Four years ago, the Giants and Patriots met in the Super Bowl, and we published our first Super Bored Awards. This year, the Giants and Patriots met in the Super Bowl again, and here we are with the fifth installment of our yearly look at the worst of the Super Bowl ads. It was sort of a dull year for Super Bowl ads, but I feel like I say that every year, so let's just dispense with the pleasantries. Even if this year's crop of ads wasn't thrillicious, it sure didn't leave us wanting.
The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Winner: Pepsi Max
Quivering: Well, we named this award "Least Shitty Ad" for a reason. And this year, perhaps more than ever, it was a real struggle to find an ad we didn't hate. Pepsi has had quite a few of these Pepsi/Coke delivery guy ads (and they've used "Your Cheating Heart" before, too). It's not a bad idea - at least it has a product-based message. This particular version speaks to product benefits as well as product differentiation (lots of Pepsi taste, no calories, better than Coke Zero). The ending is relatively funny - the cameo with Regis is a little over the top, but given the fact that this is the Super Bowl, you have to expect something like that. Overall, it's a fine effort. The Camry Effect commercial was well done, but not quite believable, and the brown M&M commercial was okay, but still goofy (and we're just not fans of that whole M&Ms as living creatures concept). Overall, Pepsi Max edged out the weak competition to win Least Shitty Ad - but don't feel too good for PepsiCo until you read all the way to the end.
Most Overproduced Ad
Winner: Chevrolet
Windier: In the run-up to the Super Bowl, Ford got pissed and demanded that NBC and/or GM pull this ad, though it obviously didn't happen. You can see why they might have been upset. You can also see what makes this ad overproduced. Look at how much must have been spent on set design. And to what end? The commercial really says nothing about Chevy trucks. I know they describe themselves as "the most dependable and longest-lasting" but anyone can toss out adjectives like that, especially when it depends on what standard you're applying (in its beef, Ford claimed that it had more trucks with 250,000+ miles on them still on the road than any other automaker). It basically comes down to Chevy calling its trucks apocalypse-proof (a silly, unsupportable assertion) and taking a cheap shot at Ford. Was that really worth the effort?
Also, where are the wives/children? Or is there just something else going on here that I don't really want to know about? "Where's Dave? He knew we needed six guys for the ideal post-apocalyptic circle-jerk! Man, now I'm going to have to stand all funny."
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Winner: TaxACT
Quivering: Around 30 years ago, a young Will Shortz (well before he was crossword editor at the New York Times) submitted a puzzle he had constructed to the NYT editor at the time, a stodgy, mustachioed relic named Eugene T. Maleska. Shortz's crossword was rejected because it had the word "belly button" in the grid. Maleska felt that people doing the crossword puzzle while sipping their morning coffee would find the mental image of a belly button to be objectionable. Well, times have changed and now the navel plays a much more agreeable role in our society. But do you know what doesn't play an agreeable role in our society? Urine. Urine isn't fun to think about at any time. Which is why TaxACT's concept for this commercial is such a head-scratcher.
This commercial certainly looked cheap, but it was its crude toilet humor that sealed its selection for clumsiest execution. I just can't believe that there wasn't a better idea for a commercial about a tax filing website. What people will remember about TaxACT, if they remember anything at all, will be "Oh yeah, the kid who peed in the pool." It won't be "free tax return" or "no restrictions, rebates or gimmicks", or "TaxACT is the best tax site." It'll just be "piss." Please tell me how that's going to help anyone.
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Winner: Acura
Windier: Several years ago, my (now infrequent) co-author Quivering wrote one of my favorite posts on this site, about maybe the worst ad we've ever covered: the Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates laugh-a-minute extravaganza for Microsoft. A decade removed from his heyday, Seinfeld was excruciatingly unfunny in the ad, leading me to write the following in the comments:
"I can't decide whether Seinfeld himself has become impossibly unfunny over the last ten years... or whether it was the brilliant, brilliant minds at CPB who wrote the awful Seinfeld-style ersatz comedy in this ad that makes him sound like a terrible parody version of himself."
Well, having seen Seinfeld in this year's Acura ad, I think we have our answer, and for once, Crispin Porter & Bogusky aren't to blame. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Seinfeld wrote this commercial himself. But there's something extremely sad about watching him try to relive past glories with graying hair and a delivery that simply lacks the pop it had when he was doing a pretty good series of American Express commercials in the late 90s. Also, when an ad has "web extras," that's almost never a good sign.
Why, just look at all the hilarious quips that had to be cut - CUT! - from the final product! I'm pretty sure Seinfeld's laugh at the end of that video is one of the few this spot earned from anyone, anywhere. You have to do more than trot out ancient pop culture references to be funny - just ask Matthew Broderick and Honda. The cherry on top of this bowl of shit masquerading as a sundae, however, is the sudden appearance of Jay Leno, a man who has actually gone longer since last being funny than Seinfeld himself has. Why is he there, anyway? I know he's a car buff, but does anyone care about that? If Seinfeld was going to echo the "Newman!" line, wouldn't it have been at least as funny to have Wayne Knight show up? I'm pretty sure he would have come more cheaply than Leno.
All right, enough about this garbage. Ah, one more.
Frankly, Seinfeld probably did come up with most/all of this material himself. And it's terrible. The best part is that NO ONE IN THE COMMERCIAL THINKS HE'S FUNNY, and he's trying to impress them. Meanwhile, I'm sitting at home, getting more and more tired of him. Money well spent, Acura. I guess when you're selling a car that doesn't really exist yet, there's only so much you can do.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Winner: TeleFlora
Quivering: The reason this goes to Teleflora, and not Fiat (which basically ran the same ad), is that Fiat at least had a modicum of irony (at the very end). Teleflora's commercial is just a balls-to-the-wall fuckfest. "Give and you shall receive," "Happy Valentine's night," images of lipstick application and stilettos - this is the commercial equivalent of a porno that starts with a pizza delivery guy knocking at the door. Teleflora's subtlety reminded me of this recent South Park. Even within the context of Super Bowl ads, Teleflora makes GoDaddy commercials look like Bronte novels. And also? Everyone knows that diamonds are the only surefire way to get that blow job.
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Winner: Skechers
Windier: There were a lot of potential candidates here, really - Century 21's use of Donald Trump, Apolo Ohno and Deion Sanders made for another good one - but I couldn't turn down Skechers solely for how gratuitous, pointless and just plain lame theirs was. Mark Cuban, really? That was your best idea for a coda? And "What do you mean you want a new contract?" is a crushingly unfunny joke. Having the chubby dog turn out to be owned by an actual athlete would have been more clever, though I guess most athletes already have shoe deals with companies whose athletic shoe brands are slightly more valuable than Skechers'. Then, of course, there's the idea that Skechers is comparing its customers to tubby bulldogs... but then we're no longer talking about pointless semi-celebrity cameos.
The Bad Idea Jeans Award for Most Epic Miscalculation
Winner: Bud Light
Knitwear: While this is nowhere near the level of the ad we created this award for (last year's Groupon disaster), it is kind of a bummer that Bud Light is championing a great cause like adopting a rescue dog by implying that the best thing to do with a free, mangy orphan puppy is to turn it into your personal beer slave, Manchurian Candidate-style. I know this ad is supposed to seem fun, but I just feel sad for the dog. He's been so heavily conditioned that he can't even tell the difference between someone calling "Here, Wego!" and someone just yelling out "Here we go," forcing him to roll in a keg at least twice his size just to accommodate the latest round of partygoers. Talk about a dog that could stand to be rescued!
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Winner: Toyota
Quivering: The Skymall Trophy is all about the weirdest attempt to sell a product. Toyota just blew everyone out of the water to take the crown this year. This commercial makes no sense, on any level. We learn not one thing about this "reinvented" Camry. Not one thing. After they show the car, the next 26 seconds are just nonsensical reinventions that A) are not funny (which was clearly the goal of this commercial) and B) have nothing to do with marketing an automobile. Here are just a few thoughts on the "reinvented" products Toyota made up:
* How is a baby that's also a time machine helpful (or funny)?
* The reinvented DMV is just a regular DMV, even staffed by surly, unhelpful federal employees - the only difference is that it's stocked with various time-wasting attractions. Shouldn't a truly reinvented DMV be one that is so efficient you could just walk in and walk right back out (without having to spend time on a mini golf course or at a petting zoo)? Or how about just putting the whole DMV online?
* Reinvented rain that makes you thin just has too many problems to enumerate.
Congratulations, Toyota, on making a commercial that is unfunny, painfully bizarre, and unrelated to your product. Hey, maybe you can start pitching some of those reinvented products to the SkyMall catalog - it might just be a perfect fit.
Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2012
Winner: Pepsi
Windier: If not for Ben Kingsley's appearance in The Love Guru, Elton John would have provided us with the most embarrassing acting role by someone knighted by the Queen of England. But it's not really his fault, aside from accepting the part, since this ad was clearly doomed from the start. What a mishmosh. Elton vamping, a bizarre use of the not-at-all-dated "Hot in Herre," a thoroughly pointless Halle Berry cameo (seriously, why is she even there), an excruciatingly unlistenable dance remix of "Respect" from some woman who won "The X Factor" last year, the nonsense premise of a monarchy based on Pepsi rationing, what seems like a weak homage to Apple's 1984 ad... this isn't an ad, it's like the physical manifestation of one of the clubs described by Stefon.
The icing on the cake is the Flavor Flav cameo that literally has nothing to do with anything. If Flavor Flav had been the first act in the ad, maybe his presence down there would make some sense. Instead it comes completely out of nowhere and clearly signifies Pepsi going for the cheapest laugh there is. (That's right - I hereby declare that "the pointless, otherwise joke-free presence of a goofy B-list celebrity" is a cheaper laugh than "the nut shot.") It's lame, it evidences no thought on the part of the people who wrote this ad, and most importantly, it isn't funny in spite of the fact that it's clearly supposed to be. I would rather hang out with the Coke polar bears and risk getting mauled than watch this shit again. Congratulations, Pepsi: your insane fever dream is the worst ad of the 2012 Super Bowl.
Showing posts with label Pepsi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pepsi. Show all posts
Monday, February 6, 2012
Monday, February 2, 2009
Super Bored Awards II
In the mid-eighties, the marketing world pulled one of the great snow jobs on the American television audience. They somehow convinced people not to change the channel during Super Bowl commercial breaks. They told us that commercials aren't just 30-second sales pitches, but entertainment, something to look forward to, the "best" "part" "of" the "Super Bowl." It's kind of like how financial services companies somehow convinced us over the last 15 years that our 401(k)s were totally safe, and that the money was not at all entirely fictional and tied up in worthless housing debt. I guess Americans are just suckers for big, faceless corporate bullshit.
Super Bowl commercials, as you should know by now, are poor entertainment. If you watched the Super Bowl for the ads and not for the game, I'm sorry. You should have watched a movie, read a book, spent time with your loved ones - anything else, really. And not only were the commercials not entertaining, many of them didn't even succeed in their actual job of, y'know, selling something. Here, then, are our picks for the worst commercials, by category, of Super Bowl XLIII.
The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Winner: Coca-Cola
Windier: All right, it's questionable how well this ad really "sells" Coke. But there are only a few companies that can actually get away with making ads almost wholly off-message, and Coke is one of them. It's a nicely-designed ad, the music works well, and the butterflies faking the Coke bottle is priceless. And if just one Coke drinker is educated about the serious risks of insect-related beverage theft, it was worth the millions the ad cost to create and broadcast.
Most Overproduced Ad
Winner: SoBe Life Water
Quivering: Oh, SoBe. So predictable. You won this coveted award last year, and you did not disappoint in 2009.
If you think you know what's going on in this commercial, you are probably either seven years old, really high, or the person who directed the ad. It starts out with the stale joke of football players doing ballet, then clumsily segues into poorly-animated lizards, then shoehorns in characters from the upcoming Dreamworks movie Monsters vs. Aliens, and then - okay, I have no idea what happens after that, because I was on the floor twitching by then. It's stimulation overload. And totally painful and creepy. Maybe the whole thing paid off if you wore 3-D glasses (for the version that aired last night). Somehow, I doubt that.
(Note from Windier: It did not. And my eyes were on fire by the time it was over.)
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Winner: Vizio
Windier: Man, Vizio TVs must be inexpensive. How else can you explain an ad like this, which screams "We are absolutely blowing our entire budget on the cost of airing the ad, so we need to be able to make it for $7.50 and a box of cookies"? The whole thing looks like it was created in PowerPoint for a shareholders' meeting. Throw in a clunky joke involving the economy and the actual specs of the TV zooming past at light speed and you've got yourself an ad that manages to live up to both aspects of this award. And who chose that moving background? I think I'm going to be sick.
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Winner: eTrade
Quivering: This one really chaps my hide. They manipulate you with babies, and then use goofy humor to make light of the economic plight that they helped create.
Baby: "You know, it's times like these that eTrade can really help you replan your investments."
Oh, yeah, sure. Just go open an online trading account and jump right into the stock market! Hey, just because professionals with years of experience and Ivy League MBAs lost a third or more of their wealth in one year doesn't mean you won't come up a big winner! And you may lose a few bucks now and then, or possibly your retirement, savings and house. But so what?! At least those babies were funny, right? (As we all know, tired references to songs that stopped being popular 20 years ago = comedy gold.)
Dishonorable Mention: Doritos
We would be remiss if we did not call out Doritos for some really bad commercials this year. This one in particular was part of the consumer-generated "Crash the Super Bowl" campaign, where people sent in their own Doritos ads. I wish I could say that regular people were better at making ads than many of the hacks who do it for a living, but, well, maybe not. This commercial combines hamfisted acting with cheap crotch-hitting jokes. I'll bet you anything that better ads were submitted, but the Doritos people just wouldn't know a good TV spot if it were hurled at their junk from point-blank range. Hey, I just got an idea for a follow-up commercial!
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Winner: Cash4Gold
Windier: I'll admit that this nonsense is an improvement over the normal Cash4Gold ads, which mostly feature elderly women with facial expressions suggesting that a positive testimonial is the only thing that will get the gun pointed away from their heads. On the other hand, are we sure they aren't doing mostly the same thing here? Hammer and Ed McMahon have both had significant financial troubles in recent years, and while they might be satisfied customers as a result, I'm guessing Cash4Gold was able to use this fact to hire them. Why else would anyone recognizable be caught dead in a Cash4Gold ad? (Negative bonus points for forcing Ed McMahon to deliver a bastardized version of his most famous catchphrase.)
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Winner: GoDaddy.com
Quivering: Danica Patrick wasn't hot last year. And a year of not winning the Indy 500 didn't make her suddenly hotter (or a better actress). The internet domain name purveyor won this award in 2008, and we predicted it again this year based on the spot-on Ad Age description. Let's just say there wasn't an easier bet to be had on Sunday.
Let me try to capture the strategy behind this commercial:
Step 1: Objectify women;
Step 2: Make men look like primates;
Step 3: Use a sports celebrity completely out of context;
Step 4: Sell internet domain names.
Rock solid, don't you think?
Dishonorable Mention: Castrol
Inter-species makeout session alert! Man, I can't believe how hilarious that commercial is, or how much it makes me want to buy motor oil. Right after I finish vomiting.
(Side note to Castrol: Chimpanzees are not monkeys. They are apes.)
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Winner: Pepsi
Quivering: Let me preface this by saying: I get it. I get what Pepsi is doing - the whole "we're appealing to the young, hip demographic before they get too addicted to Coke products" thing. The new billboard/print campaign is interesting, and the logo looks a lot like Obama's campaign logo - I respect what they're trying to do.
But this ad is just an odd way to sell your product, and that's what the SkyMall award is for. First of all, the implication that will.i.am is the heir to Bob Dylan is a little odd. I know he had the Obama song, but let's not rush into this. Let him record a few more seminal albums before we refer to him as the voice of this generation or whatever. Also, it takes a damn long time to get to the point of this ad, or before Pepsi is mentioned. Not sure how a minute-long hodgepodge of random pop culture symbols (VWs, Gumby, Shrek, etc.) sells me on a can of cola, either.
(Addendum from Windier: If the guy whose group was responsible for "My Humps" is the next Dylan, then watch this: "Dip dop a ringy dingy doo!" I'm the next Charles Dickens, motherfuckers.)
Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2008
Winner: CareerBuilder
Windier: What makes this ad the worst of its Super Bowl class? What gives it the enduring shittiness to ring through the ages as the most painful example of advertising from a night filled with painful examples of advertising? Why do I hate it so, so much?
First of all, it uses the by-now hackneyed "list" premise, which should have been permanently retired after the classic FedEx spot from a few years ago. More importantly, it combines the list idea with droning, tiresome, and eventually quite painful repetition. How much footage did they even have to shoot for that minute-long ad, 25 seconds' worth? You say economical, I say really fucking annoying. It doesn't help that none of those things are more than vaguely funny. Woman yelling? Not funny. Guy getting called a dummy? Certainly not laugh-out-loud funny, but perhaps slightly amusing. Woman riding a seal? Not funny. (By the way, if you can't make a woman riding a seal look convincing, don't fucking use it in your ad. Do you have any idea how many people are going to see this thing, most of them in high-definition?) Fat guy crying? Not funny. Cheap-looking koala puppet getting punched? Not funny. Gross bald guy in a Speedo? Guess. So if none of those things is funny once, why should any of them be funny by the third or fourth time I'm forced to sit through them? Answer: they're not.
Furthermore, the whole thing is just counterproductive. I don't see how ugly half-naked people sell things, whether used to imply the consequences of not using the item/service being promoted or not. (One of these years I'm going to save up a couple million bucks and buy an ad that's just 30 seconds of a hairy guy in a thong, and at the end he holds up a sign that says "TheAdWizards.com" for four seconds. How many hits do you think this site would get the next day? Negative a jillion?) But even beyond that, if I weren't watching the whole ad because I write for this blog and thus felt compelled to do so, I would have changed the channel before the 30-second mark (not even seeing the Speedo guy), as any sane person should have. And that's 30 whole seconds before we actually find out what company the ad was promoting. Sure, it might have been CareerBuilder, but it might also have been HotJobs, or SimplyHired, or Monster. (Monster actually ran an ad during the game, and it was half as long, to the point, and really not annoying in any way.)
Congratulations, CareerBuilder. When you make an ad this unwatchable and bury your company name in the last three seconds, it's probably time. To hire a new fucking agency.
Super Bowl commercials, as you should know by now, are poor entertainment. If you watched the Super Bowl for the ads and not for the game, I'm sorry. You should have watched a movie, read a book, spent time with your loved ones - anything else, really. And not only were the commercials not entertaining, many of them didn't even succeed in their actual job of, y'know, selling something. Here, then, are our picks for the worst commercials, by category, of Super Bowl XLIII.
The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Winner: Coca-Cola
Windier: All right, it's questionable how well this ad really "sells" Coke. But there are only a few companies that can actually get away with making ads almost wholly off-message, and Coke is one of them. It's a nicely-designed ad, the music works well, and the butterflies faking the Coke bottle is priceless. And if just one Coke drinker is educated about the serious risks of insect-related beverage theft, it was worth the millions the ad cost to create and broadcast.
Most Overproduced Ad
Winner: SoBe Life Water
Quivering: Oh, SoBe. So predictable. You won this coveted award last year, and you did not disappoint in 2009.
If you think you know what's going on in this commercial, you are probably either seven years old, really high, or the person who directed the ad. It starts out with the stale joke of football players doing ballet, then clumsily segues into poorly-animated lizards, then shoehorns in characters from the upcoming Dreamworks movie Monsters vs. Aliens, and then - okay, I have no idea what happens after that, because I was on the floor twitching by then. It's stimulation overload. And totally painful and creepy. Maybe the whole thing paid off if you wore 3-D glasses (for the version that aired last night). Somehow, I doubt that.
(Note from Windier: It did not. And my eyes were on fire by the time it was over.)
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Winner: Vizio
Windier: Man, Vizio TVs must be inexpensive. How else can you explain an ad like this, which screams "We are absolutely blowing our entire budget on the cost of airing the ad, so we need to be able to make it for $7.50 and a box of cookies"? The whole thing looks like it was created in PowerPoint for a shareholders' meeting. Throw in a clunky joke involving the economy and the actual specs of the TV zooming past at light speed and you've got yourself an ad that manages to live up to both aspects of this award. And who chose that moving background? I think I'm going to be sick.
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Winner: eTrade
Quivering: This one really chaps my hide. They manipulate you with babies, and then use goofy humor to make light of the economic plight that they helped create.
Baby: "You know, it's times like these that eTrade can really help you replan your investments."
Oh, yeah, sure. Just go open an online trading account and jump right into the stock market! Hey, just because professionals with years of experience and Ivy League MBAs lost a third or more of their wealth in one year doesn't mean you won't come up a big winner! And you may lose a few bucks now and then, or possibly your retirement, savings and house. But so what?! At least those babies were funny, right? (As we all know, tired references to songs that stopped being popular 20 years ago = comedy gold.)
Dishonorable Mention: Doritos
We would be remiss if we did not call out Doritos for some really bad commercials this year. This one in particular was part of the consumer-generated "Crash the Super Bowl" campaign, where people sent in their own Doritos ads. I wish I could say that regular people were better at making ads than many of the hacks who do it for a living, but, well, maybe not. This commercial combines hamfisted acting with cheap crotch-hitting jokes. I'll bet you anything that better ads were submitted, but the Doritos people just wouldn't know a good TV spot if it were hurled at their junk from point-blank range. Hey, I just got an idea for a follow-up commercial!
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Winner: Cash4Gold
Windier: I'll admit that this nonsense is an improvement over the normal Cash4Gold ads, which mostly feature elderly women with facial expressions suggesting that a positive testimonial is the only thing that will get the gun pointed away from their heads. On the other hand, are we sure they aren't doing mostly the same thing here? Hammer and Ed McMahon have both had significant financial troubles in recent years, and while they might be satisfied customers as a result, I'm guessing Cash4Gold was able to use this fact to hire them. Why else would anyone recognizable be caught dead in a Cash4Gold ad? (Negative bonus points for forcing Ed McMahon to deliver a bastardized version of his most famous catchphrase.)
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Winner: GoDaddy.com
Quivering: Danica Patrick wasn't hot last year. And a year of not winning the Indy 500 didn't make her suddenly hotter (or a better actress). The internet domain name purveyor won this award in 2008, and we predicted it again this year based on the spot-on Ad Age description. Let's just say there wasn't an easier bet to be had on Sunday.
Let me try to capture the strategy behind this commercial:
Step 1: Objectify women;
Step 2: Make men look like primates;
Step 3: Use a sports celebrity completely out of context;
Step 4: Sell internet domain names.
Rock solid, don't you think?
Dishonorable Mention: Castrol
Inter-species makeout session alert! Man, I can't believe how hilarious that commercial is, or how much it makes me want to buy motor oil. Right after I finish vomiting.
(Side note to Castrol: Chimpanzees are not monkeys. They are apes.)
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Winner: Pepsi
Quivering: Let me preface this by saying: I get it. I get what Pepsi is doing - the whole "we're appealing to the young, hip demographic before they get too addicted to Coke products" thing. The new billboard/print campaign is interesting, and the logo looks a lot like Obama's campaign logo - I respect what they're trying to do.
But this ad is just an odd way to sell your product, and that's what the SkyMall award is for. First of all, the implication that will.i.am is the heir to Bob Dylan is a little odd. I know he had the Obama song, but let's not rush into this. Let him record a few more seminal albums before we refer to him as the voice of this generation or whatever. Also, it takes a damn long time to get to the point of this ad, or before Pepsi is mentioned. Not sure how a minute-long hodgepodge of random pop culture symbols (VWs, Gumby, Shrek, etc.) sells me on a can of cola, either.
(Addendum from Windier: If the guy whose group was responsible for "My Humps" is the next Dylan, then watch this: "Dip dop a ringy dingy doo!" I'm the next Charles Dickens, motherfuckers.)
Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2008
Winner: CareerBuilder
Windier: What makes this ad the worst of its Super Bowl class? What gives it the enduring shittiness to ring through the ages as the most painful example of advertising from a night filled with painful examples of advertising? Why do I hate it so, so much?
First of all, it uses the by-now hackneyed "list" premise, which should have been permanently retired after the classic FedEx spot from a few years ago. More importantly, it combines the list idea with droning, tiresome, and eventually quite painful repetition. How much footage did they even have to shoot for that minute-long ad, 25 seconds' worth? You say economical, I say really fucking annoying. It doesn't help that none of those things are more than vaguely funny. Woman yelling? Not funny. Guy getting called a dummy? Certainly not laugh-out-loud funny, but perhaps slightly amusing. Woman riding a seal? Not funny. (By the way, if you can't make a woman riding a seal look convincing, don't fucking use it in your ad. Do you have any idea how many people are going to see this thing, most of them in high-definition?) Fat guy crying? Not funny. Cheap-looking koala puppet getting punched? Not funny. Gross bald guy in a Speedo? Guess. So if none of those things is funny once, why should any of them be funny by the third or fourth time I'm forced to sit through them? Answer: they're not.
Furthermore, the whole thing is just counterproductive. I don't see how ugly half-naked people sell things, whether used to imply the consequences of not using the item/service being promoted or not. (One of these years I'm going to save up a couple million bucks and buy an ad that's just 30 seconds of a hairy guy in a thong, and at the end he holds up a sign that says "TheAdWizards.com" for four seconds. How many hits do you think this site would get the next day? Negative a jillion?) But even beyond that, if I weren't watching the whole ad because I write for this blog and thus felt compelled to do so, I would have changed the channel before the 30-second mark (not even seeing the Speedo guy), as any sane person should have. And that's 30 whole seconds before we actually find out what company the ad was promoting. Sure, it might have been CareerBuilder, but it might also have been HotJobs, or SimplyHired, or Monster. (Monster actually ran an ad during the game, and it was half as long, to the point, and really not annoying in any way.)
Congratulations, CareerBuilder. When you make an ad this unwatchable and bury your company name in the last three seconds, it's probably time. To hire a new fucking agency.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
The wind cries Pepsi
This one is a couple years old, but I stumbled upon it again while looking for another Pepsi ad and, well...
Jimi Hendrix was rated the #1 guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone. "Purple Haze" was ranked #17 on their list of the top 500 songs. And here's Pepsi, taking credit for his talent! "Thank God for Pepsi, or Jimi Hendrix would never have been a famous guitarist!" Are you fucking kidding me? This is made even worse by the fact that Hendrix is dead, and had been for roughly 35 years when this spot aired. At least if Hendrix were alive and had signed off on it, we could get the idea that he liked Pepsi and was willing to allow them to use his name. I assume that Pepsi probably get permission from the current representatives of Hendrix's legacy to use the name and music, but that's a poor substitute. I guess it could have been worse, though. Take a look at this script that Pepsi ultimately rejected for this ad campaign:
Sadly, the executives at Pepsi decided it was just a little too over the top.
Jimi Hendrix was rated the #1 guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone. "Purple Haze" was ranked #17 on their list of the top 500 songs. And here's Pepsi, taking credit for his talent! "Thank God for Pepsi, or Jimi Hendrix would never have been a famous guitarist!" Are you fucking kidding me? This is made even worse by the fact that Hendrix is dead, and had been for roughly 35 years when this spot aired. At least if Hendrix were alive and had signed off on it, we could get the idea that he liked Pepsi and was willing to allow them to use his name. I assume that Pepsi probably get permission from the current representatives of Hendrix's legacy to use the name and music, but that's a poor substitute. I guess it could have been worse, though. Take a look at this script that Pepsi ultimately rejected for this ad campaign:
[Setting: a village in 1770 Virginia. A young man in colonial dress approaches a tavern. On one side of the door is a Coke machine. The machine is surrounded by British soldiers in red uniforms that match Coke's colors. On the other side is a Pepsi machine, surrounded by colonists in blue, one of whom looks over at the young man. The man who looks over should be cast as a dead ringer for George Washington. The young man goes to the Pepsi machine and purchases one. After drinking, he looks up, clearly inspired.]
Young Man: We hold these truths to be self-evident... that all men are created equal!
[The other colonists chatter excitedly as the soldiers look over suspiciously. A subtitle appears on the screen identifying our young man as Thomas Jefferson.]
Voiceover: Declare the independence of a new generation... with Pepsi. It's the cola.
Sadly, the executives at Pepsi decided it was just a little too over the top.
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