section dedicated to desserts they want you to make using Coffee-Mate for the flavors. I will say this right now: if you're making tiramisu or crème brûlée at home and you're using Coffee-Mate in the recipe, you have truly gone dead inside.)

Hamstering it up

2011-02-18T10:50:00.001-06:00

It's about time I got around to this one.

This ad, from early 2009 or so, is a good commercial. It's a clever use of interesting visuals to communicate, getting across the idea that the Kia Soul is distinct from the many cookie-cutter cars on the road. It even gets in a couple facts about the car at the end.

Unfortunately, Kia bought into the hamsters maybe a little too much.

What the hell is that mess?

It seems pretty clear that I'm not in this ad's target demographic (the references to 145th Street and Amsterdam Avenue place the setting quite conspicuously in Harlem). But it's still baffling. First of all, Kia makes the pretty bold assumption that you remember their earlier hamster ad - it was a good ad, but it wasn't exactly "Have you had your break today?" Even beyond that, the two ads have virtually nothing in common beyond the hamsters - the hamster wheels make only a fleeting appearance in the sequel, the hamsters have now been dressed up in all manner of clothing, and Calvin Harris' "Colours" (an electronica song from 2007) has been replaced with Black Sheep's "The Choice is Yours" (a hip hop song from 1991). Really, why did they even bother to keep the hamsters? Surely the branding from the first commercial wasn't that valuable if they just threw out everything else.

Gone is the clever suggestion that the competition is like a bunch of identical hamster wheels; in its place are comparisons to a toaster and a cardboard box. Is this still supposed to represent the competition? Is it supposed to represent the used cars that might be the only other alternative for someone shopping in the Kia Soul's price range? It's impossible to say for sure when Kia is dealing entirely in metaphors. I don't know. Maybe if I lived in Harlem this ad would make perfect sense... but somehow I doubt that.

It's also worth noting that by giving the hamsters so much more to do, Kia has successfully called attention to the not-especially-good CGI they're employing in that department. The first ad seemed like it might have been mostly real hamsters until the end; I can't imagine there's a real hamster for even a frame in this commercial, and it's painfully obvious. Does that really matter? Probably not. But it looks cheap. I don't know, maybe that was the point.

A piece of Kraft

2011-02-17T10:13:00.000-06:00

I decided to look into the Crispin Porter + Bogusky oeuvre to see what else they'd done, because in spite of our hate for the Groupon and Best Buy ads, and our historical hate for their Burger King and Microsoft campaigns, surely, surely they must not exclusively produce crap ads, right?

I'm still looking.

You know what I don't love? Ads that take a product traditionally aimed at children and try to pretend that it's something that is or should be beloved by adults. I've never been able to turn up proof of this, but I'm quite sure that sometime in the early to mid-1990s Cookie Crisp started running ads suggesting that adults could also eat it as kind of a snack food. It was ridiculous then, and it's ridiculous now.

If you've ever had real macaroni and cheese - I mean made from scratch - you know that Kraft's equivalent is like mixing baker's chocolate with Splenda and calling it a Belgian truffle. It is not good. And sure, each to his own taste, but it's objectively of lower quality, even if you still like it. There's no way this dad is so obsessed with it that he's just standing there cramming it into his stupid face.

Of course, that ad is more annoying than truly terrible. Don't worry. It gets worse.

I hate nearly everything about this one.

Girl: "So get this. Kraft Mac and Cheese, but it's in a bag."

Everyone was familiar with the fact that it came in a box, right? And cared?

Girl: "And you bake it. In the oven."

Thereby taking away the only real reason to eat Kraft Mac and Cheese in the first place, which is that it takes slightly less time to make than to make real macaroni and cheese from scratch.

Girl: "Whatever happened to Cheeseasaurus Rex? I love that guy!"

WARNING: MASSIVE EDITORIALIZING OF OUR OWN ADS! "Hey, remember our shitty old mascot we just got rid of? He was totally super popular!" I'm surprised CP+B's recent Domino's ads didn't have people demanding the return of the Noid, too. Also, what's this kid, 9? How long has it been since Cheeseasaurus Rex was actually named in the Kraft ads?

Girl: "Well, Kraft Corporation, I'm on to you. Going after the grownups and trying to muscle me out?"

Revealing your marketing strategy in your copy: super edgy.

Girl: "But I'm not going anywhere."

Yeah, Kraft Mac and Cheese is likely to still be more enjoyed by kids than adults. What was the point of this ad?

As the mac and cheese is pulled out of the oven, pay close attention to the fine print, which states: "Optional oven finish." So basically you're trying to make it look classy on TV, but the fact is that most people are not going to bother to do that extra work as though bread crumbs will make you think your grandma made this.

Announcer: "New Kraft Homestyle Macaroni and Cheese. Cheesy noodles topped with golden brown bread crumbs."

So macaroni and cheese. Only not as good.

Announcer: "You know you love it."

I loathe this tagline. Absolutely hate it. Why is this the pitch? Seems to me the idea is that adults secretly love Kraft Mac and Cheese but refuse to admit it because it's supposed to be for kids. As though, being adults, we don't have the option to buy whatever the fuck we want. If I want to buy Kraft Mac and Cheese, I will. But I don't, because it sucks, no matter how many bread crumbs you sprinkle on it. Don't try to tell me what I love and don't love, Kraft, you assholes. I will make my own grocery buying decisions and you will like it. Fuck you.

And here's the latest one.

Is that the same girl? She looks pretty similar. If so, did her mom recently suffer some sort of brain injury that caused her to forget about Kraft Macaroni and Cheese? (Wouldn't that be the life.)

Let's say that it's either a different girl or is supposed to be. How does this ad make sense? If the mom has never purchased Kraft, then the kid has never had it; if the kid has never had it, how does she know to want it? Even if you assume it's because she saw an ad for it, she seems really certain of how good it's going to taste for someone who's never eaten it.

I'm also no fan of the disdain with which this ad treats the mother's cooking. Okay, so Kraft is trying to "eliminate its competition" or whatever, something common enough in the ad world. But this seems questionable at best. "Hey! Parents! You know the food you're cooking and serving to your kids? Yeah, they fucking hate it. Get with the program and start making them pasta from a bag, and maybe when the revolution comes you won't be the first against the wall. Kraft: We Will Destroy You. I mean, You Know You Love It."

Guess what, Kraft. I didn't like it when Pizza Hut took this angle and I don't like it now. You make shitty processed pasta in a bag and/or box. This is no one's idea of a wonder meal (well, maybe this guy's). Unless someone is a particularly bad cook, it probably does not outclass something they made from scratch, and the idea that we should all just stop making real food and settle for pre-packaged crap is obnoxious at best. Or, why not go the other way and just make the tagline that much clearer?

Kraft: You Know You Can't Cook

Kraft: You Know Your Kids Hate You

Kraft: Stop Embarrassing Yourself

Kraft: Fuck You and the Casserole You Rode In On

Mind over Chatter

2011-02-16T09:49:00.000-06:00

Do you suppose there is really a huge overlap between "people who are big fans of the Black Eyed Peas" and "people who make major software decisions for businesses"?

I have my doubts that the Black Eyed Peas actually use this service. But whatever.

Announcer: "Will.i.am, what do you think about the cloud?"

Better first question: "What the fuck is the cloud?"

Will.i.am: "The cloud? You mean this guy?"

Oh, I guess it's an actual cloud? Question answered! Or, not. At all.

Will.i.am: "Chatty? Man, I love this dude."

I might suggest that it is a bad idea, when attempting to introduce a new product to a mass audience, to have your main pitchman call the product by a different name. "Hey, what's that thing called? Chatty? Chatter? Chatbox? Chat Stevens?"

Will.i.am: "He helps me and my team stay aligned, so like, we all on the same page and stuff."

Thought: when attempting to sell a product that needs to be pitched to manager-level employees at companies, don't describe its function as making sure that "like, we all on the same page and stuff." This product is aimed at business professionals, not 12-year-olds from Encino.

Will.i.am: "I'm sorry, that's my phone. But hey look, check it out: Fergie be showing me tour updates, Taboo's showing me all the fly shoe designs, and Apl's letting me know where the DJ gigs at."

I guess these are things that this service does better than any other? It's sort of impossible to say, since your spokespeople are the Black Eyed Peas, and 99.9% of the people who will use this are not part of musical groups that also dabble in shoe design. Also, why are they the "Baby Peas" in this ad? And why did they need to be animated?

Will.i.am: "You see, we keep our whole business up there. It's private, and most importantly, it's safe."

Actually somewhat meaningful, I guess.

Fergie: "Will, let's go!"
Will.i.am: "Oh, yo, I gotta go on stage!"
Announcer: "Do impossible things as a team. Chatter.com."

And Apl and Taboo get what I imagine is the usual shaft. The slogan is "Do impossible things as a team?" Impossible things? Unless your company is working on the first time machine, maybe we could just stick with a verb like "incredible," which would have been just as good for the ad's purposes without sounding ludicrously overblown.

Seriously, why are the Black Eyed Peas in this ad? Even though Chatter is supposed to be a Facebook/Twitter equivalent, it's still only like that within the confines of a professional setting. Was there really that much of a need to "cool up" the ad with will.i.am's presence? Even if there was, I still don't understand why they're the "Baby Peas" or why they're animated. For all the sense it makes, will.i.am might just as well have been 500 feet tall and stomping through the streets of Tokyo, or rendered in Rankin/Bass-style stop-motion, or depicted with oozing sores and a hacking cough as "ill.i.am" of the "Garbage Pail Peas." Or maybe this commercial could have been way, way more straightforward, used someone less famous but more relevant, and given more than a whiff of a suggestion of what Chatter is actually good for.

Dressed to baffle

2011-02-15T12:40:00.003-06:00

I'm pretty sure this ad is seriously intended to encourage you to use LivingSocial.

Uh... what?

I Googled LivingSocial and, believe it or not, it's actually some sort of Groupon competitor - not, as this ad might lead you to believe, a drug that delivers a powerful dose of estrogen to help kick-start your long-slumbering desire to transform into a woman.

This truly ranks among the most bizarre sales pitches I have ever seen. Sure, it's just intended to be funny, but you're not Budweiser, LivingSocial. You can't just do whatever you think is humorous; you still need to sell your product. Not enough people know who you are yet. And while there is a small segment of the population for whom this pitch might make perfect sense, the vast majority of people are not watching this and thinking, "Oh, sweet, LivingSocial's deals are so great they will help a bearded Deadliest Catch-type turn into a transvestite! I gotta get me some of that sweet deal action!" They are almost certainly thinking what I thought when I saw this, which is, "That is fucking weird."

And realistically, LivingSocial clearly does not disagree with that. All this ad is really doing is using the idea of a man becoming either a transvestite or a transgendered individual to get cheap laughs. This strikes me as just a little inappropriate. It's kind of interesting to chart the groups you can and can't get away with using as punchlines in commercials - you couldn't get away with making gay or racist jokes anymore; you can still get away with making fun of the genders because they're such broad groups. And apparently you can also get away with jokes about transvestite/transgendered people, presumably because they're a pretty small segment of the population and because most people still regard that behavior as particularly abnormal.

The idea of this guy transforming into a woman - eating and enjoying cupcakes! Doing yoga! Getting waxed! - is clearly supposed to be side-splittingly hilarious. But I don't think so. To me it feels cheap - like the live-action equivalent of Dodge's "Man Bag" commercial narration, which actually mentions a yoga class as something unmanly - and borderline offensive to the population it's ostensibly depicting. Especially because, I mean, we're talking about something that I assume is a momentous decision for the individuals affected... and here's LivingSocial suggesting that all it takes to open up to your true self is a few good coupon deals. Ick.

Whatever. The irony is that with this ad being so bafflingly strange, all Groupon really had to do was make a passable ad with their Super Bowl entry and they would have easily won the category for the night. Of course, we all know what Groupon actually did - so maybe LivingSocial comes out ahead anyway.

Shape up and ship out

2011-02-14T11:49:00.004-06:00

Well, at least her boobs aren't talking.

What was up with this Super Bowl and making us think we just watched someone have sex?

Kim Kardashian: "I don't really know how to say this, other than to just say it."

If there's one sentence that would describe Kim Kardashian's acting chops, it is definitely "I don't really know how to say this, other than to just say it."

Kim Kardashian: "You're amazing. The best I've ever had. But things just aren't working out. Well that's not completely true. I am working out. It's not someone else. It's SOMEthing else."

Jesus, the voice in the Chevy Cruze demonstrated more range. I love how she accentuates the wrong syllable of "something." Come on, Kim - you may be a horrible actress but I know you at least speak English on a regular basis.

Kim Kardashian: "Bye-bye, trainer. Hello, Shape-Ups."

Until we see the shoes - at the 23-second mark of a 30-second commercial - there's very little (aside from the gym equipment in the background) to suggest that this isn't a commercial about Kim Kardashian dumping a guy post-coitally. Whatever that would be an ad for. And frankly, even after we see the shoes, there's really no suggestion of why the first three-quarters of the ad had to play out that way. Is it because Kim Kardashian is only famous for things pertaining to sex? If so, why is she your spokeswoman? (Also, is it me or is it a little weird to have Kim Kardashian as a spokeswoman for exercise shoes when her most notable feature is an enormous ass, something that assumedly most women buying this product are hoping to avoid?)

I'm also not sure who this ad is aiming at. Many of the Shape-Ups ads that have run in the past, a number of them featuring retired male athletes like Joe Montana, have seemingly been aimed at men, something that sets Skechers apart from most of the other shoe brands in this category (such as the above-linked Reebok Easy Tone). And by displaying Kim Kardashian in a tight exercise outfit, panning suggestively over her body, and having her compliment a guy at the end, this would seem to be no exception. But: Kim's shoes are pink. This is right up there with having her get into a bathtub naked to sell a cranberry walnut salad. Does Skechers really want to sell to men and women? And if so, shouldn't this ad have been just a trifle more sedate in its obsession with Kim Kardashian's various curves? Then again, she's not a good actress and isn't famous for anything connected to athletics (dating athletes doesn't count), so maybe not. I guess I just question why they went with her at all.

Love Wheat Thins? Then you'll love Wheat Thins!

2011-02-13T16:16:00.004-06:00

It's kind of hard to believe that this social-media ambush stuff wasn't cooked up by Crispin Porter, but it's actually from an agency called The Escape Pod. Think Wheat Thins are boring? Think again! Now they're still boring, but also annoying.

(Credit to reader Tyler for bringing this particular spot to our attention.)

When Wheat Thins started this campaign, there was - understandably - a lot of debate online over whether it was real or whether the people being visited were simply actors. Wheat Thins responded with a spot in which they visit one such questioner, thus "proving" that they are real. Never mind that, even if you trust that that spot isn't itself faked, it hardly proves without a doubt that all previous spots were not faked. But whatever. The issue here is not the legitimacy of these ads. The issue here is whether or not they suck. Which they do.

Crunch is Calling Guy: "This is CHRISMACHO. He tweeted, 'Had a hunch today would be good but didn't think it would be this good... Wheat Thins is now following me on Twitter.'"
[They knock on Chris's door]
CCG: "You Chris?"
Chris: "Yeah."
CCG: "You remember when you tweeted, 'Had a hunch today would be good but didn't think it would be this good... Wheat Thins is now following me on Twitter?'"

This commercial is now half over. And virtually all that has happened is that the Crunch is Calling guy read this snooze-inducing tweet twice. Twice! I didn't need to hear that shit once. By the way, every single commercial in this series involves this dude reading an asinine tweet out loud twice. Great way to get me to change the channel; not so great way to get me to care about what's happening.

CCG: "We made your day once, and I have a hunch we're gonna make your day again today. We have this for ya."
[Truck reading "Follow @CHRISMACHO, He's Awesome" pulls up]
CCG: "Guy's gonna be driving around town all day today."

You probably could have spent this money on, say, advertising for Wheat Thins. I don't know. Seems like it might have been a better use of your marketing budget. To those of you who would say that this is advertising for Wheat Thins, let me direct your attention to the following tweets (which are [sic]) received by @CHRISMACHO since this spot began airing:

"hey u the dude from the cereal commercial" - @RobbCroyl

"u the guy frum the chip commercial????" - @713MAINMAINE

"You the dude from the condoms commercial?" - @KWAPT

That last one is most likely a joke, but I'm guessing the first two aren't. It reminds me of when people find posts on this blog by Googling the names of other companies (like people Googling the description of a Burger King ad but writing "Wendy's" with it). When you aren't direct, your brand name is not always as memorable as you think. In this case, we're talking about a commercial in which Wheat Thins themselves don't even appear as anything other than set dressing! At least in other stupid ads in this campaign, like this one, a box of Wheat Thins makes a legitimate appearance.

The end result of this commercial is that @CHRISMACHO now has about 13,000 followers. I'm guessing this is almost 13,000 more than he would otherwise have had, but it's still a pretty modest number considering that his handle was given out in a national ad campaign that explicitly told people to follow him. I'm guessing there were plenty of people who read his feed first, didn't think he was that awesome, and decided that maybe they shouldn't do something just because a box of crackers told them to. Also, @CHRISMACHO does not spend all his time tweeting about Wheat Thins (there are a couple tweets in the last month that mention them), so not a lot of residual advertising there, even to that fairly small number of people who did opt to follow him. But I'm sure it was worth it.

Here's the other thing about these ads: in just about all of them, people get visited because they commented about Wheat Thins on Twitter in a way that made it clear they are already consumers of Wheat Thins. Am I crazy or is saturating the market of existing consumers not really that effective a strategy? Seems to me you should be wanting to create new buyers, and commercials which tell us almost nothing about your product beyond the fact that it exists just might not be the best way to do that. I mean, unless the hope is that this commercial encourages craven fame-whores to tweet about Wheat Thins just to get on TV... but that still doesn't mean they're buying Wheat Thins. The whole thing just seems counterintuitive.

On the bright side, at least these commercials aren't stupid... well, at least they're... um... at least they don't start off by pretending to be about helping Tibet?

With my mind on my Facebook and my Facebook on my mind

2011-02-12T13:55:00.001-06:00

I legitimately cannot believe that Chevy spent three million dollars to pitch this to us.

Hey! We're Chevy. We have a new car called the Cruze. Here's what you need to know about it.

1. Inexplicably, you can have your Facebook updates read to you while you drive.
2. It is a car.
3. Hmm? Sorry, I dozed off for a second there.
4. You know, I think I'm going to head out early today.
5. *tires squealing*

I mean, is this an ad for a car, or for Facebook? Have we really reached a point in society where people cannot wait more than 30 seconds to check their Facebook feeds? And do I really want people doing that while driving? I guess I'm glad he can do it (mostly) hands-free rather than fumbling with a smart phone, but that's small consolation. It's only a matter of time before your feed starts to look like this:

John Smith is driving to the mall. And updating Facebook from the car, using just my voice! Is this cool or what?

John Smith kind of wants an Orange Julius when I get there.

John Smith Whoa! Almost rear-ended this guy who decided he just HAD to turn right. Learn to drive, asshole!

John Smith Holy fuck I can't BRRRRRGGG

Also, I know this is a commercial, but there's no way the voice would manage to correctly read the woman's update with what I'm assuming is dramatic punctuation.

Teleflora: Because you're stupid

2011-02-11T10:19:00.001-06:00

It's nice to know that, as a man, less than nothing is expected of me.

Is there really a man on the planet who would think that "Dear Kim: Your rack is unreal" is an appropriate sentiment to put on a Valentine's Day card? Or any card? Come on. I know this is hyperbole, but surely this guy could have choked out the most basic thing like "I love you," right?

Teleflora's 2009 ad went with the curious tactic of claiming that it didn't do something that none of its competitors was doing either. This year, they're going with just calling their potential customers morons, which I'm sure is always real good for sales. Here's the pitch:

"Teleflora says it beautifully. Because frankly, you can't."

Well, I can't turn into a flower and stuff myself into a vase, but otherwise I'm pretty sure I can get this shit handled, assholes. I don't think you have sonnet writers on staff over there.

Also, so, okay. The guy is already sending flowers; he's just writing a shitty note to go with them. Is the implication, then, that it doesn't even matter what he writes because it's accompanying a bouquet of flowers? Because I would kind of hope that most women would be incrementally more demanding. "Well, this is certainly a stupid and inappropriate thing to send me... but flowers are pretty! All is forgiven!" The gender stereotype exacta of "men like boobs, women like presents" has rarely been so perfectly hit.

Incompetence comes standard

2011-02-10T13:03:00.002-06:00

Apparently 2011 is the year of car sex. At least if you go by the Super Bowl ads.

This is a 30-second ad that really has no purpose other than to tell jokes... and I count four of them. Four! That's it! Also, they all suck.

Red Car: "Hey guys, the reviews are in on Cars.com!"
Silver Car: "Really? What'd they say?"
Red Car: "Well, let's see. It says Sheila looks great... topless. Heh heh..."
Convertible: "What's so funny?"
Red Car and Silver Car: "Nothing."

Ha ha ha! It's funny because convertibles are topless, but then we also made the convertible a female car and if a woman was topless her breasts would be showing! Yeah! Oh man, what a joke! Also, there's no reason for cars to find toplessness erotic because they are cars, and not humans.

Red Car: "And it says here Hank's a real gas guzzler."
Silver Car: "You hear that, Hank?"
Blue Car: [belches] "Whatever."

Wow, a burp joke. I guess I should be happy they didn't have him fart, but we're still talking jokes that are sub-Mater. Although I'm almost inclined not to even count this one as a joke, because, are you fucking serious?

Silver Car: "Hey, what about me?"
Red Car: "It says your ride is very smooth."
Silver Car: "Aww yeah! Hear that, Sheila?"
Convertible: "Never gonna happen."

I can think of a lot of reasons why it's never going to happen, the first one being that you are cars and are incapable of having sex with each other, and the rest of them being that any attempt on my part to try to think of what it might look like for cars to be having sex with each other is going to end with me finding out who wrote this ad and beating them with a tire iron.

Announcer: "With consumer and expert reviews, confidence comes standard."

I know they only had 30 seconds. But those are not very confidence-inspiring examples of your great reviews that will help me make a car-buying decision. Whoa, a convertible looks good with the top down? Holy shit! Car X has a smooth ride? Surely not something you could say about any of a hundred different models. Expert reviews, everyone! A huge SUV/truck thing does not get good gas mileage. Thank God I visited Cars.com for that fascinating insider nugget!

Woman: "See? Just like the review said - big rear end."
I'm Sure Coincidentally Black Minivan: "Excuse me?"

And we end with probably the best joke of the ad, which should tell you how bad all the others were. Also, again, useless information from Cars.com. I mean, if you don't want a car with a big rear end I'm sure it's nice to know which ones do and don't before you head to the showroom. But they're at the showroom and walking past the car they don't like anyway, so total time saved = zero. Also, it's a fucking minivan. If you want a minivan, the back is probably going to be kind of large. If that's not what you want, you don't get a minivan. You're not going to walk up to a convertible and be like, "Just like the review said - the top goes down. That is not what I want at all!" You're just going to avoid that section.

I'm sure Cars.com has plenty of useful things that it does. Kind of a shame they couldn't show any of them in their three-million-dollar ad that was seen by a third of the country. But hey, I'm sure the belching SUV made a lot of four-year-olds giggle. Now we just need to make sure they also learned the name Cars.com and will remember it for the next twenty years! It's all about the long-term, people.

I like ample cargo space and I cannot lie

2011-02-09T14:00:00.002-06:00

Should I have expected better from Mini?

Host: "This is 'Cram It in the Boot!' Where we take the four-door, all-wheel-drive Mini Countryman and... cram it in the boot!"
[Model makes suggestive pushing gesture]

Really? Really.

Host: "Josh! Have you ever crammed it in the boot before?"
Josh: "Um."

This, of course, is the point at which it becomes literally impossible to think that this commercial isn't referring to anal sex. At first you're like, well, maybe this is just supposed to be a funny-sounding title. No. Look at Josh's face as he considers the question. This ad is about butt-fucking. (It's even more blatant in the 60-second version which didn't air during the Super Bowl when the host says to Josh, "Your fiancée Ashley says you can really cram a boot!" and Josh just stammers and looks uncomfortable.)

Host: "Cram it!!!"
Audience: "Cram it! Cram it!"
Host: "Golf clubs, cram it in the boot! Cram that robot in! Yeeeees! Cram it in there!"
[Josh crams a giant sub sandwich into the trunk, featuring an extremely suggestive angle on the "Cram Cam"]

Ha ha! Yeah, Josh! Go! Um... fuck that car with your party sub strap-on! Wait, what? Why the fuck is this happening?

Host: "Whoa!!!"

"He sure fucked that car in the ass! Daaaaamn!"

Announcer: "The bigger all-new Mini Countryman, with plenty of room to cram!"

I'm sorry, I just do not understand this angle at all. Why are they alluding to anal sex? Are they discreetly (a word I use very loosely in this case) trying to suggest that the larger Mini allows you to have sex in your car the way you couldn't in the original Mini without it being extremely uncomfortable (you know, like the back of a Volkswagen)? Are they really only trying to talk about trunk space but for some reason thought that making the car look like the recipient of anal sex would be a hilariously naughty joke to "slip out" to 100 million people?

Call me a square, but I'm of the opinion that if you're going to make your commercial "secretly" filthy, it had better be really hilarious. And this just isn't. It's one joke - "talking about packing the trunk of a car with stuff kind of sounds like you're talking about anal!" - that is at best mildly amusing to begin with, repeated ad nauseam for 30 seconds. (Or 60 seconds in the case of the extended version which, I assure you, has nothing new to contribute to the scenario.) I get trying to be edgy for the sake of being memorable, but I just don't think it worked. There's edgy funny, and then there's edgy repulsive, and this lands far too firmly on the side of the latter.

Super Bored Awards IV

2011-02-08T17:30:00.005-06:00

Ah, the Super Bowl. For people in the ad world, or for those of us tangentially connected to the ad world, this is like our... World Series? Well, it's like some really big sporting event. You know what I'm talking about.

I had really anticipated, based on descriptions of the ads I read before the game, that we were in for the worst year yet. But in fact, as I tweeted afterward, this was a surprisingly non-terrible group of ads from a mean standpoint. But were there still plenty of bad ones to fill out the Super Bored Awards? Oh, of course there were. In fact, we ended up creating a new category just to get them all in. Without further ado...

The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Winner: Coca-Cola

Windier: As I mentioned, this was a surprisingly bad year for unbearably shitty ads. That doesn't mean it was an incredible year for great ads, though. Still, there were a few contenders for this spot, more than I can say about some years previous. Eminem's Chrysler ad has seemed popular - and it's pretty good, but it's also two minutes long and only finally names its product in the last ten seconds, so I'll be a little unconventional and go with this Coke ad instead, which I enjoyed. We figured Coke (which also won this award in 2009) was good for a decent ad, and they were - although only one (see below). I sometimes find Coke's insistence on treating its product as some sort of magical elixir a little grating, but it's nicely underplayed here (I could go for a Coke if my job were pacing in the desert for hours, too) and the wordless acting from the two soldiers is handled well. The bit at the end where the one soldier drags his sword on the ground to re-establish the official border is outstanding, recalling famous temporary truces like the 1914 Christmas Truce during the first World War. Too heady for a Coca-Cola Super Bowl ad? Probably. But it's a classy spot nonetheless.

Most Overproduced Ad
Winner: Coca-Cola

Quivering: I saw this one live, and I was shocked to find out later that it was only a 60 second spot. That's how bored I was while watching it -- time almost stopped. Not only was it long and boring, it was also really overdone. This is one of the few spots that probably cost more to make than it did to buy the ad time to air it. Dragons, beasts, Planet of the Apes-like creatures -- this definitely took a while to conceive and produce. Was Coke trying to make a commercial or pitching a movie idea to Pixar? It's dull, bad, and entirely deserving of Most Overproduced. Congratulations, Coke, on managing to crank out one good ad and one terrible one.

Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Winner: E*TRADE

Quivering: Last year's overall winner of Worst Ad, E*TRADE is back and this time we're honoring it with Cheapest and Clumsiest. These commercials are probably supposed to look shoddily made -- it's not like they go to great lengths to nail the CGI on the baby's mouth or anything. But these are also clumsy -- they just go for lowest common denominator humor, and then shoehorn in a comment or two about investing. This campaign has dragged on and on, with no end in sight. Maybe E*TRADE likes it because it's cheap to execute. Maybe they think it works. Who knows. Let's just hope this baby does us all a favor and retires in Tuscany with Enzo.

Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Winner: Doritos

*sniffffffff* Doritooos!

*sniffffffff* Lawsuuuuuit! Workplace lawsuit.

Knitwear: Doritos: Like cocaine, but orange! Here's the line of logic that I see people having brainstormed for this commercial. Doritos are good. (They are.) They're so good, they're addictive. (Unfortunately, they really are.) Addictive, like drugs? And I mean, like, hardcore drugs? (That's pretty crazy.) So crazy it's... brilliant? (More like the real crazy.) Crazy like the kind of crazy that people expect from their Super Bowl ads?

I think that's the point we're getting to here. If you want your ad to be a classic Super Bowl ad, it must be so brilliant that it stands on its own as art (see: 1984, Google's Parisian Love). But brilliant is difficult to do. So instead, you can make it controversial with one or any combination of those old chestnuts - sex, drugs, rock n' roll - and even rock n' roll is starting to show its age- or make it crazy. You wouldn't be able to get away with introducing this ad at any other time of year, but now that it's made its entry into the mainstream, you can continue to reuse it.

Flimsiest Pretense Award
Winner: Sealy

Quivering: Hey, how about we take the most awkward, least fun part of sex and then represent it over and over in a commercial? That'll move some product!

From an article I found about the new Sealy campaign: "'Our research found people do much more in bed than sleep; there’s a whole lot of living going on in bed,' said Jodi Allen, Chief Marketing Officer at Sealy." I love that they had to do research to find that out. "Hey, people just sleep in bed, right? Nothing else at all? Hmm, better get a focus group together..." And here's Susan Credle, the Chief Creative Officer at Leo Burnett (an agency adept at hemorrhaging business and staff): "This campaign will get people talking about Sealy and saying, finally a mattress company who gets what I do... in bed." Thank you, Susan, for being precisely as much of an adult as I thought the creator of this ad would be when I first watched it.

The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Winner: Snickers

Windier: This was a pretty easy one to call - all you have to do is say "Richard Lewis and Roseanne." How much more out of date can you be? How many people even remember who Richard Lewis is at this point? This is also a pretty weak attempt at recapturing the magic of the Betty White ad that took last year's game by storm and eventually helped land White on Saturday Night Live - let's just say Lewis shouldn't expect a call from Lorne Michaels any time soon. Although Lewis' transformation into a beefy logger with a heroic beard is passably amusing, his "whiny" lines themselves are dull at best, and that should be the best part of the ad. Roseanne's appearance, featuring her nails-on-a-chalkboard voice and some of the worst CGI of the night, merely puts the capper on the half-assed job (although kudos to Snickers for recognizing that most people would love to see Roseanne get hit by a log). It seems like almost no effort went into this ad beyond the initial step of coming up with "What if it was about being whiny this time and we got Richard Lewis and Roseanne?" If your entire ad hangs on the presence of Richard Lewis, and you're not selling Boku in 1991, something is probably wrong.

The Bad Idea Jeans Award for Most Epic Miscalculation
Winner: Groupon

Windier: We had to create a new category just for this one, because wow. Crispin Porter strikes again. How badly did this ad misfire? Well, Groupon spent most of Monday apologizing and attempting to explain it. Another example? As of this writing, its like/dislike count on YouTube was 144 likes and 669 dislikes. 669 dislikes! It's virtually impossible to post something on YouTube with that many votes and that kind of ratio (82% disapproval!). But can you blame people? This ad isn't funny enough to pull the crap it does. "Sure, Tibet is being crushed under the iron fist of an authoritarian regime that seeks to assimilate it... but hey, cheap food, everyone!" Sorry. You can't possibly expect that to work in 30-second form.

I understand Groupon's ostensible joke. But how do you not see something like this coming? Start the ad by pretending it's a serious PSA about the hardships of life in Tibet... then yank that away to reveal your pitch? Groupon later revealed that the ads (including Cuba Gooding Jr. for saving the whales and Elizabeth Hurley on deforestation) are also intended to raise money for the causes mentioned. Okay. I know 30 seconds isn't a lot of time, but wouldn't it have made a lot more sense to slip that in at the end or something? There's no way anyone would know that by just watching this ad, and what potential philanthropist would go to Groupon's site to find out after seeing it? Also, did you know Christopher Guest directed this ad? Money well spent, I'm sure. Too bad it comes off more like it was directed by Hu Jintao.

SkyMall Championship Trophy
Winner: Chevrolet

Windier: The reason Chevy's pitch for the Cruze gets the SkyMall trophy - for weirdest attempt to sell a product - is made painfully apparent by watching the ad. Hey, should we air a commercial for our car? Or should we show three seconds of it and then have the next 27 taken up by old people repeating the few things we said, only incorrectly? I have no idea what Chevy was hoping to accomplish here - I mean, clearly they were hoping it would be funny (it is not), but it lacks any real relevance, has no connection to the Cruze's target audience (or any automotive target audience, save Hoverounds), and is incredibly difficult to watch. By the time the ad is over, it's easy to forget what it was ever trying to sell in the first place, and equally hard to care.

Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2011
Winner: Best Buy

Quivering: 42: Number of seconds of this ad you have to watch before you know what company the commercial is advertising.

3: Number of technological generations that are supposedly created within the span of one minute.

0: Number of amusing jokes in this commercial.

11: Seconds of Osbourne arguing/screaming you need to endure during this ad.

Infinite: Number of times you would have to watch this commercial to have it finally make sense.

One Trillion: Amount in dollars that Best Buy should be fined for airing this minute of torture.

Negative One Trillion: Amount in Canadian dollars that Justin Bieber should be worth after appearing in this ad.

1: Number of guesses we needed to predict the overall worst ad would be Best Buy's once we found out that Crispin Porter was directing their Super Bowl commercial.

What is this I don't even

2011-02-06T08:08:00.001-06:00

Speaking of a lack of creativity...

See, McDonald's, here is the problem. You hired an ad agency to make a commercial for your new McCafe drink. And then the person on your account forgot about the presentation until the morning of, and just grabbed something he found on YouTube.

The bigger problem, though, is that hand dancing is annoying. I'm sorry to all you hand dancers out there - it is. Well, let me qualify that. If I decided to go to a hand dancing show (I'm assuming such things exist? I have no idea, since until I saw this commercial I was not aware that hand dancing was a thing at all), then fine, I know what I'm getting into. This commercial, however, posits that I would like to see a hand dancing show spontaneously break out in the middle of a McDonald's at like 9 in the morning. Look at all the editorial bullshit that gets worked into this ad in just 15 seconds: multiple people look over and smile, and one dude even whips out his smart phone for a little video. Can you imagine reacting like that if you were there? I'm fairly sure I would leave at the first opportunity and stare a hole in them up until that point. Because that is fucking annoying as all get-out.

These two are also revoltingly proud of themselves - look at the way they finish, like they're concluding the gold medal pairs skate at the Winter Olympics. Of course, if I put up a video of my more or less useless talent on YouTube and the world's biggest restaurant chain paid me thousands of dollars to do it in a commercial, I'd probably be all smug too. Doesn't make it less obnoxious. Things aren't helped by the ridiculous song - there are multiple YouTube comments that are like "I love this song, do you know the title?" Are you fucking kidding me? If you "love the song" surely you must have been able to understand the lyrics, which as far as I can tell go like this:

"Is there chocolate / is there whipped cream / is there caramel / in espresso they're mixing"

The end part was a little harder to pick up but it's something like that. Whatever. The first three parts are certainly right. The chances that there was an existing song that just happened to describe a caramel mocha espresso are roughly 975 quadrillion to one against. Who would think this was a real song? Also, real or not, it sucks. (And is it me or do those whipped cream toppings fail to move at any point during the commercial? I call bullshit.)

You know what this reminds me of? 80s movies. In the 80s, no matter how lame your sport or activity, no matter how unable it was to sustain a movie for two hours, there was still a movie for absolutely everything. Breakdancing? Hell, there was Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. BMX biking? Rad. Skateboarding? Gleaming the Cube. Arm wrestling? Over the Top. Gymkata? Gymkata. Were all these movies shitty? Of course they were! And one reason why is because a movie should never have been based around a niche activity in the first place. Granted, this is a 15-second commercial and not a two-hour movie... but hand dancing is way less interesting than any of those other things. The point is that just because someone has a YouTube video does not mean you have to put them in a commercial. Are you listening, Wonderful Pistachios and Geico?

The P List

2011-02-05T14:31:00.003-06:00

I don't think Wonderful Pistachios is going to run any ads during the Super Bowl, but if they did, they'd be a shoo-in for the "Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities" award. Frankly, they might deserve the lifetime achievement award in that category just for their most recent series of ads.

That's probably the one I find the stupidest, mostly because (a) Keyboard Cat isn't even a celebrity and (b) that's not even the real Keyboard Cat (who is dead, as we all know by now). Also, the way the guy says "purr-fectly" drives me up the fucking wall. But I mean, here's a list - not sure if it's fully complete - of other people appearing in this series of ads:

Lewis Black
Chad Ochocinco
Rod Blagojevich
R. Lee Ermey
Lucy (and Charlie Brown)
Wee Man
Snooki

If you have no idea what's happening at the end there, you are probably over 40, and I envy the hell out of you.

Look at that list. Granted, it's not completely terrible - Ermey appears in other ads, for instance (though it is worth noting that Ermey is not mentioned by name in his ad, implying that he is the least famous person on the list). But Rod Blagojevich? A guy who is only famous for beating corruption charges despite permanently looking like the cat who ate the canary? Wee Man, at best the third-most famous person from the inexplicably long-running Jackass franchise? And even though I will grudgingly admit that Jersey Shore's popularity means Snooki is famous enough to appear in these ads, is she really someone well-liked enough to constitute a positive endorsement?

I also don't really care for the construct of the ads. I'm sure they're cheap to make, and I suppose they're sufficiently original among what's out there as to be memorable... but we're talking about a gag ripped off of any one of a hundred bumper stickers that say shit like "Teachers do it with class." And then all they do is take that and cram pretty much whatever random quasi-famous person comes to mind - probably not even the first ones, just the ones they can most easily write puns for. It's like Mad Libs: "[person/thing of note] does it [adverb/simile]." That's it. Even if it's successful, I don't think such a lazy excuse for creativity deserves to be praised. Or to put it in terms they'd understand: Wonderful Pistachios ad writers do it... hackily.

Repeat offenders

2011-02-02T10:00:00.001-06:00

The advertising strategy for Totino's Pizza Rolls is kind of weird, right? They're basically portrayed as a product that kids are totally obsessed with. Yet would such a product need to advertise? And assuming their claims to be true and bearing in mind that I saw the following ad appearing on the evening news just tonight, you kind of wonder why parents would be excited to buy their kids some snack food that isn't especially healthy and on which they have a disturbing fixation.

Who thought this was a good idea?

Girl 1: "There's nothing we love more than listening to our favorite songs!"
Girl 2: [overlapping] "There's nothing we love more than listening to our favorite songs!"
Girl 1: "But our favorite thing is eating Totino's Pizza Rolls!"
Girl 2: "But our favorite thing is eating Totino's Pizza Rolls!"

And then we get one line of the most wimpy-sounding version of "Kids in America" ever, just for good measure.

This commercial is conceptual crib death. The idea never had any chance of not being annoying - I'm guessing if you asked most parents of pre-teens they would tell you that trying to talk to a kid who has music blasting in her headphones is one of the most aggravating experiences on earth. So what does Totino's do? They try to sell you their product by recreating an impossibly obnoxious experience. As if that weren't enough, there's the awful repetition, which only points up the fact that neither of the girls is listening to anything going on around them. I suppose kids could find this funny, but if your target market is middle schoolers then you really need to be selling to their parents. And this ad just seems like parent kryptonite.

In this vein, here are some potential future ad concepts for Totino's:

* Kids in the back seat of a car tell us that they love violating each other's personal space and saying "I'm not touching you!" but that their favorite thing is eating Totino's Pizza Rolls.

* A four-year-old at the mall tells us how he loves to throw himself on the ground and scream if he doesn't get his way, but his favorite thing is eating Totino's Pizza Rolls.

* A 14-year-old girl halfway out her bedroom window tells us how she loves to sneak out late at night to meet her older boyfriend for some third-base action, but her favorite thing is eating Totino's Pizza Rolls.

* Through a telephone handset at the visitor's window, Lyle and Erik Menendez tell us that their favorite thing is eating Totino's Pizza Rolls.

2011 Super Bored Awards Preview

2011-02-01T15:45:00.004-06:00

I swear the Super Bowl ads get worse every year. We did have one of the best of all time last year with Google's entry, but it's not just the infrequency of the best ads. The middle class of passable, acceptable but generally forgettable ads, ones that won't win any awards but simply don't annoy the hell out of us, seems to be getting smaller every year, as more and more companies watch their millions swirl into a howling vortex of crap. Don't believe me? Take a look at our preliminary guesses for this year's Super Bored Awards - as well as the slew of potential runners-up - and tell me this isn't one of the most dire-looking crops you've seen. It's going to take a lot of overachieving to make 2011 a banner year in the megabucks ad world.

The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad

Explanation: I don't know if we actually need to keep explaining these given that this will be our fourth year handing these awards out... but whatever. This award, pretty evidently, goes to the least awful ad that airs during the game. Sometimes these ads are legitimately great (Google), sometimes they're more just decent and inoffensive (Coke in 2009, Gatorade in 2008), but either way we're just hoping we see at least one worth giving the award to.

Prediction: Scrolling through Ad Age's list of this year's buys, as I said earlier, makes for pretty dismal reading. There are a few that look like they could be undistinguished, but that would give them the win on a technicality, which sucks. Quivering's suggestion was Coke because they're the only major corporation we can trust to make a passable ad, especially with stalwarts like Nike and Gatorade apparently off the game entirely. Mercedes-Benz and BMW (the latter buying an ad for the first time in ten years) are both options to class up the joint, but car commercials these days always seem to be at least a little stupid.

Most Overproduced Ad

Explanation: You can understand, I guess, why advertisers feel the need to try to make their commercials these larger-than-life affairs - spend millions on a 30-second ad and it damn well better be memorable. But the best ads aren't always the ones that go utterly for broke. The worst ones often are.

Prediction: Here's Ad Age's summary of SalesForce.com's campaign: "Ads were developed with help from Will.i.am, part of half-time show act the Black Eyed Peas. The spots happen to feature animated characters called the 'Baby Peas.'" Anyone who was watching CNN on Election Night 2008 saw Will.i.am manage to overproduce the political process, and if you've heard any of the Black Eyed Peas' recent hits, you know that they go hand in hand with overproduction. As Quivering put it, sounds like we have the makings of a spot that would make Liberace blush.

Worst Use of "Humor" Award

Explanation: Another one that could easily go to two-thirds of the ads on the broadcast, this simply "honors" the ad that tried to be funny and failed the hardest.

Prediction: E-Trade. The E-Trade baby will apparently never die, because if there's one thing funnier than womanizing, cheating, boozing and generally being an asshole, it's when babies womanize, cheat, booze and generally behave like assholes. E-Trade has bought into the babies so much that their commercials don't even always mention trading anymore, which is never a good sign.

The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities

Explanation: Shelf life is not a common concern for Super Bowl advertisers, since a hugely expensive 30-second spot is the ad equivalent of blowing your load and then rolling over (especially for companies that either rarely advertise during the rest of the year or just run their Super Bowl spot over and over again). Nothing makes this more apparent than the title of this award - I mean, remember when Carlos Mencia was a noteworthy name? Seems like a million years ago. So this award goes either to a weak use of current minor celebrities or, alternately, a weak and embarrassing use of people who maybe were briefly A-listers, except it was two decades ago. Whichever is more desperate.

Prediction: Snickers' famous Betty White ad didn't win any awards with us last year, but it wasn't awful and was certainly one everyone remembered. Then Snickers did another one with Aretha Franklin and Liza Minnelli. This year... they're doing another one. The people representing who you are when you're hungry that isn't you? Roseanne Barr and Richard Lewis. Apparently this commercial was shot at the Improv in 1987. Keep your finger on that mute button, folks - it's going to be painful.

Flimsiest Pretense Award

Explanation: This one goes to the commercial with either the most inappropriate use of sex or the one that does the worst job of justifying it. You could easily stick GoDaddy.com in front of this since their entire schtick is using sex appeal to sell, of all things, domain name services... but at least they're consistent. It's the companies who suddenly bust it out that we're really worried about.

Prediction: Skechers. Shape-Ups are already in the recently-growing category of shoes designed to tone your physique - in particular, your butt, if you are a woman. Skechers' spokesperson of choice? Kim Kardashian. I think we can all see where this is going.

Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award

Explanation: Pretty much what it sounds like. Does your ad look like you had three million and one dollars to spend and the first three million had to go to buying the 30 seconds? Then you'll probably win this award.

Prediction: Doritos and Pepsi are both running "Crash the Super Bowl" contests again this year where users submit homemade ads, thereby costing the companies nothing except the ad space. And because they're user-submitted, they usually look pretty cheap and/or awkward. Plus while we're sure there are some pretty decent user-generated spots out there, you have to bear in mind that Pepsico executives will be choosing at least one of them.

SkyMall Championship Trophy

Explanation: You know how when you flip through SkyMall on an airplane, you find yourself looking largely at weirdly specific products that probably don't need to exist, and the pitches for most of them are totally insane? That's kind of what we're going for with this award - the product that has no business running a Super Bowl ad (like the Census Bureau last year) or simply the weirdest overall attempt to sell a product.

Prediction: Volkswagen. The Ad Age description says that the spot for the new 2012 Beetle "will make use of a 'Black Beetle' character jumping along to the song 'Black Betty' by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion." Um, okay. Was this just the result of some weird train of thought brainstorming exercise that the ad agency had? It will be interesting to see how that ad comes together. If it does.

The GoDaddy.com/SalesGenie.com/Bud Light/Miller Lite/Emerald Nuts Award for Worst Super Bowl Ad

Explanation: No real explanation necessary - when you get beyond all the particular reasons to hate an ad that feed into the other categories, which was simply the worst? This year's winner will join luminaries such as SoBe LifeWater (2008), CareerBuilder (2009), and E-Trade (2010).

Prediction: If you look through that Ad Age list, you know there are at least half a dozen candidates. But one that stands out as a possibility is Best Buy. Why? Three words: Crispin. Porter. Bogusky. Just do a search for that agency on this site and you'll see what we mean - note in particular the plethora of Burger King ads, but don't forget that they were also the geniuses behind the ill-fated Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates pairing of 2008. This is also Best Buy's first-ever Super Bowl buy, so they'll probably be on board with all kinds of ridiculous shit just to make a splash - Ad Age gently warns us that "a celebrity or two could also be in the mix." God only knows what that means.

Spanish ply

2011-01-31T23:14:00.008-06:00

I ordinarily hate posting clips that have text on them promoting someone else's website. You can understand why - it might look like I'm endorsing that site when in fact I've never gone to it and have no intention of vouching for its quality. So with the understanding that this is not an endorsement of the site itself, which I've never visited, I do want to thank whoever is behind "Gallery of the Absurd" for posting this on YouTube, because this Cottonelle ad just cries out for comment.

Gahhhhhh.

Wife: "When you've been together as long as we have-"
Husband [off-screen]: "Honey, where's the-"
Wife: "Top shelf! Life can get a bit... routine. That's why I decided to switch things up..."

The gag, of course, is that you're supposed to think that this is an ad for Viagra, or Cialis, or KY Yours and Mine or something. Something involving sex. Of course, this is actually an ad for toilet paper. And here's where it gets really gross.

Wife: "...with Cottonelle Ultra toilet paper!"
Husband [o.s.]: "Oh, yeah."
Wife: "You see? It's 35% thicker than the Northern brand."

Originally here I wrote a parody of the Beatles' "Only a Northern Song" with the lyrics "It's only the Northern brand," before reminding myself that it's one of their deepest cuts and no one would find it funny. (I had to tell you that just so I could avoid second-guessing not posting it.) Anyway, around the laughable attempt to skirt the mention of their nearest competitor, we can see the commercial going to hell - well, going further into hell - as the husband is enjoying himself way, way too much off-screen.

Husband [o.s.]: "Love it!"

Egad. Really, Cottonelle? Really? Has this guy reached so far up there that he's massaging his own prostate?

Wife: "You might say this one little switch has made all the difference!"
[Husband emerges in some sort of 70s dance outfit.]
Husband: "Veena, get dressed, we're goin' dancing."

Horrifying. Also, is her name really "Veena?" I can't hear it as anything else, but who is named that, other than no one? By the way, this guy apparently successfully finished wiping his ass in under twenty seconds. Is he the Flash? Does he just shit pure water? And speaking of water, I didn't hear a sink. Get the fuck back in there and wash your hands, jackass.

Announcer: "Little switches can make all the difference!"

All what difference? I'm sorry, Cottonelle, but you're not selling me on the idea that using different toilet paper is going to change my life. Much less my sex life.

Knitwear and I were actually talking about this - toilet paper is a hard product to sell. 99% of products you can show people using, but toilet paper is not one of them. So instead we get this endless dance. You can be like Charmin and use cartoon bears so that you can get right up to the line of what's okay - showing pieces of toilet paper stuck to a cartoon bear's ass, something you obviously couldn't show on a human. Or you can be like Cottonelle and, in this ad, not show someone using your product but instead play the sound of someone using your product. The only problem with that is that I don't want to hear someone using your product either, especially not when they're making sounds that make it entirely unclear what is happening in there. And I also don't want to hear that while the guy's dumpy wife is standing outside using language that implies their sex life has improved thanks to cleaner asses. But hey, thanks for that mental image, Cottonelle! Maybe in the sequel the guy could come out in bondage gear. "Veena, put on your mask, grab the whip, and don't forget the safe word is rhubarb!"

Today in things that don't ever happen

2011-01-30T23:56:00.003-06:00

Friend 1: "Nice shape, Jane!"
Jane Krakowski: "Thanks! I've been helping out at a lot of celebrity car washes."
Friend 2: "I think she meant the new Trop50 bottle."
Jane: "Oh. Right."

Oh, right. Because Jane Krakowski invented the new Trop50 bottle and therefore it makes sense for praise for its shape to be directed at her. Or, oh, right, because "Nice shape" is a comment that any native speaker of English would ever make, ever. Or, oh, right, what the fuck is this. Friend 2's smugness is delightful here given that she's treating as an absolute given something no human being would say.

Jane: "Well, you can see how I'd make that mistake."

I can! Well, sort of. If I was carrying a bottle of juice into a room and one of my friends said, "Hey, nice shape," I think my response would be "What the fuck are you even talking about?" And then if they were like, "I meant that the shape of that juice bottle you're carrying is nice," I would have stared at them for a full minute without saying anything, and then never invited them to another of my famous "we're doing nothing but drinking orange juice in my living room" get-togethers.

Jane: "I've never been in better shape!"
[She attempts to preen for her friends, who totally ignore her.]
Friend 3: "Mmm, so good! And it's got 50% less calories!"
Jane: "What do you think?"
Friend 2: "Which makes it gooder!"
Friend 1: "It is gooder!"
Friend 3: "It's better than gooder."

This is really just fucking retarded at this point. What am I supposed to be feeling towards these women? Because I just hate all of them, and by extension the product for which they are shilling by deploying the reverse-engineered grammar of a four-year-old. Also, since the word which conveys the concept that "gooder" does is the word "better," I think I would have tried not to include that word in the copy. Might take some work, but it's not like you haven't already spent 20 seconds hooking a car battery up to the English language's genitals.

Jane: "Ladies, you don't say gooder! There's no such word as gooder!"

You won me back, Jane.

Friend 2: "But Jane, you look gooder."
Jane: "Do I???"

Never mind. "Oh, friends, I don't mind that you're the three dumbest women on the planet. I just want you to acknowledge that I've lost weight!" Incidentally, I am surprised, slash amazed, slash dumbfounded that in a commercial aimed at women, starring women, and featuring a main character bragging about her weight loss and a low-calorie product, that the weight loss and the low-calorie product are not actually tied together. It's like they weren't even trying to make this commercial effective. Or comprehensible. This shit makes those Yoplait ads where the women talk up desserts they're not actually eating look like masterpieces of the craft.

Happy thoughts, happy thoughts

2011-01-25T22:53:00.003-06:00

Retailers always get a little weird around the holidays. But this seems a bit extreme.

This ad has bothered me since I first saw it, because... what is going on here?

Voiceover: "To us, the little things mean a lot. Add up all our standard features, and SafetyTech..."

As he's talking, we zoom around the car, which is driving through the snow. A helpful snowflake guides us through many of the features. Then the car pulls back up at the dealership and things get weird.

Salesman: "How was it?"
[A branch shakes for no apparent reason and dumps snow on the salesman's head.]
Girl: "We'll take it!"
Salesman: "Awesome."

Is this scene just bizarre to anyone else? Why is this kid making the family's car buying decisions? Why did that branch suddenly dump snow on the salesman, to the kid's amusement? Then it occurred to me - remember the old "It's a Good Life" episode of the Twilight Zone? This girl is the 2011 equivalent of Billy Mumy in that show. Her parents, desperate to please her, have opted to purchase an expensive new car in the hopes that she will enjoy riding in it. The salesman, standing in the cold waiting for them to return, knows that he has to keep smiling at all costs, even as she uses her telekinetic powers to drop a branch-load of snow onto his head, lest he displease her and suffer the consequences. "It's good that she made that snow fall on me," he thinks to himself, the grim specter of his doubts about this arrangement lurking in the recesses of his mind. "It's very, very good." He grits his teeth in a pained smile and tries to think nothing but happy thoughts. He knows that he's likely going to get a lowball offer for the car, but that's a good thing - nothing would make him happier! Shivering half from cold and half from fear, he stares from behind his plastered-on smile at the horrible monster who holds the whole town captive to their own thoughts and tries not to think of smashing her face into the back of the driver's headrest.

Shitius Altius Fortius

2011-01-23T00:01:00.002-06:00

I'm not even sure what to say.

An anonymous commenter a few posts ago was the first to bring this to my attention, although frankly I would have been just as happy to go the rest of my life without knowing this commercial existed.

We've talked in the past about how commercials dealing with "gross" subjects tend to be somewhat circumspect, with my go-to example being the Metamucil "Beautify your inside" campaign from 2007. This commercial... is the opposite of that.

We open on some sort of shitting contest. I mean, that's actually what is happening here. Three babies are involved in a contest to see who can fill their diaper with the most shit. For real. That is the ad. So the first one goes, and gets scores of 6, 5 and 3. Whoa! Not nearly enough shit in that diaper, Baby #1! You knew this was the World Shitting Championships, right? Step your game up.

Baby #2 steps up and drops a much larger shit - while being recorded on cell phone cameras in the front row - and gets scores of 8, 7 and 8. But Baby #3... he came prepared. His diaper expands with shit until it is nearly as big as he is! Yeahhhhh! All 10s! He is the Nadia Comaneci of shitting!

Voice-over: "What happens in diapers should stay in diapers."

This now presents us with the alternate mental image of some non-Luvs-clad baby taking a monster dump the size of his own body and having excrement fly everywhere. Thanks, Luvs.

Voice-over: "New Luvs Ultra Leakguards with Heavy 'Dooty' Blowout Protection. Outstanding protection for your little 'heavy dooty' champs."

Have you ever seen "dooty" spelled that way before? I have not. Meanwhile, the second and third-place babies are for some reason putting their hands on the winner's still-full diaper, like they're in awe of his shitting prowess and want a little reflected glory. This is really exceedingly vile.

I know this ad is directed at parents. And I know that for the majority of parents, your kid taking a crap and you having to clean it up becomes so commonplace that it ceases to be disgusting; it's just a thing that happens that has to be dealt with, one of the things you sign up for when you decide to have children. (And if you glance over the YouTube comments, it's pretty clear there's an opinion divide between parents and the childless over the merits of the spot.) But even with that in mind, did this commercial really need to be this graphic? These are cartoon babies, after all - you're not actually proving the durability of the diapers by showing the massive shit expansion, so why show it at all? And did you really have to play "Whoomp! There it is!" in the background?

This is the place where I'd normally do some joke about what it would be like if other companies advertised this way. But how can I? There really is no analogous situation to watching a baby (even an animated one) fill its diaper onscreen - only a handful of other products even deal in an area this nasty, and none of them would ever advertise so directly. The only commercial I can think of that's even vaguely similar is the one for Oops, I Crapped My Pants, and that's a joke ad for a product that doesn't exist. So congratulations, Luvs, for being only slightly less gross than a fake ad that's intentionally over the top about its pitch.

You know, as long as we're talking about diapers, I just realized I never dealt with this one:

Eurotrash Voiceover: "My diaper is full! Full of chic!"

Ha ha! It's funny, because "chic" sounds kind of like "shit," which of course is what the diaper is actually full of.

Eurotrash Voiceover: "When it's a #2... I look like #1."

Diaper companies really just don't care, do they? Metamucil talks about primping your colon, but Huggies is just like, "Yeah, whatever! Babies shit all the time, and we all know it. We're not dancing around anything."

Eurotrash Voiceover: "I poo... in blue!"

Good God. Couldn't you try to be even a little cute about what diapers are for? I mean, we all know anyway. It really has to be shoved in our face like this? For good measure, the tagline is "The coolest you'll look pooping your pants." I love the use of the second person as though anyone truly capable of watching and understand this commercial is going to be the one using the product, as opposed to buying it for their child. (By the way: jean diapers? Seriously? This was something that needed to exist? Were there really people complaining that boring ol' white diapers were making their baby look dangerously uncool?)

I know this whole thing is kind of tongue-in-cheek, but I mean, no, it really isn't. You make that product and sell it, you can't really claim ironic license. This is something you want to sell. And again, okay, the people you're trying to sell to probably won't be fazed by all the talk about babies taking craps. But couldn't you think for a second about the non-parents out there, the people who were just hoping to watch television without being confronted with the image of someone taking a dump? We're people too, dammit.

Attention parents: babies are cute. (Most babies.) But they are not as cute to the rest of us as you think they are. And not everything they do is cute just because they're babies. Taking their first steps? Cute. Babbling happily? Cute. Filling a diaper with shit? NOT CUTE. There's a reason why bathroom stalls have doors on them - no one wants to see someone else taking a shit. I don't care how tiny and precious you are, I'm not interested in being informed about what just came out of your ass or where it's now residing. So maybe we could sell diapers without having to talk about how constantly full of shit they are? Is that possible?

"Steamer" is right

2011-01-22T12:28:00.000-06:00

Quick! Can you identify the product or service that Stanley Steemer provides?

It's kind of a trick question. According to their website, they actually provide a variety of home cleaning and repair services. They'll clean your carpet, your tile, your furniture, your air ducts... they do water damage restoration, sell flooring, clean the interior of your car, boat or RV... there are really quite a lot of services that Stanley Steemer provides.

Unless you learned about Stanley Steemer only from watching this ad:

In which case, Stanley Steemer is a company that cleans up animal shit.

Awful insurance ad blowout

2011-01-21T09:59:00.008-06:00

Something very strange is going on in the insurance industry lately. For an example of what I mean, let's take a look at a Farmer's Insurance ad from about two years ago:

I mean, okay, it's sort of boring. It's straightforward, it maybe gets a little too much into financial jargon... but ultimately the main point is clear and sincere. Farmer's has been around for a long time, we don't play games with your coverage, etc.

Now here's a Farmer's ad from their most recent vintage:

What in the hell is happening here? Can you make hide or hair of it? Because I cannot. The commercial implies that you can buy insurance to cover your accident after the fact, which I'm almost positive is sort of the opposite of how insurance works. Then there's all the goofy details in the ad - "bait shop," "tulip poplar," that dopey singing at the end - which all just scream "Look at us! We are modern and hilarious!" Sure, it's a less boring ad than its older counterpart, but at what cost? We're talking about insurance here, not light beer or candy. Does it need to be sold with this kind of a pitch?

But it's not just Farmer's. Oh, not by a long shot. You'll remember, of course, the awful State Farm ads which started some months ago (and were taken on by this blog right here) and are still running. But that's hardly it.

That's a Nationwide ad from about four years ago. It's already in the "trying to be funny" range, as all those "Life comes at you fast" ads were - remember the Kevin Federline one? - but in a pretty clear, innocuous way. Not so anymore.

Is the point of this commercial to make me want to die? Because it does. Ooh, maybe before I walk into traffic I can buy some life insurance from Nationwide! I mean Nationpam. That's just funny right there.

What is this obsessive need to have a goofy character gimmick? "The World's Greatest Spokesperson in the World?" First of all, that's a pretty direct ripoff of like ten other things. Even if it weren't, it is not inherently funny, and that guy's over-the-top smarminess is not drawing me towards Nationwide. This particular iteration of the gimmick is even worse because it isn't really saying anything - while other ads in the series at least talk about services that Nationwide offers, like "vanishing deductible," this ad just takes on online insurance companies with a vague, unsupportable promise that Nationwide won't treat you like a number. And then the guy sings obnoxiously in a way that suggests that Nationwide, like State Farm before them, has fallen hopelessly in love with their own jingle.

Even Esurance - a sufficiently nouveau company that you might just have expected this kind of ad from them in the first place - has gone from the relatively direct Erin Esurance animated ads to, well, this:

Esurance is apparently trying to skirt the kind of attack Nationwide was directing at their ilk by pointing out that you can have "Technology when you want it, people when you don't." But for some reason they have to do this by inventing an obnoxious agent who insists on being known as "The Saver" and a series of not-much-less obnoxious coworkers who like to point out that you save exactly as much money by just using the Esurance website. It's like the insurance equivalent of those "Cash/credit same price" signs you see at gas stations, except much more aggravating. The only thing I really take from these Esurance ads is that the Esurance offices look like a really annoying place to work.

Progressive, meanwhile, has been running the same Flo ads for a couple years now, so I can't accuse them of a very recent lurch into painful gimmickry. I can, however, point out that the commercials are getting harder and harder to watch.

I kind of like the way she says "Still not sure," but I hate the rest of it SO MUCH that it really doesn't matter because I almost never see that part anymore. Why is this supposed to be funny? Because some old guy is saying silly words? This tells us nothing about Progressive that we haven't learned from 85 other spots of theirs, so that suggests to me that this one was created because someone specifically thought this guy's lines were hilarious. Guess what? They were wrong. And I'd say that maybe the ad was trying to market to old people except it's kind of making fun of them, so I'm not sure how well that would work.

There are other insurance companies I haven't touched on. Allstate's "Mayhem" ads are more sober than most of the ones above, even as they milk a specific gimmick for all it's worth. Geico is still running goofy ads that barely mention their product half the time, but it's Geico - if you're expecting anything else from them, come on. 21st Century Insurance has been running ads that very directly, with just a smidge of humor, point out how you can get the exact same coverage as other companies but for a good deal less.

As I said above... we're talking about insurance here. Why are we suddenly seeing nearly every company go in for the same inane pitch - or in many cases lack thereof - that characterizes most beer commercials? It could be that Geico's recent expansion has encouraged other companies to try and follow their style, but don't you think that Geico's rates and/or service really have at least as much to do with it as the gecko or the cavemen? Geico also advertises a lot and will have multiple campaigns running at once - currently they have at least two, the gecko and the rhetorical questions, running nationally. I feel like if you do that, it almost doesn't matter what your ads look like. And wouldn't it make more sense to pitch in a clearer, more sensible way? Are we really so far down the rabbit hole that even the most adult-oriented, non-impulse-buy product like insurance has to try to have ads that teenagers will laugh at?

I mean, when you want insurance, I'm sure you want to save money, but you also want it from a reputable source, right? Do most of these ads reassure you about the quality of coverage you'd be getting? No, and that's rarely even the focus, which I find insane. The Farmer's and State Farm ones both present you with an utterly warped and inaccurate picture of how insurance works; the rest rarely have much to say beyond "We're less expensive!" The bizarre thing is that it's not really that hard to focus on both cost and features, is it? Think about the average McDonald's ad, say. You might see an ad where they talk about how a hamburger is only 99 cents, but in that same ad they will likely also promote something else about the hamburger, like its taste. Now think about the Progressive ad, which implies a low price but spends too much time having an old guy bark out nonsense to really address anything related to the actual insurance.

Isn't this ironic? Insurance, of all things, seems like a product where I would not want to make my decision just on cost. If my choice is between a McDonald's and a Burger King hamburger, I can feel pretty safe just going with the cheaper one (assuming my goal is saving money). If my choice is between two insurance companies, I might want to take a closer look at the fine print, no? This is kind of a big decision - if I ever do get into an accident, don't I want to know what kind of coverage I have? Instead, when it comes to their commercials, most of the insurance companies want to distract you with shiny things as part of a grating race to the bottom.

Tax season in Bizarro World

2011-01-19T21:45:00.005-06:00

Does this sort of sales tactic happen on a routine basis? I guess it must, since H&R Block has built a whole series of television and radio commercials around it.

Salesman: This is one of the best cameras we have in stock. It has phenomenal optics- here, hold that. Super sharp images, and you can have it for free.

Announcer: Imagine if you could get the best for free.

Customer: (laughs) Sounds too good to be true.

Salesman: Yeah, it is too good to be true. That would be insane. To give our best stuff away for free?

Announcer: At H&R Block, we're serious. We believe you deserve the best tax preparation available for free.

At the point of the "reveal" that the salesman was lying, I'm feeling confused, and also kind of irritated, uncomfortable and embarrassed on behalf of the customers. (I know they're most likely actors, but the commercial is setting us up as if they are actual customers, and thus those are the sort of emotions being pulled up for me as a member of the audience.) When I feel embarrassed, I don't want to hang around for whatever the sales pitch is going to be- I just want to get away from that commercial as quickly as possible. If this blog didn't exist, I wouldn't even have bothered to find out who actually made the commercial.

Salesman: How's it going?

Customer: Good, how are you?

Salesman: Good. Have you seen this? This is the best bike we have. Top spec gears, super light frame.

Customer: I love it.

Salesman: Right now, you can have it for free.

Customer: Shut up.

Salesman: Free! Yeah!

Announcer: Imagine if you could get the best for free.

Customer: Oh this is, oh my god. This is mine?

Salesman: (Shakes head) No.

Customer: Shut up.

Salesman: I can't just give away my best stuff for free.

In the first commercial, we're told that it would be insane to give away the company's best stuff for free. In the second commercial, it's implied that the customer is stupid for falling for the pitch in the first place. So which message do you prefer- that your customers are stupid for believing that there is such a thing as a free lunch, or that your company is crazy for offering a free lunch in the first place?

In neither commercial is it explained what the purpose would be of using such a bait-and-switch tactic in the first place, although the writers seem aware that customers would not like it, as the radio version of the second ad ends with the annoyed customer asking "Is this your idea of a joke?", to which the salesman flatly replies "Yes. Yes it is. Ha ha." How could you possibly salvage a sale after this opening? "Anyway, the bike's really $2,000. But you love it, right? So you still want it, right? Right? Where are you going?" In essence, H&R Block is setting itself up in contrast ("we're serious") to fantasy stores and salespersons who would never behave this way- at least, not if they wanted to actually sell anything.

Mixed messages

2010-12-25T10:08:00.006-06:00

In the time we've been doing this blog, Microsoft hasn't exactly been heavily on our radar, but they have had a couple of appearances thanks to ridiculous hyperbole and utter insanity. It's been more than two years since that last one, so we hoped that maybe they'd learned their lesson. Well... not entirely. Take a look at these two ads and tell me what Microsoft is actually trying to sell.

First things first: on its face, I actually like this ad a lot. It's funny (because it's true!), it's visually appealing, the music cue works perfectly. The message, however, is confusing if not entirely self-defeating. I'll turn things over for a minute to our own Knitwear M. Groundhog:

"It's based on a flawed premise. They're saying that the reason people waste time on their phones is because it takes too long to do things. In fact, people waste time on their phones because they enjoy doing things on their phone, so if you make it so that you can do that stuff faster, they're actually going to do MORE of it."

Indeed. As well-put-together as this commercial is, it can't hide the fact that its central conceit really does not make a lick of sense. The people shown in the commercial appear to be engrossed in their phones, not because they have slow download speeds or something but because they like going on Facebook, sending texts, playing games, whatever. "Saving people from their phones" hardly seems like a good marketing strategy when it's not clear that anyone is crying out to be saved from their phones. (Also, the guy on the phone while his wife - I assume - stands there in lingerie? That would never happen, ever.)

But wait! Does Microsoft want to get you off the phone and back to life? Or... don't they?

The basic concept of this ad is just idiotic. My girlfriend can't tell I'm playing X-Box Live? Uh, you're sitting there, staring at your phone, and moving it back and forth. She can tell you're playing X-Box Live. And even if she couldn't, she could certainly tell that you are doing nothing but staring at your phone. I'm going to ignore the whole avatar/"sexy dance" segment of this ad because it's stupid and also besides the point.

The point being this: which is it, Microsoft? Are your phones supposed to "get us in and out and back to life?" Or are they supposed to enable us to play video games literally anywhere, a development which the first ad certainly seemed to be raging against? One possibility, I suppose, is that Microsoft ran all those "Really?" ads and then people pointed out to them that the central idea of the ads was stupid and unproductive, so they decided to shift to "Uh, wait! So you want to stare at your phone incessantly no matter what we say? Well, then stare at our phones incessantly! We've got X-Box..."

Of course, once you've already suggested that everyone in the world is a phone zombie who should buy your phone so they won't be staring at it all the time, it's kind of hard to turn around and tout the features that will make them want to stare at it all the time. Would you ever see a car ad that made a big deal about how the car will get you from point A to point B quickly so you can just go about your day? No, you wouldn't. Making a commercial implying that your product should be used as little as possible is pretty much the essence of counterproductivity. It's easy to see why Microsoft shifted gears; unfortunately for them, we'd all already seen the initial ads.

It's the cost that counts

2010-12-21T23:22:00.003-06:00

So you want the most expensive thing in the store and your parents won't buy it for you. Instead, they offer you a lower-cost option that is pretty similar. What does this make them? That's right: inconsiderate assholes.

[Kid admiring undoubtedly expensive electric train set]
Mom: "How about this one? It's almost the same thing."
Kid: [insufferably] "No. It's not."

Fuck this kid, am I right? Your parents aren't obligated to buy you anything, you ungrateful little bastard.

Dad: "This one's great! It's just as good as the one you wanted."
Kid: "No... it's not."

This just makes me feel really bad for the dad. Listen to how he sells that first line. The mom seemed kind of noncommittal - "Eh, this other one seems okay, right?" - but the dad sounds legitimately invested in the quality of the guitar he's holding, and Flock of Seagulls just shits all over him. How much do you suppose that kid even knows about guitars? "Uh, hello, Dad? This guitar looks cooler and is five times more expensive, therefore it's better."

Guy: "That's the one."
Salesman: "Great choice."
Voiceover: "Don't settle for a copy when you can have the original."

If you can afford it, sure. I'm fairly certain that if Seagulls' dad was swimming in cash he'd have been happy to buy his obnoxious son whatever expensive guitar he wanted - so clearly he wasn't, meaning what we have is this douchebag kid griping every year because his middle-class parents can't and/or won't cater to his every whim. Great message, BMW. Hey, did your parents buy you exactly what you wanted for Christmas every year, no matter the price point? They didn't? Well, fuck them - treat yourself with a $40,000 luxury car this Christmas! Can you afford that? Who the fuck cares? You're an adult now and you don't settle for copies, whatever that means. Also, your kids eat cookies and ice cream for dinner and stay up as late as they want, because you're just the kind of guy who follows through on all the whiny shit he said as a ten-year-old when he didn't get his way.

Prince Charmin

2010-12-11T14:13:00.003-06:00

There are various reasons why there hasn't been a post here for a while, and I won't bore you with explanations or excuses. But suffice it to say there haven't been a lot of really noteworthy ads to skewer lately, or at least not much to say about the really hateable ones. (We can't stand those Hyundai ads with the insufferable indie band, but how much can you say about that? They're just impossible to sit through.)

Well, leave it to the Charmin bears to bring us out of hibernation.

This commercial opens by implying that the Charmin bears are about to have sex. Sadly, that's the least distasteful thing about it.

[Charmin bear reaches for a square of toilet paper]
Announcer: "When you have a softer bath tissue, you can enjoy going more!"

I assume she means you can enjoy (going) more, but it's funnier to think that she means you can enjoy (going more). "Oh, this bath tissue is so soft, I just can't wait to get back in the bathroom for my next dump! Bring me all the baked beans in the land!"

Announcer: "While still using less."

Then apparently you can snuggle up against the leftover paper because it's just that goddamn soft. Come on, Charmin. It's still paper - I'm not wiping my ass with a silk handkerchief here.

Next it's the typical demonstration of how absorbent the paper is, which is always secretly the most disgusting part of any toilet paper commercial when you think about what it's going to be "absorbing." These commercials probably pass the old Metamucil commercial for "most ridiculous dancing around a subject that no one wants to hear about in a TV commercial, even if it is something everyone does."

Announcer: "Using less never felt so good!"

On the inside of your ass!

Announcer: "New Charmin Ultra Soft: Enjoy the Go."

"Enjoy the Go????" That is so unbelievably gross. Look, Charmin. It's nice that you want to make ass-wiping a more pleasant experience. But enjoy the go? Enjoy it? What the fuck is your problem? Bowel movements are a fact of life, not something that can be turned into an entertaining experience by the addition of a softer toilet paper. If you could make some deal where solid waste would just vanish from your body so you'd never have to take a shit again, wouldn't you do it? Wouldn't most people? Meanwhile, here are the Charmin bears, treating softer toilet paper like it's a fucking free weekend at Disney World. Of course, I suppose it's not as ridiculous as some of the slogans they rejected:

Charmin Ultra Soft: How Sweet It Is

Charmin Ultra Soft: Oh Thank Heaven

Charmin Ultra Soft: Let's Get It On (Your Butt)

Charmin Ultra Soft: And Flights of Angels Sing Thee to Thy Flush

If you can't take the heat, stay out of Miami

2010-10-25T18:18:00.003-05:00

I don't want to get too sports-heavy here, but anyone who follows basketball probably has an opinion on the LeBron James saga. Regardless of what you think about his decision to leave Cleveland for Miami, and what you think about the subsequent fan reaction to it, I think we can probably all admit that this was not the best response.

I'm sure LeBron felt stung by the reaction he got upon leaving Cleveland. He no doubt felt that he had done all he could there - in 2007, he dragged the team to a spot in the Finals almost singlehandedly, and won 60+ games in each of the last two years with improved but hardly championship-caliber teammates.

But this ad just comes off as whiny and petulant. LeBron recently gave a statement in which he said that he could understand why Cleveland fans were upset - that's good, if months late. But really this, this post I'm making, isn't about what he's said in the media. It's about this ad, in particular, lest we get off-topic here. And this ad is stupid.

It's stupid for the same reason the Charles Barkley ad that James quotes - the "I am not a role model" one - was also kind of stupid. While I appreciate Barkley's point on some levels, the fact is that he's appearing in a commercial when he says it. He's a paid endorser of a product. And the whole point of paying an athlete to endorse your product is to trade on said athlete's fame and, yes, their position as a role model to sell that product. Barkley may genuinely not have wanted to be a role model, but Nike made him one anyway.

And the same thing is happening here. James, via Nike, was marketed as little short of the Second Coming in Cleveland. Don't believe me?

Yikes. To be fair, that ad doesn't actually mention Cleveland, but you get the point. You can see the huge size of the "We are all witnesses" banner that falls in the ad at the top. James was pitched as nothing less than the savior of basketball in Cleveland. And so when he left - when he decided, perhaps, that basketball in Cleveland was beyond saving, that he'd given it his best shot but now that he had more of a choice he was happy to go play in a nicer city with some friends of his on a better team, thanks - he was vilified by people who felt betrayed.

Should they have felt betrayed by LeBron? Maybe, maybe not. But this ad trades on mocking and/or complaining about that sense of betrayal, and it's a betrayal that was stoked by Nike itself.

Not a role model? Uh, hardly. This ad portrays James as the ultimate role model, one capable of affecting the entire population with his behavior.

"Should I be who you want me to be?" James asks, with more than a hint of sarcasm, in the latest ad. The obvious answer is no; LeBron James, like anyone else, can be whoever he wants to be. But as a man whose job, even as he speaks those words, is to pitch sneakers to teenagers... well, the answer is kind of yes. If you want to be a multimillionaire pitchman, you have to put on a face that the public will appreciate. It comes with the territory. LeBron James the basketball star and LeBron James the Nike spokesman are not separate entities. LeBron James the Nike spokesman is most definitely a role model - or anyway, he is in the eyes of Nike, because if he weren't he would be of no value to them. And if LeBron James the Nike spokesman is a role model, LeBron James the basketball star is a role model. And if he wants both of those personas to exist, fully functioning, as beloved as they are capable of being and not loathed by a spurned fanbase... well, then, yes, LeBron. You have to be who we want you to be.

And if you don't want to be? That's cool too. Just don't run back to Nike to make an ad about how none of it is your fault. I don't think you're going to sell too many shoes that way.

Fake-us group

2010-10-24T16:59:00.004-05:00

I've been waiting for someone to explain to me how this commercial could possibly be real. Maybe one of you has an idea?

Woman: "Domino's doesn't want me to know what's in their ingredients."
Man: "'Cause it's probably not real cheese."

I find this a weird complaint, in the setup. On what grounds is she claiming that Domino's doesn't want her to know what's in their ingredients? Did she call her local Domino's once to ask for a list and they told her to fuck off?

Focus Group Leader: "Well, I've got a surprise for you."
[the walls pull away to reveal that they're in the middle of a field]
Woman 2: "Oh my God!"
Leader: "This is just one of the dairies that makes the milk to make real Domino's cheese."

Okay. So, it claims at the bottom of the screen that this was an "actual focus group." I just have one question.

WHAT?????????

I guess there are some subsidiary questions within that one. How could these people possibly have failed to realize that they were in a tiny shack sitting on the grounds of a dairy farm? How did Domino's get them there without this being in any way revealed? Blanchardville, Wisconsin is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Either these people were from the area - in which case it is particularly incredible that they would not have realized they were on a dairy farm - or they were like bussed in from Madison, the nearest city of any real size, and also should probably have found something at least a little off about a major corporation holding a focus group in the middle of farm country.

But let's say, for the hell of it, that this focus group was going on without any of the participants realizing where they were... why were they out there in the first place? How did Domino's know that the legitimacy of their cheese was going to be called into question in this focus group? Was one of the people speaking a plant? This goes back to that initial comment by the woman that Domino's doesn't want her to know what the ingredients are. What? Where did she come up with that? It's almost like that's something she was... I don't know, told to say?

Lest Domino's get any ideas about some ad where I'm watching TV calling their focus group fake, and then they have all the members of the focus group walk into my living room and introduce themselves to prove they're real people, I'm not necessarily saying that this ad was faked. But I am saying, for sure, that if you wanted to make an ad that looked fake, that was supposedly real but was so insanely convenient that it had the whiff of contrivance all over it... well, you couldn't do much better than this.

Avocado's number

2010-10-09T19:58:00.003-05:00

What the fuck is happening here?

[We open on a super-fake-looking party with goofy background noise and two people not actually talking to each other but rather holding hot dogs at strange angles. Cut to a woman who was clearly just standing there waiting for her cue, striding forward with... a bag of avocados!]
Host [I assume]: "Perfect!"

So this is some sort of weird avocado party? "Everyone just show up with a bag of avocados! All other food will be provided."

[The doorbell rings. Some woman opens it.]
John Lynch: "Hey!"
[The two people who were holding hot dogs look at each other and shake their heads.]
John Lynch: "Wait! I'm- I'm John Lynch! Nine-time Pro Bowler! World champ!"
[He flashes his Super Bowl ring, but it's no use - the door closes in his face.]

Was John Lynch invited to this party? Or does he just walk around neighborhoods wearing his Super Bowl ring, looking for houses with a lot of cars parked outside, trying to get into strangers' parties based on his extremely tenuous fame? (For the record, I watch a lot of football, and I would not have recognized John Lynch had he not introduced himself. Peyton Manning he is not.)

[The doorbell rings again; Lynch offers a tray of some sort of snack - chicken wings? - but the door closes on him again. He tries again with a football-shaped cake - no dice. The woman bulges her eyes as if to say, "I don't think so."]

This makes sense. I don't think I'd let some random dude into my party even if he used to play football and even if he brought his own cake. But wait until you find out why he can't come in.

Voiceover: "What do you bring to a party that has everything?"

Not chicken wings or a football cake, I guess. Although this party does not seem to have those things.

Voiceover: "Fresh, creamy Hass avocados!"

Um, question. How exactly does this party have everything when apparently all it has are Hass avocados? Hot dogs? Throw some Hass avocados on there. Canapes? Better be topped with tiny avocado pieces, asshole. Chicken wings? I can't think of any way to add avocados to that, so basically get the fuck out.

Voiceover: "Nothing else will do!"

Aside from making guacamole, who does anything with avocados for a big party they're hosting? If I went to a party and everything had avocados in it, I would make one of two assumptions: either the hosts have been growing avocados in their backyard and just experienced a bumper crop, or the hosts are in some weird cult that pushes the benefits of the avocado for some reason.

John Lynch: "Puppies!"

Lynch has learned a lot from Pierce, it would seem. But it's worth noting that this commercial ends on a cliffhanger. Do puppies get Lynch into the party? Does the fact that the puppies are in a Hass avocados box win him any points? Or are the guests just even more furious with him? "You took perfectly good avocados out of that box and filled it with puppies? I couldn't eat a puppy with avocados even if I wanted to. Get lost before we call the police on you for avocado-related harassment!" Dammit, Hass, I must know! I smell sequel! Maybe you could get another ex-football player who is not famous enough on sight to warrant appearance in a national ad to appear. I just hope you're paying them in avocados.

I'll just stand, thanks

2010-09-27T21:01:00.005-05:00

The three and a half years of this blog have seen more than a couple entrants into the field of "most disgusting fast food sandwich," from the BK Stacker to the Baconator to the Bacon Double Homestyle Melt. This one, though, has been notorious ever since it was first announced. KFC, to their credit (maybe?), seems to have embraced the notoriety. But that doesn't really improve things.

Construction Worker: "Today is the day."
Skateboarder: "The day I ignore the voice of reason."

Seriously, that's the pitch? "You know that little voice in the back of your mind telling you that this food item is disgusting and awful? Just block that shit out." I could use the same logic to justify eating a package of Mallomars and washing it down with turkey gravy. You know, in theory.

Office Type: "The day I talk to the girl from accounting."

Not much of a comparable. Unless - is she riddled with STDs? Okay, you win, KFC. This is exactly like working up the nerve to eat your horrible sandwich.

Dude with classic car, for some reason: "The day I ditch the bun."

Okay, not bad - the Atkins diet isn't for everyone, but leaving off a fast food bun, which is a lot of refined white flour, will save you a fair number of calories...

Douchebag on couch: "And demand two meaty fillets!"

Uh oh.

Random guy on street: "Two slices of cheese!"
Guy walking indoors: "And two pieces of bacon."

"And two more notches on your belt." I love how they act like there was actually "demand" for this, like they didn't want to make the Double Down but Joe Back-Fat forced their hand. Does anyone really believe there was some focus group where KFC was testing out a new sandwich, and they kept getting the response "Would be better with entire second chicken fillet and without bun?"

Office Type: "Yeah. I said bacon."

Oh, bacon? Never heard of it. I assume this is some rare ingredient that no one would ever think to put on a fast food sandwich, and thus your extreme emphasis and pride here is not at all mispla- no, no, I'm being told that in fact bacon is quite popular and probably appears on more fast food sandwiches these days than does ketchup.

Construction Worker: "Today's the day... I double down."

And tomorrow is the day you get a stent put in. No, make that two stents! See what I did there?

Voiceover: "The KFC Double Down! Double meat, double cheese, double bacon, double awesome."

Bacon is meat. And this thing really just looks gross. Oh, but it's also in grilled! Sweet, I was worried that two chicken breast fillets plus bacon and cheese might be a smidge too many calories. You do save all of 60 calories (still 480), although astonishingly the grilled version has significantly more cholesterol than the original recipe.

Voiceover: "Get yours today."

Pass.

Douchebag on couch: "So good."

I really don't like this guy. Why is he trying to eye-fuck the camera and only speaking out of one side of his mouth? Fuck him. I have no interest in anything he likes. Anyway, in case you missed him saying "So good," here comes a really obnoxious jingle to spell it out for you. No, seriously:

Jingle: "So S-O, G-Double-O-D Good!"

What the fuck is that stupid bullshit? First of all, "so good" itself is barely an acceptable slogan. Second of all, that is the best you could do for a song? "Hey, let's say the exact same thing twice, except in between the two words we'll spell the whole thing!" Who had to bill KFC for the thirty seconds it took them to write and compose that piece of shit?

This really is the evolution of fatness in America, isn't it? Sure, compared to some other products, the Double Down really isn't that bad - 540 calories and 32 grams of fat in 241 grams, which is absolutely dwarfed by that BK Homestyle Melt (810, 58, 221). But we've gone from "This sandwich needs more meat! Get rid of these vegetables!" to "This sandwich needs more meat! Get rid of this worthless bun!", which is just kind of ridiculous. Can you really even still call it a sandwich if it lacks a bun? And what's next? A chicken fillet with bacon and cheese jammed between two hamburger patties? A whole pork belly between two pieces of chicken? A turducken wrapped in bacon? A chicken fillet in between two entire roast pigs? Don't forget the melted butter for dipping!

Here we blow

2010-09-26T15:38:00.004-05:00

I wanted to write these ads up months ago, but initially had a hard time finding them on YouTube. Fortunately, it's never too late to deal with something this shitty.

We all know beer ads - especially light beer ads - are typically awful. That's what happens. But I've found this ad particularly inexplicable from the beginning. Why?

So the plot of the ad is, this guy is going to his softball game and thinks his girlfriend's book club is lame and boring. Then he realizes they have Bud Light and decides he'd rather just hang out there, drink beer, hit on his girlfriend's friends, and invite over all his buddies to party as well.

As far as I can see, there are two options. Either Bud Light condones this asshole's behavior:

"It's a party whenever Bud Light's around! Drop what you were doing, ignore all rules of social interaction, act like a complete creep! All to get that sweet, sweet nectar into your body!"

Or they don't:

"Bud Light: preferred beer of total douchebags!"

It's hard to imagine they're going for the latter, so: yeah! Bud Light, everyone! I know you and your girlfriend had separate plans for the day, but forget that shit! Barge into her book club! Disrupt that fucker! Get all the women drunk and try for an orgy! Invite your equally lame (and apparently subliterate) friends over and turn it into some sort of entirely undeserved mixer! Oh, and because the women are women, they will know their place and acquiesce quietly to your boorish behavior in spite of their reservations! Here we go!

Back when I made this post, I mentioned a second ad besides the Dodge ad in question that involved the Founding Fathers in a questionable way. Here it is:

Ben Franklin was a noted lover of beer. Without knowing anything about his preferences, though, I feel like he would not have been a Bud Light drinker.

Washington: "Where the blazes is Jefferson?"
Founding Father 2: "T.J.? He's probably still writing that 'declaration.'"

I'm not sure who the second guy is supposed to be. Alexander Hamilton? John Adams? James Madison? He sort of looks like Ben Franklin to me, but that other guy is supposed to be Franklin. The hat and coat are reminiscent of Paul Revere, but calling Paul Revere a "founding father" is a real stretch.

[Jefferson rides in and holds up two six-packs of Bud Light]
Jefferson: "Gentlemen!"
FF2: "Here we go!"

It's about time someone invented shitty beer!

[James Brown's "Living in America" plays]
Washington [dancing with a woman]: "Would you like to be the second lady?"

No, you guys, Jefferson was the philanderer. It's like you don't care about American history!

Eventually:

Washington: "We should do this every Fourth of July!"

The Fourth of July: celebration of American independence, or excuse to break out some terrible light beer and hit on every woman in sight? You be the judge.

This ad doesn't really offend me, but as with the Dodge ad, I find the use of figures from American history as pitchmen to be weird and off-putting. Here at least it's clearly intended to be funny; surely no one would take away from this that Washington and Jefferson would have necessarily endorsed Bud Light. Either way, it seems just a bit strange and/or inappropriate to have an ad where one of the Founding Fathers outright shits on the Declaration of Independence, regardless of why.

And the award for least comprehensible plot in an ad this year goes to

2010-09-25T13:00:00.002-05:00

I guess the footage in this ad was just so golden that they had to keep it, even when they decided to change the entire plot.

Kid: "Hey Parker, wanna race home? Bet I can beat you there."

Unless you are blind, it is staggeringly obvious from the visual cues - the way the kid gestures with his hand, the way Parker takes off running, Parker's hiding behind a tree (clearly an advantage in a footrace), etc. - that this commercial has nothing to do with "racing home." Parker is going to get the shit kicked out of him if he doesn't make it to his house ahead of these kids. I'm guessing that focus groups did not like the plot of this ad, and thus it was changed, but the random kid playing Parker had already been paid ten million dollars and so Chrysler felt like they had to overdub it rather than simply spend six hours shooting a new version of the ad in which the kids were actually racing. Or maybe they just figured it wouldn't make sense regardless and opted to cut their losses.

Voiceover: "With its 43 safety features, like the Parkview rear back-up camera..."
Mother: "Hi, sweetie! There you are!"

What? So... she was looking for him, because they needed to drive somewhere I guess, but he only just arrived home from school and jumped into the open trunk of the car, and meanwhile she was in the front seat with her seat belt already on. Could the plot of this ad possibly be any more incomprehensible?

Voiceover: "Electronic vehicle information center, and rear cross path detection system, now available in the Safety Tech package, the Chrysler Town and Country is a safe bet to make."

Meanwhile, the bullies sit on the lawn... of Parker's house. Are they just going to wait for him to come back and kick his ass then? And really, what did the car have to do with any of this? "Oh man, if the Chrysler Town and Country didn't have an electronic vehicle information center, Parker's ass would be grass right about now!"

Honestly, is it that hard to tell a coherent (or in any way relevant) story in 30 seconds? It's 30 seconds! How can it be that difficult to hold your plot together? I mean, let's face it - even if the commercial had never been changed and was always about bullying, it still makes no sense after about the ten-second mark, because why is the mom already in the car and where are they going? Why wouldn't she just pick him up from school, rather than him having to run a significant distance home only to get immediately into the car and drive away? Is that even his house? If it's not, how did he know she would be there? What the fuck does any of this have to do with safety features, other than that an announcer is listing a few as we watch this nonsense unfold?

The one piece of evidence that the ad actually involves a "race" is Parker sticking out his tongue and then grinning at the bullies as his mom drives away. I can see doing that if you just won a good-natured race. I can't really see doing that knowing that you have to go back to school the next day, with the exact same bullies, and eventually you probably won't be able to outrun them given your enormous backpack and their lack of same. But hey, none of the rest of the ad's plot makes sense. Why should I expect it to start doing so in the last ten seconds?

You gotta have balls

2010-09-24T21:48:00.004-05:00

Balls, everyone. BALLS! Hey, is this the funniest post you've ever read yet? It's not? BALLS. I don't think you understand. Balls.

Voiceover: "Mankind has asked many questions, but few as profound as this."

Why do bad things happen to good people? If God is righteous and all-powerful, why is there evil in the world? How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Which is cheaper, using Axe products every day or just getting a tattoo of the word "douchebag" on your forehead once?

Woman: "How can guys clean their balls so that they're more enjoyable to play with?"

Ha-HA! Balls! It means one thing but also another!

Jaime Pressly: "Well, there's finally a tool that can really get the job done: the Axe Detailer."

Or, like, a washcloth? I cannot say I've ever had an experience with ball-grime (sorry) that was so caked on (sorry again) that I would have needed some sort of ball-safe Brillo pad while showering. Also, if I had to guess, most women probably aren't that excited to play with a guy's balls no matter how sparkling clean they are.

Pressly: "This can make any ball sparkly and new."

The fine print here says "Take care when using on sensitive areas." So, it might be a little rough for sensitive areas? Well, it's a good thing you designed it exclusively to be used on the single most sensitive area of the male anatomy.

Pressly: "Go ahead and play with those clean balls, Denese."

Balls balls balls balls balls balls balls.

Woman: "Magical."
Voiceover: "Abracadabra."

This is retarded.

In the online version - which is 2:45 long - Denese juggles the golf balls in her hand for, I shit you not, fifteen straight seconds. Unsurprisingly, there are also oodles more predictable and unfunny ball-themed jokes, some of which were presumably deemed a little "too hot for TV."

I don't know. I mean, is this really a problem? Is this a complaint that a lot of guys have, that it's difficult to clean one's scrotum? Because I can't say I've found it to be an issue - and as such I just look at an ad like this as a bunch of cheap jokes to make teenagers snicker, kind of like the Bud Light ad that they weren't allowed to run during the 2008 Super Bowl because it liked its fart jokes just a little too much. Surely even Axe is not required to play to the absolute lowest common denominator. I'd take the sheer inanity of "Double Pits to Chesty" any day over this mess.

Zoosk alors

2010-09-23T21:35:00.005-05:00

Sure, there are like 500 dating websites out there. Some of them will tell you about their marriage success stories, or how they'll pair you with someone compatible... whatever. How many can guarantee they'll match you up with the stupidest people on the planet?

Friend 1: "This guy's into camping."
Woman: "Eh."
Friend 2: "What about that guy?"
Woman: "Oh, yeah! I could definitely go for some 'serious romance.'"

Then, for reasons known only to the writers of this commercial, she envisions a situation in which she and the guy keep bumping heads, running into things, and getting generally physically injured while attempting to have sex. This would never happen. Also, I might have missed a memo, but no matter how you feel about it, I don't think "fucking on the first date" can really be construed as "serious romance."

Woman: "Maybe just a movie date, would be nice."
Friends: "Yeah."

That was actually her imagination! What is wrong with this woman? "Hmm, I could go for some wild first-date sex... no, that would end with comical injury, as they do. We'll just go to a movie!" In what universe does this commercial make sense? For that matter, how does it sell a dating site?

Voiceover: "Zoosk: the online dating site that lets you date your way."

As opposed to Joosk, the online dating site where your nagging mother pressures you into dating that nice boy from down the street - he's a doctor, you know. And would it kill you to have a couple grandchildren for me before I die? I don't ask for much.

Voiceover: "Whether you want to browse, flirt or find your soulmate."

I guess that's a fair point - pretty sure eHarmony, for one, isn't really big on "flirting." But even with that in mind, I feel like this niche was probably already filled by one of the 8500 dating sites out there.

But if you think that Zoosk commercial was dumb and made no sense...

Um.

Woman: "I should probably ask him out, right?"
Friends: "Yeah!"
Friend 1: "Oh, speaking of dating, how was the blind date your mom set you up on?"

And then we see that in the ten seconds the woman was finishing getting ready, the guy had a severe allergic reaction to her dog, cat, and some sort of shellfish hors d'oeuvre that was sitting on the table.

Woman: "I think I'll stick to Zoosk for all my dating."
Friend 1: "Good idea!"

Good idea? Fuck, great idea! After all, I'm sure Zoosk requires you to submit a full allergy profile when you register, to weed out the guys who might swell up hideously before you even have a chance to decide if you want to bump heads and throw your back out with them later in the evening. What's that? Even without looking you're pretty sure they don't do that? Well, their loss. I'll just stick to NoPetDanderOrFoodAllergyHarmony.com for all my dating needs.

I mean, honestly. I can think of seven thousand things that could go wrong on a blind date, and I can also think of at least two or three that are maybe something you could imagine being able to weed out based on an online dating profile (people never lie in those things!). But shellfish allergies? Not one of those!

I can see where the extreme seriousness and maritally-inclined tone of the ads for eHarmony, and even Match.com to a lesser extent, would turn off people who are just looking online for casual dates. But is this kind of goofy, unrealistic asshattery really appealing to anyone? For that matter, have we learned anything about the Zoosk site itself, other than that its ad agency has the imagination of a sea urchin?

Rethink extremely unlikely

2010-09-23T14:00:00.004-05:00

Tying in with yesterday's State Farm post, I wanted to write up this ridiculous Honda Civic ad in which they outright claim that it will get you hired for a job you might not be qualified for. (Do you also need to have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night?) I couldn't find it, because for some reason people aren't lining up to upload boring, shitty car ads to YouTube. So instead we'll just talk about this AT&T ad, because it's just about as stupid.

Sure, okay, it can take some lucky breaks to get ahead in life. The ridiculous degree to which that idea is blown out in this commercial just makes my head spin, however. Questions I have:

* What was she even doing? So, she walks to the bottom of her steps, checks on a finishing download, and then immediately puts her phone back away? Why did she even need to get the phone out in the first place? Oh, because if she doesn't drop her shoes while putting the phone back away, the people would walk right past her. One second of contrived bullshit can make all the difference!

* These apparently quite influential ballet people will just invite any old person with ballet shoes in for an audition? "Oh, you do ballet? Well, even though if you were good enough to dance the lead in a show you probably wouldn't be dancing alone in some dark studio in your early 20s, why don't you come down for a tryout?"

* How many possible times in life can there be when doing something now versus three seconds from now actually matters and yet you also have time and/or a legitimate reason to download something on your smartphone?

[The Old West, 1887.]
Outlaw Cactus Joe: Well, it's just you and me, Sheriff. A duel to the death! As soon as the bell in the old clock tower chimes, we draw!
Sheriff Bill: Your reign of terror is almost over, Joe. Hmm, maybe I should download Kool and the Gang's "Celebration" for afterwards... [pulls out smartphone]
Daisy Mae: Sheriff, for God's sake! Now's not the time for downloads!
Sheriff Bill: Don't you worry, Daisy Mae. I'll have this song downloaded in plenty of time... say, this wireless network is just crawling right now.
Daisy Mae: [sobbing] Oh, Sheriff! You can't download that quickly with Verizon! It's only AT&T that has the nation's fastest download speeds!
Sheriff Bill: [nervous] Never you mind, Daisy. We're getting there. I think it's halfway done...
Outlaw Cactus Joe: Clock's almost to noon, Sheriff. And I ain't waiting for you to finish your download! When that bell chimes, I draw!
Sheriff Bill: Look, it's just... it's almost done, okay? Just give me two more seconds here...
[clock chimes, Cactus Joe draws and fires]
Daisy Mae: Sheriff! No!!!
Sheriff Bill: Hear me, good townsfolk! You must all switch to AT&T at once! I curse Verizon with my last breath! [dies]
Outlaw Cactus Joe: Well, time to rob the bank and sleep with some whores. And then I'll upload some pictures of that to Facebook with my iPhone! Mwa ha ha ha!!!

Like a good genie, State Farm is there

2010-09-22T18:38:00.003-05:00

Hey, I just had a crazy idea. What if we decided to sell products based not on things they actually do, but on things they don't do nor possibly could? It's just retarded enough to work!

I'm guessing that people under the age of 35 were not buying enough insurance.

Friend 1: "Snatching stuff takes-" [rock smashes through window] "Oh! What is going on in here?"
Friend 2: "Uh oh."
Dude With Insurance: "It's okay, relax. Watch this." [singing poorly] "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there!"
[State Farm Agent appears from nowhere]
Agent: "Hey Dave."

I'm guessing mid to late 20s for these guys. Do they really all remember this jingle? When was the last time State Farm used it before this series of ads? Whatever.

Friend 2: "Wow."
Friend 1: "Is that your agent?"
Dude: "It's the jingle."

Ugh. Talk about an annoying meta-concept. "Off-key renditions of our famous jingle are like the Bat Signal for our insurance agents!" How postmodern of you.

Dude: "Try it!"
Friend 1: "Uh, no."

You had the right idea.

Friend 2: [singing extremely poorly] "Like a good neighbor-"
Dude: "Just say it."
Friend 2: "State Farm is- is there."
Friend 1: "With a sandwich."
[A sandwich appears on the table]

What? Why? This has something to do with insurance? "Be insured against hunger, with State Farm."

Friend 2: "Ohhh yeah."
Dude: "And the girl from 4E?"
[Girl appears]

"Be insured against blue balls, with State Farm."

Friend 2: [inexplicably delivering his line like a Southern Baptist minister] "And can I get a hot tub?!"
[Hot tub appears in the middle of the room]
Agent: "Nice."

"Be insured against not looking like the kind of douchebag who has a hot tub in the center of his apartment, with State Farm."

Voiceover: "Find out what else State Farm agents can do for you at whyagent.com."

I think you mean "Find out what State Farm agents can do for you," since this commercial did not show me anything that a State Farm agent can actually do. They're not going to bring me a sandwich or make a hot tub appear in my apartment, and they're definitely not going to get me laid. For that matter, wasn't that agent here because of a broken window? What happened to that?

Selling products without referencing anything they do is one thing; that's old hat at this point, and frankly it's an odd commercial these days that focuses too heavily on its product's strengths. But selling a product based only on things it doesn't do, can't do, and will never, ever do no matter how much you use it? It's like a Coke ad that says it helps build strong bones or some shit. I would have just written this off as obviously intended to be silly humor if not for the fact that they explicitly use the word "else." What else can State Farm agents do for you? No. They cannot do anything shown, at any point. Here's what a State Farm agent can probably do for you: survey the damage, help you to file a claim, and then never be involved with you again until the next time something breaks in your house. Granted, that doesn't play as well on television.

The new face of annoying

2010-08-17T21:40:00.003-05:00

There seems to be a movement afoot to try and sell products to youngish parents by showing the most obnoxious, unrealistic examples of youngish parents possible in the ads. Sears, your entry?

Blech.

Voiceover: "Say you're looking for..."
Wife: "The perfect fridge."
Husband: "Perfect for two-"
Wife: "Three."
Husband: "-of us."

Why, that delivery just snaps, crackles and pops! Did Aaron Sorkin write this? Is this conversation going to continue in a several-minute tracking shot that concludes in the Oval Office?

Sears Guy: "Got it."
Voiceover: "Well, only Sears has the top ten brands!"
Husband: "This Samsung makes cubed ice."
Wife: "Gotta have the cubed, not the crescent."
Husband: "Or the crushed. It's settled."
Both: "Cubed!"

Go away and die. Also, what is with this woman's eyes? Is she on speed, or is she just being distracted by the same off-camera shiny thing that's clearly being used to keep that baby unnaturally peppy?

Wife: "Check out this Whirlpool side-by-side."
Husband: "Side-by-side? But don't we want the-"
Both: "-bottom freezer."

Good thing these two got married, because I can't imagine anyone else being able to stand for this conversational style for more than about ten seconds.

Some Other Guy: "Look, I don't see why this is a big deal. I just wanted to-"
This Same Wife: "-watch the game with your friends? Not on antiquing day."
Some Other Guy: "Couldn't you just go with-"
This Same Wife: "-one of my girlfriends? They're all busy and besides, you promised."
Some Other Guy: "Stop cutting me off! I can't stand the way you insist on-"
This Same Wife: "-finishing every sentence for you? It's just the way I'm scripted, honey."

Sears Guy: "This new Kenmore Elite is exactly what you're looking for. Plus enough space for-"
Husband: "-five of us."
Wife: "Five? Thought we said-"
Husband: "Four?"
Wife: "Right."
Husband: "Yeah, but have you seen this fridge?"
[Wife gives a knowing sort of look]

I hate this. Hate it. Family planning based on the size of a refrigerator? Are you out of your fucking mind, Sears? Plus, I don't want anything that encourages these assholes to have two more kids who will clearly grow up to be completely insufferable. That poor cute baby is already doomed; no reason to throw two more on the fire. Hey! Assholes! If you don't really want more than two kids, and this fridge has so much space that you just have to have three, maybe just don't buy an enormous fridge! It might even cost you less to get one that's merely big enough for four people. (For the record, I know it's supposed to be a joke. It's not funny.)

On the bright side, we did learn from this ad that Sears employees will apparently try to up-sell you to a product larger than you want or need with the slightest provocation.

You: "Yes, I'm looking for a washing machine. It's just the two of us at the moment, although we're thinking maybe a kid or two down the road, so it'll have to be big enough to handle that."
Sears Employee: "I've got just the thing. This washer here holds three tons of clothes. It was originally built for use by the laundry staff on the QE2. It's on clearance at only $7.5 million!"
You: "That... seems a bit excessive."
Sears Employee: "Be sure to pair it with this dryer, which holds six tons of clothes - enough to dry two loads from the washer! See in the back there? The dryer is powered by a miniature sun which Samsung's engineers harnessed in another solar system and dragged back to Earth."
You: "Yeah... it's really just going to be four of us, max, so..."
Sears Employee: "Should we check out a dishwasher too? This one over here can do all the dishes from the dining halls at Ohio State in a single load!"

Pay no attention to the car behind the curtain

2010-07-06T20:20:00.003-05:00

All right, Dodge. Your American Revolution ad was ridiculous. You've got 30 more seconds to sell me on the Challenger. And... go.

Sigh.

It doesn't take a genius to elucidate the reasons this ad is stupid, but let's cover them.

Voiceover: "When people see a UFO, they never say, 'I wonder what those consumer review sites would think about that thing.'"

Uh... what? I can think of about 500 reasons not only why no one would do that, but why no one would ever think that anyone would do that, including, but not limited to:

* No one is planning on buying a UFO, hence the lack of a need to see product reviews
* No one thinks consumer review sites would have information on a UFO
* What in blue fuck is wrong with you

Voiceover: "They say, 'Dude, that's a freaking UFO!'"

First of all, I don't care how cool you think your car looks. It is not analogous to alien spacecraft technology. Second of all, I think anyone with half a brain can see the half-assed snow job Dodge is attempting to pull. This is like putting out a shitty movie, refusing to screen it for critics, then running ads that say, "When people see a beautiful sunset, they don't say, 'I wonder if Roger Ebert would give this sunset a thumbs-up.'" Dodge is basically saying, "Hey, this 30-second slow-motion shot of our car driving ten feet? That's all you need to see. What? Shut up. Stop asking questions. The Car Fox doesn't work here." It's nothing more than basic misdirection, an attempt to get you to focus on the one thing they're apparently actually proud of - the car's design - at the expense of anything else. I mean, don't most car ads have pricing, or some listing of features, or even just some legal boilerplate? Not this one. But it compares the car to a UFO, so hey, there's that.

Other copy that Dodge rejected for the ad:

"When people see a UFO, they never say, 'I wonder what kind of gas mileage that thing gets.' They say, 'Dude, that's a freaking UFO.'"

"When people see a UFO, they never say, 'What do you suppose that costs? I sure would be interested in seeing some lease information.' They say, 'Dude, that's a freaking UFO.'"

"When people see a UFO, they never say, 'Yeah, but the UFOs made in the Vega system are cheaper, safer and more reliable. I'm just not sure I want to buy an Andromedan UFO this time.' They say, 'Dude, that's a freaking UFO.'"

The Battle of Car-atoga

2010-06-23T23:06:00.002-05:00

A couple years ago, I made a post about a Pepsi ad that implied that a young Jimi Hendrix was inspired to play guitar because of his love for Pepsi. In it, I joked that Pepsi rejected a script suggesting that Pepsi also inspired Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence. As it happens, there are two commercials out right now that took that ball and ran with it. I couldn't find one online, so here's the other.

To say that Dodge has been going a bit over the top with its ad campaign lately is probably understating it. First, they mocked you alternately for being a big pussy who drives a minivan and for being a big pussy who doesn't drive a minivan. (Can't win with these guys.) Now... well, look, I know this ad is not seriously suggesting that George Washington drove a Dodge Challenger. But what is it suggesting?

The takeaway association is that Dodge, as a company, is somehow emblematic of the American spirit. America got freedom right, and we, Dodge, got cars right! At the risk of appearing humorless, I just find this ad kind of crass. It's one thing to be a goofy local ad where some guy dressed as George Washington says, "I cannot tell a lie - Discount Warehouse has great deals!" It's quite another to be a major corporation running a straight-faced ad implying that Washington would have approved of your business model.

The more annoying thing, of course, is that this is the only pitch. Anything to say about the car? No. Totally fake scenario in which the car is being awesome? Sure, I guess. It's not like this is even an impressive driving shot or something like so many car commercials feature. And I dare you to take your Dodge Challenger out into some random field and see how it does.

Also, we're allies with the British, people. Maybe we don't need to run an ad which depicts them as initially oppressive and then cowardly in the face of our superior automobiles? I picture David Cameron seeing this and then changing the channel while muttering darkly, "Bloody hell, Yanks, it was 230 years ago! Let it go!"

I'm lovin' being an antisocial jackass

2010-04-17T15:07:00.005-05:00

Fun fact: I don't know anyone who likes this commercial.

I can honestly say I don't have the slightest idea what McDonald's was thinking with this one. I know in the last post I talked about going for "funny" characters at the expense of "likable" characters, but this guy isn't funny and it's not clear to me that McDonald's is really trying to be funny. It just thinks... well, I don't know what.

Roommate: "Hey dude, you gotta-"
Asshole: "Please, don't even talk to me until I've had my coffee."
Roommate: "Okay..."

Fun fact: they sell coffee in stores. They sell coffee machines in stores. If you're an enormous douchebag until you've had coffee, consider brewing some yourself before you leave the house. Also, is this the first time this ever happened? You'd think the guy's roommate, at least, would know the drill by now.

Neighbor: "Oh, hey, Tim, how's it-"
Asshole: "Sorry, I haven't had my coffee yet."
Dog: [barks]
Asshole: "No."

If dog speak could be translated, I'm pretty sure that dog would be saying "Fuck you."

Woman on Bus: "Morning!"
Asshole: [stares, but at least manages not to say anything obnoxious]

There are like eleven million McDonald's on the planet and like fifteen million places to get Starbucks. Why the fuck has this asshole not just gone and gotten some fucking coffee yet?

McDonald's employee: "Welcome to McDonald's! Can I interest you in a-"
Asshole: "Not before I've had my coffee."

Okay, officially, WHAT THE FUCK. Who the fuck is this fucking asshole and why is he the centerpiece of a commercial? Hey, douchebag: WHY DID YOU EVEN GO INTO THE MCDONALD'S??? I assume you knew they had coffee there, and I saw you just looking at the menu - WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM? Order some coffee or shut the fuck up, you fucking knob.

McDonald's employee: "-premium roast coffee for just a dollar?"
Asshole: "Talk to me!"

He looks surprised. Seriously, why were you in there at all? There is only one reason why you'd go into a McDonald's while in an "I can't talk to anyone until I've had coffee!" stupor, and that is to get some fucking coffee. This guy's an asshole and an idiot.

After taking one sip of coffee he then proceeds to talk to multiple people on the sidewalk. They walk right past him, and they should, because he's an asshole. I love the triumphant music McDonald's plays during the coffee-pouring shot like they're really pleased with themselves. "Hey, caffeine zombies! Have we got the place for you!" If you're not just trying to be hilarious (and really, even if you are), shouldn't your ad's main character be trying to stand in for your customers in some way? Who would want to think of themselves as this kind of jackass? "Oh yeah, ha ha, that's totally me! God, I'm such an annoying asshole. Well, time to hook this IV of coffee to my vein lest I fail to have caffeine for ten seconds and start to snap!"

Not to get all preachy, by the way, but does it seem odd that you can have a commercial like this, where a character is basically saying "Sorry, I need my morning injection of drugs in order to function properly?" That's called habituation, people, and it indicates that maybe this douche should consider cutting back his caffeine intake just slightly.

Just as an aside: here, via a video I found on YouTube while searching for this ad, is what would happen if anyone behaved like this in real life. Yet more proof that everyone hates this ad.

Wow! That's an awful commercial!

2010-04-14T22:40:00.002-05:00

By this point I'm sure you've all seen that god-awful Staples "Wow, that's a low price" ad. You haven't? But you'd like to punish yourself? Well, okay.

That commercial, however, is not why we're here. We're here because of this one:

That's veteran character actor Joey Slotnick (I did not have to look this up in any way. Is that weird?) as the audience surrogate. And if you saw a guy doing that in a Staples, you would, in fact, probably react exactly as Slotnick does here - with grimaces and eventual sarcasm. But Staples isn't here to bury its ridiculous yelling pitchman. No, he wins this little duel, by smugly pointing to a price that is, in fact, so low that it would apparently cause anyone to go apeshit.

What is really the point here? This is easily one of the five most annoying pitchmen in history. That seems like exaggeration, but think about it. How many characters can you name off the top of your head who are more hateable? I might be able to come up with a handful, but even after I did that, I would have to concede that most of those characters at least have some sort of personality. This is just crazed yelling by an escaped mental patient. Not only is it obnoxious, it's some of the laziest writing you'll ever come across. Bear in mind that this ad is ostensibly supposed to be funny. So where's the joke?

And that was just the first ad. The fact that Staples had the gall to put this second commercial on the air shows that they recognize how stupid and annoying the first ad was. Here, they're admitting that they quite frankly don't give a shit. Why? Because for every reasonable person who hates these ads, there are apparently two who think it's hilarious to recreate them and post it to YouTube. This may not be the single laziest major-corporation, nationally-televised ad campaign in recent memory, but I can't think of any that are markedly lazier.

And the second ad is worse than the first. The first ad, while thoroughly unfunny, at least attempts a punchline.

Lunatic: "Wow! That's a low price!" [x3]
Female Employee: "How many products do we carry?"
Male Employee: "Seven thousand."
Female Employee: "I'll get him a cart."
[more crazed yelling]

Painfully bad. However, it does follow the basic structure of a joke. The second ad? Not so much.

Lunatic: "Wow! That's a low price!" [x3]
Man [sarcastically]: "I'm sorry, did you say something about a low price?"
[Lunatic points smugly]
Man: "Wow! That's a low price!"
Lunatic: "I know!"

As McBain might say, dat's de joke. In the first commercial, there's a bad joke surrounded by obnoxious yelling. In the second ad, Staples basically says, "Hey, we know you hated that first ad. So guess what? Now we're not even going to pretend there's anything else going on! We don't care what you think. We're going to shove this awful shit down your throat until you choke on it."

A couple posts ago I talked about those awful Toyota Sienna ads and how I didn't understand why you'd make an ad in which the presumed protagonists and pitchmen are so loathsome. But this really is what we've come to in advertising, isn't it? The point of this ad isn't really to be funny. Not even Staples could possibly think this ad was legitimately funny. But while it's unfunny and stupid and annoying... it is distinctive. In those Sienna ads, that family is awful and I have no desire to emulate them. But I did remember the ad. I personally don't believe the old adage "There's no such thing as bad publicity" - there have been ad campaigns that have led me to stop using a product because I hated them so much. But I'm starting to feel like maybe I'm shouting into the wind here.

If there's one thing I've learned in three years on this blog it's that corporations, almost to the last, are simply not interested in making good advertisements. They're interested in making money, and if Jay Leno, Jersey Shore and the Transformers films have taught us anything it's that in mass culture, there is no prerequisite of quality or value for success. Why does Staples make an ad like this? Because it's cheaper than making a good one and because they don't think it matters. And the sad part is they're probably right.

This is probably reading like a sign-off at this point, and it's not. We're not closing the blog, and in fact I've added a Twitter account - you can follow @windiermegatons if you want - so that I can throw up the occasional bite-sized thought on ads that annoy me but don't quite merit a full post (although sometimes, as with Buffalo Wild Wings, I get there eventually). But I'll be honest: this ad is so bad it's pushed me to the edge of the abyss.

You have to be kidding me

2010-03-31T21:01:00.002-05:00

We talk about unrealistic ads on here all the time, but it's almost unthinkable how bad this one is.

Let me preface this by saying I've never been to a Buffalo Wild Wings. But I sort of assumed from the name that they were some sort of buffalo wing restaurant. And yet, in all the commercials I've seen of theirs - and during the NCAA tournament there have been more than a few - I cannot once recall seeing anyone eat, or even hold, an actual chicken wing.

In fact, the commercials that do air make Buffalo Wild Wings seem like the Trilateral Commission's private sports bar. A panel that enables them to fix the outcomes of sporting events? Referees in their back pocket? Truly this is a frightening vision of the New World Order.

These ads annoy me for a number of reasons, not least because "You have to be here" is such a ridiculous tagline. Why do I have to be there? It seems to be just like any other sports bar. And the idea of people in a sports bar not wanting to leave just kind of depresses me. How miserable is your life if you're all, "Oh, please let this game continue! When I'm inside the protective sanctuary of Buffalo Wild Wings, all my cares melt away! I simply can't face harsh reality again so soon!" If that sounds familiar, you've got bigger problems than whether or not this game goes into overtime.

In addition, this ad substantially misrepresents what it's like to be a fan of a sports team, as I think anyone who actually is (a group which apparently does not include anyone at Buffalo Wild Wings' ad agency, who seem to view sports as something they once heard of) would easily recognize. I mean, let's talk about what exactly is happening in the basketball game being watched in this ad:

1. New York and Boston are playing.
2. New York has just tied the game at 102 on a dunk with less than six seconds to play.
3. The entire bar, including any number of people in Boston apparel, cheers this result.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?????

I don't care how great a time you're having at Buffalo Wild Wings, eating chicken wings (I assume) and drinking probably shitty beer. If you are a real sports fan, you want your team to win. A situation in which they somehow give up a wide-open, game-tying dunk with six seconds left is not something to be applauded. Further applauding when your team is going to win the game but is unable to do so because the player is blinded by a camera flash is complete lunacy.

But who cares if your team wins, right? You're just a fan of, you know, watching sports. In a general sense. It's not whether you win or lose, it's whether you get to sit in a Buffalo Wild Wings for an additional 15 minutes. Because you just have to be there.

Better pizza, bigger annoyance

2010-03-20T23:08:00.004-05:00

I'm sure you've seen the ads that Domino's has been running recently, in which they show focus groups talking about how shitty their pizza is, and then they go back to those same people and go, "Hey, we fixed it! Do you love us now?" And those people are like, "Yeah, this pizza is now totally great!" Although at least some of them basically admitted that they might not have been so critical had they known Domino's was actually going to look at the video, and so maybe they're just saying it's great because they're ON FUCKING TELEVISION THIS TIME but whatever. Maybe it's great now. (If you haven't seen the ads, they were mostly chopped down out of this big fucker.)

I'm just saying: if you've just run an ad campaign talking about how your pizza was super terrible to the point that you had to completely fix the recipe, I'm not sure I'd make this my next move.

Domino's Chef: "For years, Papa John's has been telling us they have 'Better ingredients, better pizza. But when challenged in this court, they stated their slogan is 'puffery.'"

Yeah, uh, question for the pizza chef. Are you telling me that Domino's actually took Papa John's to motherfucking court over the wording of their slogan? Because that seems like some kind of ridiculous bullshit.

Chef: "What's puffery? Scott, you're a lawyer."
Scott: "Puffery: 'An exaggerated statement based on opinion. Not fact.'"
Chef: [shrugs dramatically]

Look, if you want to be all serious about this, it's very easy to argue that "better" is ill-defined and that Papa John's is not necessarily claiming to be literally better - whatever that would entail - than other pizza chains. But also, during the "years" when Papa John's was claiming this, Domino's pizza was apparently complete shit. You guys just ran ads telling us how your pizza used to be awful, and apparently you only fixed it in December. Are you mad because Papa John's didn't change their slogan immediately after you changed your recipe? Because it doesn't seem like there's any real impetus on them to do that. Unless you took them to court over it like total douchebags. (And if you didn't really take them to court and you're just saying that to make a more "interesting" commercial... well, that's just puffery, my friends.)

Chef: "Here's what's not puffery. Our new hand-tossed sausage, extra cheese and pepperoni pizzas just beat Papa John's in a national taste test."

Okay, good for you, but again, I'm assuming this just happened since your new pizza is still, you know, new. So what were you criticizing them for? This is like if after Barack Obama was inaugurated, he made some speech that was like, "For years we've heard George Bush give speeches like he was the president. But I just checked and it turns out I'm the president right now! George Bush should stop calling himself the president." And then everyone would have been like, "Wow, we just elected the dumbest man alive." Honestly, Domino's, do you just have no concept of time passing? Is your ad agency run by dogs? What is happening here?"

Chef: "Our pizzas taste better and that's not puffery. That's proven."

I mean, I guess. You'll forgive me if I don't necessarily take a bunch of nobodies' opinions on the taste of pizza as some sort of gospel truth. Also, see everything I already wrote, you stupid asshole. Does Domino's really think that behaving like some nitpicky douchebags is going to win them any friends? Do they think that people take advertising slogans so seriously that this was in any way needed? Are there people who would actually be like, "I don't know, Domino's, you say this new pizza of yours is good, but I just saw a Papa John's ad and they specifically said, 'Better pizza.' So, whatever, that clearly must be true." Because if there are, I'm really afraid.

Burnt Sienna

2010-03-11T21:27:00.003-06:00

Remember when Dodge insinuated that minivans were for pussies, then immediately turned around and tried to sell you a minivan? (It was like three posts ago.) Well, Toyota's taking a different tactic in the minivan war. A different annoying tactic.

You know who has great commercials? Sonic! What if we basically copied those commercials and then made them about the car the people are sitting in and not what they're eating? Get that one actor too. He's hilarious.

Husband: "Well, we got a minivan, for the kids."

You know, you can put kids into cars that aren't minivans. Are minivans good for kids? Sure, I guess. But if you really have the antipathy for minivans that's implied here... you don't have to get a minivan. See: 8 million horrible soccer moms driving like fucking Ford Expeditions or whatever.

Wife: "Right."
Husband: "But we got a Sienna... to match how awesome we are."

As if the Office-like pseudo-confessional wasn't obvious enough, how about this guy just totally channels Ed Helms? I mean, I'm sure Ed Helms is not the only guy in the world to ever do a character like that, but it is the exact vibe I get here.

Husband: "I like to call it the Swagger Wagon."

If these people existed, and were as earnest in their douchebaggery as this couple is, how many friends would they have? Zero? Some sort of imaginary number?

Wife: "It's actually a lot like our family. Stylish, modern, super good-looking."

It feels like I've been asking this for years now. (In fact, I have been asking this for years now.) Why do companies insist on selling their products with obnoxious assholes as the spokespeople? Didn't it used to be the other way around? Think about how Camel had to stop using Joe Camel because, basically, he was too cool, which made kids want to smoke. Think about various celebrity endorsements. The idea was supposed to be that other people who used the product were cool, attractive, and pretty much everything the viewer wanted to be. I know we're in a jaded, postmodern age, but we've gone through the looking glass if the ideal spokesperson for a product is someone who isn't cool or attractive but just thinks they are, and announces this to everyone in grating, self-absorbed fashion.

Husband: "You know, sometimes when we roll up in our Swagger Wagon, and people see our style... uh, I don't want to say that they get jealous..."
Wife: "Yeah you do."
Husband: "Yes I do."

As if this weren't annoying enough on its own, the ad flashes "Daddy Like" and "Mommy Like" on the screen during this section. This is actually supposed to be the campaign's slogan, and let me tell you, it's so fucking terrible that I would rather buy a Prius I knew to be malfunctioning than buy a Sienna and take the risk that someone would think I thought this ad was even remotely tolerable. Holy fuck.

Announcer: "Meet the family, and the new Sienna, on YouTube."

I've met the family. They've been met. And if you think that this ad made me want to spend one more fucking second in their presence, Toyota, you are sorely mistaken.

Okay, I did watch a few of the others. But if I didn't write for this blog? Not a chance. I'll spare you the agony of going through any of them, but suffice it to say they're exactly as awful as you'd think. If you're interested in torturing yourself, start with this one, in which we are asked to believe that the Sienna is so great you can use it as some sort of spa. Really.

Annoying. So annoying.

2010-02-15T18:08:00.002-06:00

Hotels.com's ads used to be... well, stupid. But in a sort of affable way. Like this:

See? Stupid. I see this and think "Reviews from people like me? How much of a weirdo do you think I am?" Nevertheless, there's a kind of good-humored air about it, like they're implicitly admitting that they're just trying to have a good time with their advertising.

Not so anymore.

Fuck this ad. Okay? Fuck it.

First of all, the question is thoroughly begged when you name your main character "Smart." What is that, even? Last name? Nickname? Ah, who the fuck cares.

Woman: "What's up, Smart?"
Smart: "Being smart."

Fuck you.

Smart: "Yep, just booked my tenth night on Hotels.com, sooo... I get a night free."

Oh my God, you super-genius, you! You... took advantage of a company's offer! I hope you needed all those ten nights. Otherwise you're like moms who come home with three 12-packs of Coke because it was on sale, even though no one in the house drinks Coke. As it is you're like someone bragging because he got the final stamp on his Subway Club card. No one cares, douchebag.

Smart: "You, me, getaway."

"Sexual harassment. So sexual harassment."

Woman: "Really? Where?"
Smart: "Anywhere you want."
Woman: "A bed and breakfast?"
Smart: "Bed and breakfast? Check."
Woman: "A place by the beach?"
Smart: "A place by awesome."

Again, fuck you. Also, that second place is clearly not a bed and breakfast. What are the odds she was changing her request entirely as opposed to modifying it to "a bed and breakfast by the beach?" Some fucking smart guy you are.

Woman: "Oh! You are smart."

Sound the editorializing alarm! Also, why the fuck is he smart? I guess taking advantage of a rewards program is smarter than not doing so - assuming you already have reason to be booking a significant number of hotel rooms - but it hardly makes you a super-genius, any more than clipping detergent coupons out of the Sunday paper qualifies you to run NASA. It's not that I think Hotels.com should talk about their product in an equivocal fashion, but how about not giving us a pitchman at the apex of obnoxious douchiness? (I also love that even in Claymation that woman is clearly way too hot for him.)

Announcer: "Accumulate ten nights and get a night free. Welcome Rewards from Hotels.com. Smart. So smart."

Again, I'm not saying this isn't a good deal. But do you have to pose it in so smarmy a fashion? This is maybe one rung above Hyundai's "Big Duh" sales event of 2007. Is it really so hard to suggest that something is a good idea without insulting the audience's intelligence?

In conclusion... fuck this thing.

A tradition more annoying than any other

2010-02-13T14:16:00.004-06:00

How do you make a bad ad campaign worse? Try to get "edgy."

This ad is, obviously, online only. What kills me is that it's referred to as a "banned Super Bowl commercial" by KGB. I mean, I guess it was banned... in the same way that, say, the orgy scene from Caligula was banned from the Super Bowl. Most likely this ad wasn't submitted at all, since KGB cannot possibly have been under the impression it could air on television, or even if it was submitted, it was only so they could call it "banned!" and "too hot for TV!" after its entirely inevitable rejection. But wow, if it was banned from the Super Bowl... that means it must be totally hilarious in a risqué fashion. Right?

KGB Douche: "We got a call?"
Woman 1: "It's my husband."
KGB Woman: "What happened?"
Woman 1: "We were in the pro shop, he and Bob were discussing global warming, and..."

Cut to an hilarious shot of a guy bent all the way around...

KGB Douche: "He's got his head up his ass."

*spit take* Bahahaha! Hilarious! Not at all a joke that is decades old at best. Also, global warming? It would almost be worth 99 cents to see what answer KGB could possibly give to "Is global warming real?" Even actual scientists don't seem to be 100% in agreement on this point.

Woman 1: "Not the first time."
KGB Woman: "Sir, are you all right in there?"
Guy: "Who said that?"
KGB Douche: "Now who's Bob?"
Woman 2: "My husband. Over there."

Guess what? He's also got his head up his ass! ROFL!

KGB Douche: "Next time your husbands don't have a clue, make sure they text KGB first."

So... neither of them had a clue? How exactly had this debate been going?

Unnamed Husband: "Global warming is real! It's harming the planet!"
Bob: "Oh yeah? Prove it, jerk!"
Unnamed Husband: "See, there's pollution, right? And the pollution goes in the water, polar bears eat it, they die, and their rotting corpses drive up the planet's temperature!"
Bob: "You idiot! Nuclear waste gets stored in cooling towers! It makes everything colder!"

If neither person has a clue in a debate, it no longer matters.

KGB Douche: "Always know what you're talking about. Text your questions to 542542."

"Don't bother doing any significant research on the major scientific topics that you'd like to discuss. Just text KGB and get an answer that fits into 120 characters on your cell phone." I don't know, KGB. Couldn't you dumb things down a little more? I want an answer about global warming that would fit inside a fortune cookie!

Guy [putting]: "It's in the hole!"

And one last cheap ass joke, just for good measure. I would have added a sarcastic *rimshot* there, but KGB would have assumed I was playing along with the theme.

Grab life by the balls

2010-02-11T22:24:00.007-06:00

Good news, ladies. You won! You're not just equal to your male counterparts - you're ahead of them. You control everything. What's that? You don't believe me? You say men still regularly make more than women, and hold the vast majority of positions of power in this country, and really the world? Well, that can't be right. I mean, did you not see that Dodge Charger ad that aired during the Super Bowl?

See?

Man 1: "I will get up and walk the dog at 6:30 am. I will eat some fruit as part of my breakfast. I will shave. I will clean the sink after I shave."

Maybe they should have chosen a guy who hadn't clearly already shaved for this one. Anyway, let's keep a tally of which of the things mentioned in this ad are (a) completely normal, (b) common courtesy, or (c) actually maybe emasculating in some way.

Walking the dog: I mean, it's probably your dog, asshole. If it's her dog, and it's some yappy toy poodle or something, I guess that's annoying. Still, I would class this as (a).

Eating fruit: Yeah! Fruit is for pussies! Normally it's all I can do to choke down half a banana. Plus eating a banana makes me feel kinda gay. Lord. This is clearly (a).

Shaving: Yes, how unusual. Guys never shave unless women make them, right? (a).

Cleaning the sink: God forbid. (b).

Man 2: "I will be at work by 8 am. I will sit through two-hour meetings. I will say yes when you want me to say yes. I will be quiet when you don't want to hear me say no."

Okay, those first two things are completely normal and have little to nothing to do with women. Bitches, man - always forcing you to... work... like a normal human being would... (a). As for the latter two... maybe work on your communication. If you're in a relationship with a woman and you're too afraid to contradict her, you have bigger problems than your car. But, I guess that's a (c) for each of those.

Man 3: "I will take your call. I will listen to your opinion of my friends. I will listen to your friends' opinions of my friends. I will be civil to your mother."

The first and last are, again, things that I think any reasonable person would not be off-base in expecting. Both are either (a) or (b). The middle two... I guess they're (c). But this hypothetical woman sounds kind of unpleasant. Maybe you should just break up. Though I call bullshit on this dude even having a girlfriend. He needs to take Man 1's advice and find a razor, just for starters.

At this point, by the way, the commercial is half over. What's it for? Who knows?

Man 4: "I will put the seat down. I will separate the recycling. I will carry your lip balm. I will watch your vampire TV shows with you. I will take my socks off before getting into bed. I will put my underwear in the basket."

B, A, who fucking cares about a lip balm tube that weighs half an ounce, I guess C, you're a ridiculous asshole if you wear socks to bed, and B.

Man 4: "And because I do this... I will drive the car I want to drive."

"Yeah, honey, I know that buying a new car is a big decision. And I know you want a minivan because of the kids. But I clean up after myself - only for your benefit because I'm perfectly happy living in filth, I should clarify - and occasionally carry your lip balm. Therefore I'm getting a car that is completely impractical for our family."

Announcer: "Charger: Man's Last Stand."

Not to get all heavy on you, but did you ever wonder why the divorce rate is so high? It's because of shit like this. Man and woman are not natural enemies, Dodge, you assholes. A relationship involves give and take, yes. But it really shouldn't be about scoring cheap points that you try to cash in later by holding them over the other person's head and demanding some form of equity. And no one can reasonably argue that doing things that any halfway considerate person should understand are just normal parts of life with another person constitutes just cause for buying a muscle car. I mean, if you have enough money to have two cars, and you already have the family-friendly car, then whatever. You want to drive a Charger, that's probably fine. But the entire implication behind this commercial is "Your wife is not going to want you to drive this car! Point out that either you're going to drive it or you're going to toss your underwear over the blades of the ceiling fan, and she's going to like it!"

And honestly, "Man's last stand?" I do have to applaud Dodge for the sheer balls it takes to be an American automaker - doing really well lately, as we all know - willing to say a big "Fuck you" to half the population right off the bat.

Final tally of things mentioned in the ad as emasculating reasons why dudes need to drive Dodge Chargers:
(a) Completely normal: 7
(b) Common courtesy: 6
(c) Actually maybe emasculating in some way: 5

C is less than either of the other two and way less than the total of A and B. I mean, fuck. Eating fruit? That's the best you can do? Fucking going to work like everyone does? These are the sacrifices that deserve the complete silence of your partner when you decide that you're going to be making the automotive decision unilaterally? Jesus.

Did you think that was it? It's not.

Announcer: "What is that thing?"

Some sort of car! What do I win? Is it more cheap jokes about being whipped and/or gay? I sure hope so!

Announcer: "Well, I'll tell you what it isn't. It isn't a 'man-bag.' It isn't 'man-sandals.' It isn't a low-cal plate. It isn't a yoga class. It isn't an exfoliant with added moisturizer, it isn't a couples cooking class, and it certainly isn't a small dog that needs to wear a jacket if the temperature drops below 70."

"It isn't picking up a box of tampons. It isn't being in the same room with a box of tampons. It isn't brushing your teeth before bed. It isn't not hitting on your wife's sister, right in front of your wife. It isn't washing your hands after you pee. It isn't remembering your anniversary. Oh, and it certainly isn't ever doing anything that would make you seem like less of a man in the eyes of a faceless corporate entity that is just trying to sell you something."

Announcer: "That's what it isn't."

Going to sell it at all? No? No price, no specs, the car doesn't even move. The entire selling point is, "If you don't buy this car, you're a total pussy who does everything your wife tells you to. Buy a fucking Charger or we're calling your friends and telling them you didn't have a huge, greasy hamburger for lunch every day of your life, but once ate something under four thousand calories, like the weenie you are." Why, you're probably the kind of spineless wimp who would drive a minivan!

Yeah! Wait.

Announcer: "There are guys who will smirk at you for buying a Dodge Grand Caravan."

Are you serious? Those guys are you. The entire point of this first ad in this post is "As a tradeoff for yielding incremental amounts of my masculinity in service of a long-term relationship, I ain't driving no minivan."

Announcer: "For some reason, having a minivan that happens to have the 2009 dependability award from JD Power and Associates isn't manly enough."

Yeah, I bet they see that and they think you're the kind of guy who orders the low-cal plate. Or carries his wife's lip balm. Fag.

Announcer: "Think about that for a second. Filling a car with five of your offspring isn't manly enough?"

Fuck that! Squeeze the kids into the trunk of the Dodge Charger. That's a real man's car! Unless we've decided that we want to sell you on a different model. Forget the Charger! Buy a Grand Caravan and prove your virility!

Here's an interesting tidbit. According to Road & Travel Magazine, "women purchase more than 50% of all new vehicles, 48% of all used vehicles, [and] influence 80% of all sales." Is that the kind of demographic you want to be completely ignoring, Dodge? Especially when it comes to selling a minivan, a family car, a car that a woman is almost certainly having a big say in deciding to purchase? You're going to sell it as "a good place to stash the fruit of your loins, the better to look virile in front of other men"? And then your other ads not only ignore women as purchasers, but actively mock men who dare to participate in anything you deem "too feminine." It's like this campaign fell through a wormhole from 1957, when women were expected to live in the kitchen and the only commercials targeted at them were for ovens and aluminum foil. With that in mind, here are some possible slogans Dodge may want to use going forward to address some of their marketing toward women without sacrificing their core message:

"Dodge: No girls allowed"

"Dodge: Bake me a pie"

"Dodge: I work hard all day to put food on that table"

"Dodge: Shut your whore mouth"

"Dodge: I'm going to the bar and dinner had better be ready when I get back"

Super Bored Awards III

2010-02-08T21:15:00.014-06:00

I think it's finally time to just come out and say it: Super Bowl ads have jumped the shark. Whether it's the economy, a general dearth of creativity, the pressure of wanting to clear a higher bar every year, or whatever else, I don't know - but the time when the game was really a showcase for new marketing has come and gone. Maybe in the early 1990s, when the Super Bowl was routinely a shitty game, it might have been reasonable to say "I watch the game for the ads!" or "The ads are the best part of the game!" Lately? If you like football, the game has regularly been better than the ads, and if you don't like football, you've probably been really, really upset at wasting all that time. If anything, people have talked themselves into still liking the ads only because they think they're supposed to. If the majority of these ads were dumped during a rerun of "Two and a Half Men," no one would even blink.

With that little rant out of the way, let's get on with it: the best, and mostly worst, of Super Bowl XLIV.

The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Winner: Google

Windier: We said in the preview post that there's a reason we use "least shitty" here and not "best." But there's no getting around it: this ad is an absolute tour de force, for any number of reasons. The biggest of those is this: we've all seen the awful Bing "search overload" ads that treat the end-user like a complete moron. Recently, noted terrible ad maker KGB has gotten in on the act, claiming that "KGB is a better way to answer any question." They also ran an ad during the Super Bowl suggesting that KGB can tell you how to say "I surrender" in Japanese faster than a web search. I could point out that the very first Google hit is the correct answer and that the odds of KGB texting you back faster than that are approximately nil, or that KGB is probably just using Google on their end anyway... but this isn't about KGB. The point is that in one fell swoop, Google has demolished both the Bing and KGB ads.

Knitwear: Agreed. The Google ad clearly demonstrates how the average Internet user would use a search engine. This includes realistic errors (such as misspelling "Louvre"), as well as the immediate presentation of the obvious answer ("You're very cute") to a clearly phrased request ("translate tu es très mignon"), rather than forcing you to comb through a list of links to dictionaries or blog entries. Google trusts the consumer to use its product correctly, rather than likening you to a caricature of the average Internet user who needs his or her hand held by the benevolent Bing and KGB overlords. "You are clearly too stupid to be trusted with your own search. Give us 99 cents to handle the heavy lifting."

Windier: Google probably doesn't need to advertise - their name has entered the lexicon as the default verb to indicate a web search. They also don't need to call out their competitors - and they haven't; the destruction is entirely implicit. They've just run a classy, understated ad, which even in its bare-bones simplicity comes as close to the idea of ads being miniature movies as any of the loud, obnoxious spots that surround it. All that and it actually sells its product. No wonder I get chills every time I watch it.

Most Overproduced Ad
Winner: Emerald Nuts

Quivering: It was a category with any number of potential winners this year, but Most Overproduced had to go to Emerald Nuts' frenzied, panicked spot. Not only are the human dolphin show visuals nonsensical and upsetting, but so is the branding in the commercial itself. Emerald Nuts and Pop Secret? I guess. Don't really see the point of combining those two distinct brands into one commercial, except maybe to save money. Those products are hardly what economists would call perfect complements.

But the real tragedy is the offensive-on-every-possible-level tagline "AWESOME+AWESOME=AWESOMER." This is obviously stupid. But it's also LAZY. All you can say about combining nuts and popcorn is that it's some degree of "awesome"? How horrifyingly uninteresting.

Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Winner: Focus on the Family

Windier: Remember how controversial this ad was supposed to be? Yeah. After seeing the actual spot, I feel like Focus on the Family would have come out just as well by backing out of the game - they'd still have gotten their publicity in the lead-up, and they wouldn't have had to spend three million dollars to air an ad about... well, what is this ad about? Tim Tebow's mom explains that her pregnancy was hard (okay) and that she still worries about her son's health (okay) and that her family needs to be tough (whatever). And then she gets "tackled" by Tim in a really bad CGI scene that must have cost at least half of this ad's $20 budget. And... that's pretty much the entire thing!

Yes, I guess you could argue that Focus on the Family played it safe. They made no mention of the fact that they are - as their website says - "a global Christian ministry that helps build thriving marriages that reflect God’s design, and equips parents to raise their children according to morals and values grounded in biblical principles." They certainly didn't use Tebow's story to pitch a pro-life stance as everyone expected (aside from the "Celebrate life" tagline at the end), although they've done so elsewhere. They must have figured this wasn't the right forum - though I might argue that if you're not willing to promote your values in an ad, but rather slow-play it to try and trick people who don't already know what you are into visiting your website, that's a pretty weak cop-out. What if this were an ad for Oreos? "Hi, I'm Tim Tebow's mom. You know, when he was a kid, he loved Oreos. These days, we could all use more Oreos in our lives. Oh, you haven't heard of Oreos? To find out what they are, visit Oreos.com." Really, you were too afraid to just tell us? Feh. All that hand-wringing over nothing.

Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Winner: Bridgestone

Quivering: An unfunny amalgam of an old Jack Benny joke and any Henny Youngman joke. Bridgestone spent three million dollars on half-a-century-old humor. Now that's thumbing your nose at the recession. It's also not selling tires.

Flimsiest Pretense Award
Winner: Motorola

Windier: It would have been easy to give this to GoDaddy.com for the third year in a row. At least Megan Fox is legitimately hot; Danica Patrick's credentials in that department are questionable at best. Still, this commercial is particularly weak in justifying itself. There's no reason to have Fox in a bathtub other than that it's appealing; the copy certainly makes no attempt to put it in some form of context (and frankly the writing is just awful and hard to even follow). But it's what comes afterward that really puts the icing on the cake: the second post-tub scene is a mother banging on her son's bedroom door and demanding, "Timmy, what are you doing?" Really, Motorola? That's what you're doing with your Super Bowl ad - masturbation jokes? Way to class up the joint.

The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Winner: Boost Mobile

Quivering: Kind of a weird one, because it's not really the 25th anniversary of the 1985 Bears, but rather the 24th (they won the Super Bowl in January of 1986). So this basically came out a year too early. And also, the Bears were not even in playoff contention this season. So this comes out of nowhere. Since Walter Payton isn't around to be a part of the commercial, you get a host of B-listers in this one, all deserving of the Mencia Book Prize. The most famous is either the former punky QB Jim McMahon, or perennial attention whore Mike Ditka (who just started his own line of wines!).

Also, be warned: do not "go online to find the rest of (their) jam." It's just more half-rhymes, and more old white man in a cheetah print thong than you care to see. I challenge anyone to remember that this commercial was for a cell phone company.

SkyMall Championship Trophy
Winner: The United States Census Bureau

Windier: To say that this ad - directed by Christopher Guest, by the way - features the weirdest attempt to sell a product doesn't even get at the root of the problem. I'm not even sure you could say that this ad is selling a product. The Census isn't a product, after all - the idea, I guess, is that people need to be encouraged to fill out their census forms. So, with that said... how in God's name does this ad do that? If you go on to YouTube, there is a wealth of related content, which probably explains the full concept if you actually bother to watch all of it (I watched about a minute and then got bored). But not everyone is going to check out your ancillary content on YouTube. The premise needed to be distilled down into a 30-second spot for mass consumption, and this ad does not do that. It features characters we don't know or care about (and makes no attempt to explain them), dialogue that's so vague it's virtually nonsensical, and one of the worst integrations of a brand name into an otherwise unrelated script that I've ever seen. John McCain (on his Twitter feed) called the ad a waste of money... and he's right. Not because the Census has no business advertising during the Super Bowl, but because the Census has no business making a bizarre, meaningless ad that almost fails to get even the bare minimum of its point across. You're not Bud Light, Census Bureau. If anyone should be making a straight-faced, non-hilarious ad, it's you. Instead, we got this mess.

Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2010
Winner: eTrade

Quivering: eTrade - it's been a long time comin'. You've been annoying us with these cheaply edited voiced-over babies for years, and it's high time you get recognized for it. Consider this a kind of career accomplishment for all the torture you've unleashed upon the innocent American viewing public. This award is kind of like Martin Scorsese's Oscar for The Departed, except that we're trying to tell you that we hate you.

I've been wondering - what is it that's so darned funny about babies cheating on their baby girlfriends and lying about it? Ahh, right - nothing. And what is it about jealousy-fueled baby cat fights and references to infant "milk addiction" that makes me want to sign up for an online stock trading account? Hmm... oh yeah, I didn't do that, because I have a brain. There have been many head-scratching installments to this campaign, but the sheer shock factor in this one really has me wondering how this could possibly appeal to the practical-minded investor.

Oh, and eTrade? Now that you've won, please let these babies grow up and stop the campaign.

2010 Super Bored Awards Preview

2010-02-04T00:28:00.005-06:00

The Super Bowl is more than just the NFL championship. It's the one time of year where people get together and pretend, for a few hours at least, that they don't hate advertising. And for deep-pocketed advertisers, it's a great chance to waste a reported $2.5 to $2.8 million dollars on a commercial -- that's as much as $93,000 a second. Giddy-up!

In keeping with tradition, we present to you our preview of our Super Bored Awards (to be posted sometime early next week), where we recognize the worst (and the slightly less horrible) commercials set to air during Sunday's Super Bowl. And since it would be ridiculous to view these commercials as marketing per se, and in the absence of actual data, we'll review them for what they are: half-a-minute long, branded mini movies that marketing narcissists create to feel a little bit better about themselves. Here are the categories and the projected winners (thanks to AdAge for posting this great list of Super Bowl ad buys):

Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad

Explanation: The day we say a three million dollar, thirty second video deserves to be voted "Best Ad" is the day we shut down this blog. That's why we prefer "Least Shitty."

Prediction: A few possibilities: Coca-Cola is doing something with The Simpsons. That might actually be funny. Universal Studios will be advertising its new Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park land, and that might be interesting (but maybe that's just my interest in theme parks.) Also, CareerBuilder, last year's winner of Worst Ad here on the site, is doing a user-submitted commercial contest, where you can vote on your favorite of three ads. This is different from Doritos' contest, because winners were selected based on their scripts, and then the ads were produced professionally. One of the ads is all right, another is kind of gross, and the third is childishly disgusting. If the Fairy ad wins, I might vote for that just because, why reward an ad agency for a mediocre effort when some random guy can do just as mediocre a job?

Most Overproduced Ad

Explanation: When you're talking about $3 million just to get a commercial on the air, the commercial itself better be good. Unfortunately most marketing execs seem to think "good" means "costs a ton of money." And that's how we end up with so many manic, over-produced pieces of crap. Oh, how to pick just one.

Prediction: Here's the Honda spot description:

Ad's focus will be on the launch of an entirely new model, the Accord Crosstour, a wagon-sedan crossover. And an animated squirrel. And Kool & the Gang's "Funky Stuff."

You don't suppose it will be a dancing animated squirrel, do you?

Worst Use of "Humor" Award

Explanation: So many Super Bowl ads try to be funny. It's fairly subjective as to whether you think they succeed or not. As we've said before, commercials make for poor entertainment, so we think we'll have a tough choice to make again this year.

Prediction: Boost Mobile. We've seen their horrible recent efforts, and their Super Bowl spot will be a remake of the 1985 Chicago Bears "Super Bowl Shuffle." Why does that need to be remade? Isn't the original's kitsch value alone funny enough? Not only does it sound painful, but it's wildly unoriginal. (Also, odd timing. Next year would have been the 25th anniversary. Why now?)

The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities

Explanation: Who the hell is Carlos Mencia, and why did we name this award after him? Oh, that's right, he was some guy in a Bud Light spot 3 years ago. Well, I guess that just goes to show you that when you spend money on non-name-brand celebs, you're not getting your money's worth.

Prediction: GoDaddy.com will be back with Danica Patrick a-fucking-gain. She was a bit of phenomenon on the Indy racing scene a few years ago, but at this point she has to be considered B-list. Come on, tell me she's still nationally famous outside of these commercials. There may be other B-listers in ads this year, but we're just so tired of seeing the same "let's pretend she's hot!" premise in ad after depressing ad.

And since this is a Book Prize, this year's winner will receive a signed copy of the biography of Carlos Mencia. It's one of Carlos Mencia's favorites.

Flimsiest Pretense Award

Explanation: In the simplest terms, this award goes to the commercial with the least appropriate use of sex. We can only hope there won't be any inter-species action this year.

Prediction: We'll just have to go with GoDaddy.com again, because none of the other descriptions really indicate anything about possible sex scenes. Maybe advertisers just wanted to tone it down this year since Tim Tebow's mom is going to be watching.

Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award

Explanation: Remember SalesGenie? They had their CEO write their ads and then used animation that looked like it was done in Microsoft Paint. That's the kind of effort that wins this award.

Prediction: Doritos is, for the second consecutive year, doing their "Crash the Super Bowl" thing, where people can submit their own Doritos ads and the winner gets the Super Bowl air time. Last year's winners won a lot of "Best Ad" polls (although we didn't care for it), and even got on the Tonight Show. That certainly says something about the professional ad agencies.

SkyMall Championship Trophy

Explanation: This award does need a bit of explanation. SkyMall sells weird shit, but it's the weird way they choose to sell their shit, and their eager, misplaced enthusiasm, that really gets us. So this award goes to the ad that best exemplifies the notion of selling a product in a way it just should not be sold.

Prediction: Here's the Snickers spot's description:

Actors Betty White and Abe Vigoda will appear in a spot that reminds viewers that Snickers helps allay food cravings.

This could easily qualify for the Carlos Mencia Book Prize, but it sounds so outlandish that we might as well predict it to land here. Also, note to Snickers -- maybe the reason you help allay food cravings is that you are food. Don't kid yourselves, you're not a diet pill here.

The GoDaddy.com/SalesGenie.com/Bud Light/Miller Lite/Emerald Nuts Award for Worst Superbowl Ad

Explanation: What commercial will join the vaunted ranks of CareerBuilder (2009's winner) and SoBe Lifewater (2008)? This one's always a toss-up, but we'll be sure to post another poll to get everyone's opinion on which ad truly stood out.

Prediction: If you haven't already heard about Focus on the Family's spot with Tim Tebow, you can read about it here. We could give this award to just another unwatchable corporate offering, but I think anytime you manage to piss off half the population, you're airing an historically bad ad.