As usual, there were other ads from the Super Bowl that we easily could have mentioned, and just didn't quite have room for. That doesn't mean they're off the hook. Over the next few days, I've got a few additional "awards" to hand out.
The Chris Hansen "What are You Doing Here?" Award for Most Inappropriate Use of Underage Characters
And the award goes to... E*TRADE!
This is a fairly innocuous commercial - certainly by E*TRADE's low standards - but oh boy, then it gets to the end.
Dad: "I look at her, and I just wanna give her everything."
E*TRADE Baby: "Yeah, you know, 'everything' can cost upwards of [whistle]."
Dad: "I did not wanna think about that."
It really sucks the way stuff costs money and stuff.
E*TRADE Baby: "Relax, relax, relax - look at me, look at me. Three words, Dad: E*TRADE financial consultants."
Dad: "So I can just go talk to 'em?"
E*TRADE Baby: "Just walk right in and talk to 'em. Dude, those guys are pros. They'll hook you up with a solid plan... they'll-"
So far, so boring. Hey, the commercial's almost over! We're 21 seconds in! What could possibly ruin this?
E*TRADE Baby: "Wait, wait, wait a minute. Bobby? Bobby, what are you doing, man?"
Bobby: "I'm speed-dating!"
See, it's funny, because... um... there's a bunch of newborn girl infants lying prone in their bassinets, and this older boy infant is walking around... like... trying to hit on them? That's the... joke...
OH MY GOD THIS IS SO FUCKING DISGUSTING.
E*TRADE, what the fuck is wrong with you? I can maybe forgive babies watching animal mating videos, but you've already had an ad featuring a baby cheating on his baby girlfriend with a slutty, "milkaholic" baby, and now this shit. Given that the girl babies in this ad don't get to talk or move, and that this is happening in full view of one of their fathers, I'm going to go ahead and call this the worst one yet. How much lower can they even go? Anything worse than this I don't think you could even show on television. I'm no big fan of M.I.A. and I had no use for her flipping the bird during the halftime show, but how is that more offensive than E*TRADE implicitly discussing the sex life of babies year after year??? Time to step in, FCC.
Showing posts with label eTrade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eTrade. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
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.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Super Bored Awards III
I think it's finally time to just come out and say it: Super Bowl ads have jumped the shark. Whether it's the economy, a general dearth of creativity, the pressure of wanting to clear a higher bar every year, or whatever else, I don't know - but the time when the game was really a showcase for new marketing has come and gone. Maybe in the early 1990s, when the Super Bowl was routinely a shitty game, it might have been reasonable to say "I watch the game for the ads!" or "The ads are the best part of the game!" Lately? If you like football, the game has regularly been better than the ads, and if you don't like football, you've probably been really, really upset at wasting all that time. If anything, people have talked themselves into still liking the ads only because they think they're supposed to. If the majority of these ads were dumped during a rerun of "Two and a Half Men," no one would even blink.
With that little rant out of the way, let's get on with it: the best, and mostly worst, of Super Bowl XLIV.
The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Winner: Google
Windier: We said in the preview post that there's a reason we use "least shitty" here and not "best." But there's no getting around it: this ad is an absolute tour de force, for any number of reasons. The biggest of those is this: we've all seen the awful Bing "search overload" ads that treat the end-user like a complete moron. Recently, noted terrible ad maker KGB has gotten in on the act, claiming that "KGB is a better way to answer any question." They also ran an ad during the Super Bowl suggesting that KGB can tell you how to say "I surrender" in Japanese faster than a web search. I could point out that the very first Google hit is the correct answer and that the odds of KGB texting you back faster than that are approximately nil, or that KGB is probably just using Google on their end anyway... but this isn't about KGB. The point is that in one fell swoop, Google has demolished both the Bing and KGB ads.
Knitwear: Agreed. The Google ad clearly demonstrates how the average Internet user would use a search engine. This includes realistic errors (such as misspelling "Louvre"), as well as the immediate presentation of the obvious answer ("You're very cute") to a clearly phrased request ("translate tu es très mignon"), rather than forcing you to comb through a list of links to dictionaries or blog entries. Google trusts the consumer to use its product correctly, rather than likening you to a caricature of the average Internet user who needs his or her hand held by the benevolent Bing and KGB overlords. "You are clearly too stupid to be trusted with your own search. Give us 99 cents to handle the heavy lifting."
Windier: Google probably doesn't need to advertise - their name has entered the lexicon as the default verb to indicate a web search. They also don't need to call out their competitors - and they haven't; the destruction is entirely implicit. They've just run a classy, understated ad, which even in its bare-bones simplicity comes as close to the idea of ads being miniature movies as any of the loud, obnoxious spots that surround it. All that and it actually sells its product. No wonder I get chills every time I watch it.
Most Overproduced Ad
Winner: Emerald Nuts
Quivering: It was a category with any number of potential winners this year, but Most Overproduced had to go to Emerald Nuts' frenzied, panicked spot. Not only are the human dolphin show visuals nonsensical and upsetting, but so is the branding in the commercial itself. Emerald Nuts and Pop Secret? I guess. Don't really see the point of combining those two distinct brands into one commercial, except maybe to save money. Those products are hardly what economists would call perfect complements.
But the real tragedy is the offensive-on-every-possible-level tagline "AWESOME+AWESOME=AWESOMER." This is obviously stupid. But it's also LAZY. All you can say about combining nuts and popcorn is that it's some degree of "awesome"? How horrifyingly uninteresting.
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Winner: Focus on the Family
Windier: Remember how controversial this ad was supposed to be? Yeah. After seeing the actual spot, I feel like Focus on the Family would have come out just as well by backing out of the game - they'd still have gotten their publicity in the lead-up, and they wouldn't have had to spend three million dollars to air an ad about... well, what is this ad about? Tim Tebow's mom explains that her pregnancy was hard (okay) and that she still worries about her son's health (okay) and that her family needs to be tough (whatever). And then she gets "tackled" by Tim in a really bad CGI scene that must have cost at least half of this ad's $20 budget. And... that's pretty much the entire thing!
Yes, I guess you could argue that Focus on the Family played it safe. They made no mention of the fact that they are - as their website says - "a global Christian ministry that helps build thriving marriages that reflect God’s design, and equips parents to raise their children according to morals and values grounded in biblical principles." They certainly didn't use Tebow's story to pitch a pro-life stance as everyone expected (aside from the "Celebrate life" tagline at the end), although they've done so elsewhere. They must have figured this wasn't the right forum - though I might argue that if you're not willing to promote your values in an ad, but rather slow-play it to try and trick people who don't already know what you are into visiting your website, that's a pretty weak cop-out. What if this were an ad for Oreos? "Hi, I'm Tim Tebow's mom. You know, when he was a kid, he loved Oreos. These days, we could all use more Oreos in our lives. Oh, you haven't heard of Oreos? To find out what they are, visit Oreos.com." Really, you were too afraid to just tell us? Feh. All that hand-wringing over nothing.
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Winner: Bridgestone
Quivering: An unfunny amalgam of an old Jack Benny joke and any Henny Youngman joke. Bridgestone spent three million dollars on half-a-century-old humor. Now that's thumbing your nose at the recession. It's also not selling tires.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Winner: Motorola
Windier: It would have been easy to give this to GoDaddy.com for the third year in a row. At least Megan Fox is legitimately hot; Danica Patrick's credentials in that department are questionable at best. Still, this commercial is particularly weak in justifying itself. There's no reason to have Fox in a bathtub other than that it's appealing; the copy certainly makes no attempt to put it in some form of context (and frankly the writing is just awful and hard to even follow). But it's what comes afterward that really puts the icing on the cake: the second post-tub scene is a mother banging on her son's bedroom door and demanding, "Timmy, what are you doing?" Really, Motorola? That's what you're doing with your Super Bowl ad - masturbation jokes? Way to class up the joint.
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Winner: Boost Mobile
Quivering: Kind of a weird one, because it's not really the 25th anniversary of the 1985 Bears, but rather the 24th (they won the Super Bowl in January of 1986). So this basically came out a year too early. And also, the Bears were not even in playoff contention this season. So this comes out of nowhere. Since Walter Payton isn't around to be a part of the commercial, you get a host of B-listers in this one, all deserving of the Mencia Book Prize. The most famous is either the former punky QB Jim McMahon, or perennial attention whore Mike Ditka (who just started his own line of wines!).
Also, be warned: do not "go online to find the rest of (their) jam." It's just more half-rhymes, and more old white man in a cheetah print thong than you care to see. I challenge anyone to remember that this commercial was for a cell phone company.
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Winner: The United States Census Bureau
Windier: To say that this ad - directed by Christopher Guest, by the way - features the weirdest attempt to sell a product doesn't even get at the root of the problem. I'm not even sure you could say that this ad is selling a product. The Census isn't a product, after all - the idea, I guess, is that people need to be encouraged to fill out their census forms. So, with that said... how in God's name does this ad do that? If you go on to YouTube, there is a wealth of related content, which probably explains the full concept if you actually bother to watch all of it (I watched about a minute and then got bored). But not everyone is going to check out your ancillary content on YouTube. The premise needed to be distilled down into a 30-second spot for mass consumption, and this ad does not do that. It features characters we don't know or care about (and makes no attempt to explain them), dialogue that's so vague it's virtually nonsensical, and one of the worst integrations of a brand name into an otherwise unrelated script that I've ever seen. John McCain (on his Twitter feed) called the ad a waste of money... and he's right. Not because the Census has no business advertising during the Super Bowl, but because the Census has no business making a bizarre, meaningless ad that almost fails to get even the bare minimum of its point across. You're not Bud Light, Census Bureau. If anyone should be making a straight-faced, non-hilarious ad, it's you. Instead, we got this mess.
Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2010
Winner: eTrade
Quivering: eTrade - it's been a long time comin'. You've been annoying us with these cheaply edited voiced-over babies for years, and it's high time you get recognized for it. Consider this a kind of career accomplishment for all the torture you've unleashed upon the innocent American viewing public. This award is kind of like Martin Scorsese's Oscar for The Departed, except that we're trying to tell you that we hate you.
I've been wondering - what is it that's so darned funny about babies cheating on their baby girlfriends and lying about it? Ahh, right - nothing. And what is it about jealousy-fueled baby cat fights and references to infant "milk addiction" that makes me want to sign up for an online stock trading account? Hmm... oh yeah, I didn't do that, because I have a brain. There have been many head-scratching installments to this campaign, but the sheer shock factor in this one really has me wondering how this could possibly appeal to the practical-minded investor.
Oh, and eTrade? Now that you've won, please let these babies grow up and stop the campaign.
With that little rant out of the way, let's get on with it: the best, and mostly worst, of Super Bowl XLIV.
The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Winner: Google
Windier: We said in the preview post that there's a reason we use "least shitty" here and not "best." But there's no getting around it: this ad is an absolute tour de force, for any number of reasons. The biggest of those is this: we've all seen the awful Bing "search overload" ads that treat the end-user like a complete moron. Recently, noted terrible ad maker KGB has gotten in on the act, claiming that "KGB is a better way to answer any question." They also ran an ad during the Super Bowl suggesting that KGB can tell you how to say "I surrender" in Japanese faster than a web search. I could point out that the very first Google hit is the correct answer and that the odds of KGB texting you back faster than that are approximately nil, or that KGB is probably just using Google on their end anyway... but this isn't about KGB. The point is that in one fell swoop, Google has demolished both the Bing and KGB ads.
Knitwear: Agreed. The Google ad clearly demonstrates how the average Internet user would use a search engine. This includes realistic errors (such as misspelling "Louvre"), as well as the immediate presentation of the obvious answer ("You're very cute") to a clearly phrased request ("translate tu es très mignon"), rather than forcing you to comb through a list of links to dictionaries or blog entries. Google trusts the consumer to use its product correctly, rather than likening you to a caricature of the average Internet user who needs his or her hand held by the benevolent Bing and KGB overlords. "You are clearly too stupid to be trusted with your own search. Give us 99 cents to handle the heavy lifting."
Windier: Google probably doesn't need to advertise - their name has entered the lexicon as the default verb to indicate a web search. They also don't need to call out their competitors - and they haven't; the destruction is entirely implicit. They've just run a classy, understated ad, which even in its bare-bones simplicity comes as close to the idea of ads being miniature movies as any of the loud, obnoxious spots that surround it. All that and it actually sells its product. No wonder I get chills every time I watch it.
Most Overproduced Ad
Winner: Emerald Nuts
Quivering: It was a category with any number of potential winners this year, but Most Overproduced had to go to Emerald Nuts' frenzied, panicked spot. Not only are the human dolphin show visuals nonsensical and upsetting, but so is the branding in the commercial itself. Emerald Nuts and Pop Secret? I guess. Don't really see the point of combining those two distinct brands into one commercial, except maybe to save money. Those products are hardly what economists would call perfect complements.
But the real tragedy is the offensive-on-every-possible-level tagline "AWESOME+AWESOME=AWESOMER." This is obviously stupid. But it's also LAZY. All you can say about combining nuts and popcorn is that it's some degree of "awesome"? How horrifyingly uninteresting.
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Winner: Focus on the Family
Windier: Remember how controversial this ad was supposed to be? Yeah. After seeing the actual spot, I feel like Focus on the Family would have come out just as well by backing out of the game - they'd still have gotten their publicity in the lead-up, and they wouldn't have had to spend three million dollars to air an ad about... well, what is this ad about? Tim Tebow's mom explains that her pregnancy was hard (okay) and that she still worries about her son's health (okay) and that her family needs to be tough (whatever). And then she gets "tackled" by Tim in a really bad CGI scene that must have cost at least half of this ad's $20 budget. And... that's pretty much the entire thing!
Yes, I guess you could argue that Focus on the Family played it safe. They made no mention of the fact that they are - as their website says - "a global Christian ministry that helps build thriving marriages that reflect God’s design, and equips parents to raise their children according to morals and values grounded in biblical principles." They certainly didn't use Tebow's story to pitch a pro-life stance as everyone expected (aside from the "Celebrate life" tagline at the end), although they've done so elsewhere. They must have figured this wasn't the right forum - though I might argue that if you're not willing to promote your values in an ad, but rather slow-play it to try and trick people who don't already know what you are into visiting your website, that's a pretty weak cop-out. What if this were an ad for Oreos? "Hi, I'm Tim Tebow's mom. You know, when he was a kid, he loved Oreos. These days, we could all use more Oreos in our lives. Oh, you haven't heard of Oreos? To find out what they are, visit Oreos.com." Really, you were too afraid to just tell us? Feh. All that hand-wringing over nothing.
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Winner: Bridgestone
Quivering: An unfunny amalgam of an old Jack Benny joke and any Henny Youngman joke. Bridgestone spent three million dollars on half-a-century-old humor. Now that's thumbing your nose at the recession. It's also not selling tires.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Winner: Motorola
Windier: It would have been easy to give this to GoDaddy.com for the third year in a row. At least Megan Fox is legitimately hot; Danica Patrick's credentials in that department are questionable at best. Still, this commercial is particularly weak in justifying itself. There's no reason to have Fox in a bathtub other than that it's appealing; the copy certainly makes no attempt to put it in some form of context (and frankly the writing is just awful and hard to even follow). But it's what comes afterward that really puts the icing on the cake: the second post-tub scene is a mother banging on her son's bedroom door and demanding, "Timmy, what are you doing?" Really, Motorola? That's what you're doing with your Super Bowl ad - masturbation jokes? Way to class up the joint.
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Winner: Boost Mobile
Quivering: Kind of a weird one, because it's not really the 25th anniversary of the 1985 Bears, but rather the 24th (they won the Super Bowl in January of 1986). So this basically came out a year too early. And also, the Bears were not even in playoff contention this season. So this comes out of nowhere. Since Walter Payton isn't around to be a part of the commercial, you get a host of B-listers in this one, all deserving of the Mencia Book Prize. The most famous is either the former punky QB Jim McMahon, or perennial attention whore Mike Ditka (who just started his own line of wines!).
Also, be warned: do not "go online to find the rest of (their) jam." It's just more half-rhymes, and more old white man in a cheetah print thong than you care to see. I challenge anyone to remember that this commercial was for a cell phone company.
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Winner: The United States Census Bureau
Windier: To say that this ad - directed by Christopher Guest, by the way - features the weirdest attempt to sell a product doesn't even get at the root of the problem. I'm not even sure you could say that this ad is selling a product. The Census isn't a product, after all - the idea, I guess, is that people need to be encouraged to fill out their census forms. So, with that said... how in God's name does this ad do that? If you go on to YouTube, there is a wealth of related content, which probably explains the full concept if you actually bother to watch all of it (I watched about a minute and then got bored). But not everyone is going to check out your ancillary content on YouTube. The premise needed to be distilled down into a 30-second spot for mass consumption, and this ad does not do that. It features characters we don't know or care about (and makes no attempt to explain them), dialogue that's so vague it's virtually nonsensical, and one of the worst integrations of a brand name into an otherwise unrelated script that I've ever seen. John McCain (on his Twitter feed) called the ad a waste of money... and he's right. Not because the Census has no business advertising during the Super Bowl, but because the Census has no business making a bizarre, meaningless ad that almost fails to get even the bare minimum of its point across. You're not Bud Light, Census Bureau. If anyone should be making a straight-faced, non-hilarious ad, it's you. Instead, we got this mess.
Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2010
Winner: eTrade
Quivering: eTrade - it's been a long time comin'. You've been annoying us with these cheaply edited voiced-over babies for years, and it's high time you get recognized for it. Consider this a kind of career accomplishment for all the torture you've unleashed upon the innocent American viewing public. This award is kind of like Martin Scorsese's Oscar for The Departed, except that we're trying to tell you that we hate you.
I've been wondering - what is it that's so darned funny about babies cheating on their baby girlfriends and lying about it? Ahh, right - nothing. And what is it about jealousy-fueled baby cat fights and references to infant "milk addiction" that makes me want to sign up for an online stock trading account? Hmm... oh yeah, I didn't do that, because I have a brain. There have been many head-scratching installments to this campaign, but the sheer shock factor in this one really has me wondering how this could possibly appeal to the practical-minded investor.
Oh, and eTrade? Now that you've won, please let these babies grow up and stop the campaign.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)