The great American stereotype

Hey, I've got an idea - how about a new beer ad that uses the oldest joke in history to make a really boring point? That'd be fun, right?



Bartender: "Guys... let's talk commitment."
Group of Men: [horrified stares]

Like, ZOMG, you guys. Men who hate commitment! Did you know that that was a stereotype about men, that they fear commitment in relationships? Breaking some ground here, Budweiser. Next up, let's see them scratch themselves, then weasel out of chores.

Bartender: "Relax... I'm talking about beer."

"Oh thank GOD! Beer! Something we, as men, understand!"

Bartender: "Budweiser has stayed true to the same recipe for over 130 years."

If you're going with something as specific as "130," you might as well just say how many years, don't you think? Also, you'd think after 130 years they could produce something anyone who actually likes beer and isn't just looking to get buzzed at the baseball game would want to drink. No such luck.

Bartender: "Through five generations! They could have cut corners, but they didn't."

One can only imagine what Bud would be like today if corners had been cut. Just a six-pack of Clydesdale urine?

Bartender: "'Cause they won't sacrifice quality, or great taste."

I suppose it's difficult to sacrifice something that was never in there to begin with. Got you, Budweiser! Burned!

Bartender: [with unnecessarily staccato cadence] "A hundred. And thirty. Years."

Heard you the first time. Still don't care.

Bartender: "Now that's commitment."
Guy: "I love commitment."

Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!! Oh man!!!!! He loves commitment now! Because of that great talk about beer and stuff! He only loves commitment when related to beer. Such a male thing to do.

I suppose Budweiser doesn't need aggressive marketing. But they tried to work in a point about their product, so no passes. It's just so trite and boring. "Hey, did you know men are scared of commitment? But what if it was some sort of beer-related commitment? Oh, that's okay." Fin.

Southern snoozepitality

This commercial is hardly offensively bad. But wow, does it just go on.



Man: "Population of Lynchburg, 361."

Facts about Lynchburg: 1. Mentions of Jack Daniel's: 0. This will become something of a running theme.

Man: "About 8:00 in the morning Lynchburg kinda comes to life."
Other Man: "You might hear a dog bark every once in a while."
Another Man: "We're pretty normal people, we just live in a slower-paced."

That last guy was speaking so slowly that the ad people just cut off his last word, because they couldn't let the commercial run three more minutes so he'd actually have time to say it.

Guy with Glasses: "We ain't in no hurry around here, it takes a lot of waiting to make good whiskey."

Believe me, it's quite obvious that no one involved with this commercial is in any kind of hurry.

[brief scenes of whiskey actually being made]
Guy: "Everybody knows everybody."
Randy Baxter: "My name is Randy Baxter."
Other Dude: "Randy Baxter? Everybody 'round here knows him as Goose."
Another Dude: "Goose!"
Sammy: "Goose Baxter! You know Big Goose."

I know more about Big Goose at this point than I know about Jack Daniel's. Is this an ad for the Lynchburg Tourism Bureau?

Guy with Glasses: "Sammy's just Sammy."
Sammy: "My grandpa told me, he said, 'Sammy-'"
Another Guy Again: "Sammy, he's a talker."
Sammy: "'I don't want you off the ground any higher than your horse's back, and I don't want you in water deeper than the bathtub.'"

Never mind, this isn't selling me on Lynchburg itself, either. For those of you keeping score, we now know more about Sammy's grandfather's house rules than we do about making Jack Daniel's. Or anything about Jack Daniel's. Do these guys even work for the company? Where did they pull them from?

Some Other Guy: "When you get through talking, you're trying to figure out what he said."

Good thing you gave him like ten full seconds of your ad, then.

[everyone laughs]

I am asleep.

Voiceover: "Lynchburg, Tennessee. Every drop of Jack Daniel's ever made, we've made right here."

"And you wouldn't believe how hard it was to make that whiskey with Sammy there talking your ear off! That Sammy! Ha ha ha! What a character! I remember that time his grandpa told him not to go in water that was too deep so he wouldn't drown. Wakka wakka!"

Come on, Jack Daniel's. I know the brand sells itself at this point, but why bother advertising at all if this is what you're going to do with it? Do you think the primary demographic of 19-year-old college kids gives a shit about Big Goose Baxter? Why even spend the money to air it? Couldn't you just use that to pay for more duckling feed or whatever the shit you're doing down there that has very little to do with whiskey?

Twin Geeks

Remember the Doublemint Twins, who were featured in ads for Wrigley's Doublemint gum? It made sense - it was a double mint, and they had a double mascot. Instant success, entrenched in advertising lore, made millions. The new "twin brothers" campaign from minor QSR player Boston Market? Well, I don't think it's getting its own Wikipedia page anytime soon:



Anthony: Hey, my name's Anthony, this is my twin brother James.

Maybe fraternal twins? These guys don't look that much alike to me.

Anthony: Can I borrow 27 bucks? (gives camera pointless indignant expression aimed at brother)

Whoa! What at Boston Market could possibly cost $27?! A foie gras turkey sandwich? Truffled stuffing with cranberry caviar preserves? 27 pieces of roasted chicken? Nothing?

James: Why do you need $27 bucks?

Well, as you know, James, this is a commercial for Boston Market, so I'd assume it has something to do with buying food.

Anthony: Boston Market's got that new Tuscan Herb Rotisserie Chicken. I'm starving.

Here we are, loyal consumers mid-way through our journey of discovery in this commercial, and we currently believe that Boston Market is offering an chicken item that costs $27. Good work, BM brain trust.

James: The Tuscan Chicken is only $6.99

Ohhhhh. So it's actually 1/4 the price he just said. Slightly confusing considering this is a 30-second info dump, no?

James: ... why do you need 27 bucks?

Anthony: To pay you pack the twenty bucks I owe you.

James: How does that make any sense?

This little tete-a-tete makes for high comedy. But that is a great question, let's check out the payoff.

Anthony: I dunno, for some reason it makes sense to me.

(tumbleweed rolls by TV screen, crickets chirp, a hawk screeches in the distance) Let's hope they weren't reading off a script, because if they were, how was that script allowed to be acted out? Wasn't someone like, "Wait a second, is there supposed to be a joke in here somewhere?"

The next part of this ad is the only useful part. It's 5 seconds of an announcer describing the entree and talking about the price and limited availability. Boston Market could have made a five second-long commercial that would have been more effective that this 30-second bore-fest.

Anthony: Thank you very much (takes cash out of brother's open wallet.)

Ahh, moochers! Makes me hungry for chicken.

Want to see more witty banter between two boring white guys? You're in luck, because this is a for real campaign, folks (note: don't watch those other ads, unless you really want to see "James" in slightly different colored ties.) I mean, Boston Market specializes in the most boring food possible: roasted chicken. With like homestyle sides and stuff. It's the kind of food you get when you miss your mom's cooking but you live on your own and don't yet know how to cook. It couldn't get much more vanilla. So, Boston Market decided to sell their already-boring food via even-more-boring commercials?

Boston Market Board Room Meeting:

Boston Market R&D Executive: Okay, so the new product we're developing is pretty crazy, it's called Rotisserie Chicken.

Boston Market CMO: Awesome. But I thought we already served that.

R&D Guy: This one's got an herb on it.

CMO (begins to sweat): Whoa. Sounds pretty spicy!

CEO: You know it. Okay, so how do we sell this baby?

CMO: How about we have a commercial where these two people are talking on stools against a white background?

CEO: Well, what kind of people?

CMO: A white guy. And his identical white twin.

CEO: What are they doing, telling jokes and stuff?

CMO: No, it'll just be like regular conversation. But stupider.

CEO: Good. I like that we're not taking risks. What else?

CMO: Then we show the food -- a big close-up shot of white meat chicken.

R&D Guy: We should tell them how much it costs.

CMO: Good call. First we'll tell them it costs four times as much as it does, then we'll reveal how cheap it actually is. Then we cut back to the two white guys. And they'll just be staring at the camera, basically. Sound good?

CEO: Hello, increased market share!!

Boston Market ads neither double my pleasure nor my fun.

You've gotta put Mercury on your zzzzzz

Sometimes I wonder if certain companies even have ad agencies. Watch this Mercury ad and try to tell me it wasn't assembled in-house.



When Ford, which also has cars that run SYNC, made an ad showing off the feature, it made it a funny one. Not jaw-droppingly hilarious or anything like it probably wanted to be, but at least it went for a joke. So what does Mercury do when presented with the opportunity to sell the same feature?

Woman: "Can your car play every song you own? Play track 'Let It Roll.'"

Oh, that famous song "Let It Roll," by that famous band Common Sense. They're famous. What on earth was the budget for this ad? Remember, Ford owns Mercury; it seems telling that they went with relatively big-name artists Smashing Pumpkins and Korn for their own ads but foisted a "reggae/pop" band off on Mercury, apparently the red-headed stepchild of the Ford family. Although really, none of those bands has been popular since 1999 or so.

Woman: "And can it make phone calls, all at the sound of your voice? Call Amy."
Woman on phone: "Hi, this is Amy!"
Woman: "Be right there!"

What the hell? That's a conversation? First of all, you're both super boring. Second of all, why does Amy answer the phone like she's practicing her answering machine greeting?

Woman: "If it's the attention-getting Mercury Milan, it can."

When you have to throw in an editorial like that, it's pretty clear you're just making shit up. What is attention-getting about a pedestrian-looking mid-size car? Do they all come with "Featuring the awesome power of SYNC" stenciled on the hood in spray paint? Ooh, you could put some bad-ass flames around it - that would turn some heads. Wait, what's that? It's a totally boring, could-be-any-other-car model? Awesome. Of course, this isn't the first time Mercury has tried rather limply to make the Milan sound even remotely appealing.

My favorite parts of this ad are the several seconds of dead air right after the song starts playing - because we all needed the women to shut up so we could drink in the car's ability to drive in a straight line - and after the announcer gives the lease price, apparently so we have time to read the tiny, unreadable lease boilerplate without distraction. Are you sure you don't want to tell us anything else about the car you could have squeezed into those extra five seconds, guys? Just the one third-party feature? Okay.

Woman: "You've gotta put Mercury on your list."

I promise that if, at the end of this year, we do a "Most Stultifying Ads of 2008" post, I will put Mercury on my list. You have my word on that.

Having trouble sleeping?

Why don't you watch a non-profit/educational financial services ad?



This commercial is so unremittingly boring, it makes you wonder if TIAA-CREF forgot they were shooting a non-profit/educational financial services ad. That's some yawn-inducing subject matter -- spice it up a little! First order of business would be picking a song that isn't in a comatose tempo. Alternatively, use the same song ("Somewhere" by Bernstein/Sondheim), but pick a version of it that isn't mind-numbingly dull.

There isn't much else to interest the viewer. Visually, this is a wasteland. Here are the scenes depicted in the commercial:

Slow motion shot of a man clutching a sample of something in storage area
Slow motion shot of a woman painting stage scenery
Slow motion shot of a man tuning a piano
Slow motion shot of a man teaching students in a dimly-lit lecture hall

Why are all these filmed in slow motion? Is it supposed to be like "Check out these heroes"? These four people look like they're just praying for retirement, "Please make the piano tuning stop.... I can barely move my back, and my ears throb with poorly-done West Side Story covers every night." They all look sad and pained. Combined with the monotone, verbose voiceover, it really is a forgettable commercial.

But just when you were about to drift off, the tagline:

Financial Services for the Greater Good

Really? You're going with "the greater good"? TIAA-CREF is a massive company, with $406 billion in assets. That's "billion" as in "fucking billion." Does $406 billion sound "greater good"-y to you? Is the "greater good" really their mission? Or is it just their client base they use to make money? If they were truly about the "greater good," why were they picketed in 2005? Why would they pay their CEO a significant chunk of that $406 billion? Maybe it's not so much the general "greater good" as it is the company's "greater good."

It's bad enough TIAA-CREF had to run such a genuinely bad series of ads, but to make a bad and disingenuous series of ads? Well, that's just wrong. And that's why this site is here.