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.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
I like ample cargo space and I cannot lie
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Super Bored Awards IV
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* 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.
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.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
What is this I don't even
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?
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?
Saturday, February 5, 2011
The P List
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Repeat offenders
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
2011 Super Bored Awards Preview
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.
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.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Spanish ply
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!"
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!"
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Today in things that don't ever happen
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.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Happy thoughts, happy thoughts
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.
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.
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