Good news, ladies. You won! You're not just equal to your male counterparts - you're ahead of them. You control everything. What's that? You don't believe me? You say men still regularly make more than women, and hold the vast majority of positions of power in this country, and really the world? Well, that can't be right. I mean, did you not see that Dodge Charger ad that aired during the Super Bowl?
See?
Man 1: "I will get up and walk the dog at 6:30 am. I will eat some fruit as part of my breakfast. I will shave. I will clean the sink after I shave."
Maybe they should have chosen a guy who hadn't clearly already shaved for this one. Anyway, let's keep a tally of which of the things mentioned in this ad are (a) completely normal, (b) common courtesy, or (c) actually maybe emasculating in some way.
Walking the dog: I mean, it's probably your dog, asshole. If it's her dog, and it's some yappy toy poodle or something, I guess that's annoying. Still, I would class this as (a).
Eating fruit: Yeah! Fruit is for pussies! Normally it's all I can do to choke down half a banana. Plus eating a banana makes me feel kinda gay. Lord. This is clearly (a).
Shaving: Yes, how unusual. Guys never shave unless women make them, right? (a).
Cleaning the sink: God forbid. (b).
Man 2: "I will be at work by 8 am. I will sit through two-hour meetings. I will say yes when you want me to say yes. I will be quiet when you don't want to hear me say no."
Okay, those first two things are completely normal and have little to nothing to do with women. Bitches, man - always forcing you to... work... like a normal human being would... (a). As for the latter two... maybe work on your communication. If you're in a relationship with a woman and you're too afraid to contradict her, you have bigger problems than your car. But, I guess that's a (c) for each of those.
Man 3: "I will take your call. I will listen to your opinion of my friends. I will listen to your friends' opinions of my friends. I will be civil to your mother."
The first and last are, again, things that I think any reasonable person would not be off-base in expecting. Both are either (a) or (b). The middle two... I guess they're (c). But this hypothetical woman sounds kind of unpleasant. Maybe you should just break up. Though I call bullshit on this dude even having a girlfriend. He needs to take Man 1's advice and find a razor, just for starters.
At this point, by the way, the commercial is half over. What's it for? Who knows?
Man 4: "I will put the seat down. I will separate the recycling. I will carry your lip balm. I will watch your vampire TV shows with you. I will take my socks off before getting into bed. I will put my underwear in the basket."
B, A, who fucking cares about a lip balm tube that weighs half an ounce, I guess C, you're a ridiculous asshole if you wear socks to bed, and B.
Man 4: "And because I do this... I will drive the car I want to drive."
"Yeah, honey, I know that buying a new car is a big decision. And I know you want a minivan because of the kids. But I clean up after myself - only for your benefit because I'm perfectly happy living in filth, I should clarify - and occasionally carry your lip balm. Therefore I'm getting a car that is completely impractical for our family."
Announcer: "Charger: Man's Last Stand."
Not to get all heavy on you, but did you ever wonder why the divorce rate is so high? It's because of shit like this. Man and woman are not natural enemies, Dodge, you assholes. A relationship involves give and take, yes. But it really shouldn't be about scoring cheap points that you try to cash in later by holding them over the other person's head and demanding some form of equity. And no one can reasonably argue that doing things that any halfway considerate person should understand are just normal parts of life with another person constitutes just cause for buying a muscle car. I mean, if you have enough money to have two cars, and you already have the family-friendly car, then whatever. You want to drive a Charger, that's probably fine. But the entire implication behind this commercial is "Your wife is not going to want you to drive this car! Point out that either you're going to drive it or you're going to toss your underwear over the blades of the ceiling fan, and she's going to like it!"
And honestly, "Man's last stand?" I do have to applaud Dodge for the sheer balls it takes to be an American automaker - doing really well lately, as we all know - willing to say a big "Fuck you" to half the population right off the bat.
Final tally of things mentioned in the ad as emasculating reasons why dudes need to drive Dodge Chargers:
(a) Completely normal: 7
(b) Common courtesy: 6
(c) Actually maybe emasculating in some way: 5
C is less than either of the other two and way less than the total of A and B. I mean, fuck. Eating fruit? That's the best you can do? Fucking going to work like everyone does? These are the sacrifices that deserve the complete silence of your partner when you decide that you're going to be making the automotive decision unilaterally? Jesus.
Did you think that was it? It's not.
Announcer: "What is that thing?"
Some sort of car! What do I win? Is it more cheap jokes about being whipped and/or gay? I sure hope so!
Announcer: "Well, I'll tell you what it isn't. It isn't a 'man-bag.' It isn't 'man-sandals.' It isn't a low-cal plate. It isn't a yoga class. It isn't an exfoliant with added moisturizer, it isn't a couples cooking class, and it certainly isn't a small dog that needs to wear a jacket if the temperature drops below 70."
"It isn't picking up a box of tampons. It isn't being in the same room with a box of tampons. It isn't brushing your teeth before bed. It isn't not hitting on your wife's sister, right in front of your wife. It isn't washing your hands after you pee. It isn't remembering your anniversary. Oh, and it certainly isn't ever doing anything that would make you seem like less of a man in the eyes of a faceless corporate entity that is just trying to sell you something."
Announcer: "That's what it isn't."
Going to sell it at all? No? No price, no specs, the car doesn't even move. The entire selling point is, "If you don't buy this car, you're a total pussy who does everything your wife tells you to. Buy a fucking Charger or we're calling your friends and telling them you didn't have a huge, greasy hamburger for lunch every day of your life, but once ate something under four thousand calories, like the weenie you are." Why, you're probably the kind of spineless wimp who would drive a minivan!
Yeah! Wait.
Announcer: "There are guys who will smirk at you for buying a Dodge Grand Caravan."
Are you serious? Those guys are you. The entire point of the first ad in this post is "As a tradeoff for yielding incremental amounts of my masculinity in service of a long-term relationship, I ain't driving no minivan."
Announcer: "For some reason, having a minivan that happens to have the 2009 dependability award from JD Power and Associates isn't manly enough."
Yeah, I bet they see that and they think you're the kind of guy who orders the low-cal plate. Or carries his wife's lip balm. Fag.
Announcer: "Think about that for a second. Filling a car with five of your offspring isn't manly enough?"
Fuck that! Squeeze the kids into the trunk of the Dodge Charger. That's a real man's car! Unless we've decided that we want to sell you on a different model. Forget the Charger! Buy a Grand Caravan and prove your virility!
Here's an interesting tidbit. According to Road & Travel Magazine, "women purchase more than 50% of all new vehicles, 48% of all used vehicles, [and] influence 80% of all sales." Is that the kind of demographic you want to be completely ignoring, Dodge? Especially when it comes to selling a minivan, a family car, a car that a woman is almost certainly having a big say in deciding to purchase? You're going to sell it as "a good place to stash the fruit of your loins, the better to look virile in front of other men"? And then your other ads not only ignore women as purchasers, but actively mock men who dare to participate in anything you deem "too feminine." It's like this campaign fell through a wormhole from 1957, when women were expected to live in the kitchen and the only commercials targeted at them were for ovens and aluminum foil. With that in mind, here are some possible slogans Dodge may want to use going forward to address some of their marketing toward women without sacrificing their core message:
"Dodge: No girls allowed"
"Dodge: Bake me a pie"
"Dodge: I work hard all day to put food on that table"
"Dodge: Shut your whore mouth"
"Dodge: I'm going to the bar and dinner had better be ready when I get back"
Thursday, February 11, 2010
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.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
2010 Super Bored Awards Preview
The Super Bowl is more than just the NFL championship. It's the one time of year where people get together and pretend, for a few hours at least, that they don't hate advertising. And for deep-pocketed advertisers, it's a great chance to waste a reported $2.5 to $2.8 million dollars on a commercial -- that's as much as $93,000 a second. Giddy-up!
In keeping with tradition, we present to you our preview of our Super Bored Awards (to be posted sometime early next week), where we recognize the worst (and the slightly less horrible) commercials set to air during Sunday's Super Bowl. And since it would be ridiculous to view these commercials as marketing per se, and in the absence of actual data, we'll review them for what they are: half-a-minute long, branded mini movies that marketing narcissists create to feel a little bit better about themselves. Here are the categories and the projected winners (thanks to AdAge for posting this great list of Super Bowl ad buys):
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Explanation: So many Super Bowl ads try to be funny. It's fairly subjective as to whether you think they succeed or not. As we've said before, commercials make for poor entertainment, so we think we'll have a tough choice to make again this year.
Prediction: Boost Mobile. We've seen their horrible recent efforts, and their Super Bowl spot will be a remake of the 1985 Chicago Bears "Super Bowl Shuffle." Why does that need to be remade? Isn't the original's kitsch value alone funny enough? Not only does it sound painful, but it's wildly unoriginal. (Also, odd timing. Next year would have been the 25th anniversary. Why now?)
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Explanation: Who the hell is Carlos Mencia, and why did we name this award after him? Oh, that's right, he was some guy in a Bud Light spot 3 years ago. Well, I guess that just goes to show you that when you spend money on non-name-brand celebs, you're not getting your money's worth.
Prediction: GoDaddy.com will be back with Danica Patrick a-fucking-gain. She was a bit of phenomenon on the Indy racing scene a few years ago, but at this point she has to be considered B-list. Come on, tell me she's still nationally famous outside of these commercials. There may be other B-listers in ads this year, but we're just so tired of seeing the same "let's pretend she's hot!" premise in ad after depressing ad.
And since this is a Book Prize, this year's winner will receive a signed copy of the biography of Carlos Mencia. It's one of Carlos Mencia's favorites.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Explanation: In the simplest terms, this award goes to the commercial with the least appropriate use of sex. We can only hope there won't be any inter-species action this year.
Prediction: We'll just have to go with GoDaddy.com again, because none of the other descriptions really indicate anything about possible sex scenes. Maybe advertisers just wanted to tone it down this year since Tim Tebow's mom is going to be watching.
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Explanation: Remember SalesGenie? They had their CEO write their ads and then used animation that looked like it was done in Microsoft Paint. That's the kind of effort that wins this award.
Prediction: Doritos is, for the second consecutive year, doing their "Crash the Super Bowl" thing, where people can submit their own Doritos ads and the winner gets the Super Bowl air time. Last year's winners won a lot of "Best Ad" polls (although we didn't care for it), and even got on the Tonight Show. That certainly says something about the professional ad agencies.
In keeping with tradition, we present to you our preview of our Super Bored Awards (to be posted sometime early next week), where we recognize the worst (and the slightly less horrible) commercials set to air during Sunday's Super Bowl. And since it would be ridiculous to view these commercials as marketing per se, and in the absence of actual data, we'll review them for what they are: half-a-minute long, branded mini movies that marketing narcissists create to feel a little bit better about themselves. Here are the categories and the projected winners (thanks to AdAge for posting this great list of Super Bowl ad buys):
Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Explanation: The day we say a three million dollar, thirty second video deserves to be voted "Best Ad" is the day we shut down this blog. That's why we prefer "Least Shitty."
Prediction: A few possibilities: Coca-Cola is doing something with The Simpsons. That might actually be funny. Universal Studios will be advertising its new Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park land, and that might be interesting (but maybe that's just my interest in theme parks.) Also, CareerBuilder, last year's winner of Worst Ad here on the site, is doing a user-submitted commercial contest, where you can vote on your favorite of three ads. This is different from Doritos' contest, because winners were selected based on their scripts, and then the ads were produced professionally. One of the ads is all right, another is kind of gross, and the third is childishly disgusting. If the Fairy ad wins, I might vote for that just because, why reward an ad agency for a mediocre effort when some random guy can do just as mediocre a job?
Explanation: The day we say a three million dollar, thirty second video deserves to be voted "Best Ad" is the day we shut down this blog. That's why we prefer "Least Shitty."
Prediction: A few possibilities: Coca-Cola is doing something with The Simpsons. That might actually be funny. Universal Studios will be advertising its new Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park land, and that might be interesting (but maybe that's just my interest in theme parks.) Also, CareerBuilder, last year's winner of Worst Ad here on the site, is doing a user-submitted commercial contest, where you can vote on your favorite of three ads. This is different from Doritos' contest, because winners were selected based on their scripts, and then the ads were produced professionally. One of the ads is all right, another is kind of gross, and the third is childishly disgusting. If the Fairy ad wins, I might vote for that just because, why reward an ad agency for a mediocre effort when some random guy can do just as mediocre a job?
Most Overproduced Ad
Explanation: When you're talking about $3 million just to get a commercial on the air, the commercial itself better be good. Unfortunately most marketing execs seem to think "good" means "costs a ton of money." And that's how we end up with so many manic, over-produced pieces of crap. Oh, how to pick just one.
Prediction: Here's the Honda spot description:
Ad's focus will be on the launch of an entirely new model, the Accord Crosstour, a wagon-sedan crossover. And an animated squirrel. And Kool & the Gang's "Funky Stuff."
You don't suppose it will be a dancing animated squirrel, do you?
Explanation: When you're talking about $3 million just to get a commercial on the air, the commercial itself better be good. Unfortunately most marketing execs seem to think "good" means "costs a ton of money." And that's how we end up with so many manic, over-produced pieces of crap. Oh, how to pick just one.
Prediction: Here's the Honda spot description:
Ad's focus will be on the launch of an entirely new model, the Accord Crosstour, a wagon-sedan crossover. And an animated squirrel. And Kool & the Gang's "Funky Stuff."
You don't suppose it will be a dancing animated squirrel, do you?
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Prediction: Boost Mobile. We've seen their horrible recent efforts, and their Super Bowl spot will be a remake of the 1985 Chicago Bears "Super Bowl Shuffle." Why does that need to be remade? Isn't the original's kitsch value alone funny enough? Not only does it sound painful, but it's wildly unoriginal. (Also, odd timing. Next year would have been the 25th anniversary. Why now?)
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Explanation: Who the hell is Carlos Mencia, and why did we name this award after him? Oh, that's right, he was some guy in a Bud Light spot 3 years ago. Well, I guess that just goes to show you that when you spend money on non-name-brand celebs, you're not getting your money's worth.
Prediction: GoDaddy.com will be back with Danica Patrick a-fucking-gain. She was a bit of phenomenon on the Indy racing scene a few years ago, but at this point she has to be considered B-list. Come on, tell me she's still nationally famous outside of these commercials. There may be other B-listers in ads this year, but we're just so tired of seeing the same "let's pretend she's hot!" premise in ad after depressing ad.
And since this is a Book Prize, this year's winner will receive a signed copy of the biography of Carlos Mencia. It's one of Carlos Mencia's favorites.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Explanation: In the simplest terms, this award goes to the commercial with the least appropriate use of sex. We can only hope there won't be any inter-species action this year.
Prediction: We'll just have to go with GoDaddy.com again, because none of the other descriptions really indicate anything about possible sex scenes. Maybe advertisers just wanted to tone it down this year since Tim Tebow's mom is going to be watching.
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Explanation: Remember SalesGenie? They had their CEO write their ads and then used animation that looked like it was done in Microsoft Paint. That's the kind of effort that wins this award.
Prediction: Doritos is, for the second consecutive year, doing their "Crash the Super Bowl" thing, where people can submit their own Doritos ads and the winner gets the Super Bowl air time. Last year's winners won a lot of "Best Ad" polls (although we didn't care for it), and even got on the Tonight Show. That certainly says something about the professional ad agencies.
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Explanation: This award does need a bit of explanation. SkyMall sells weird shit, but it's the weird way they choose to sell their shit, and their eager, misplaced enthusiasm, that really gets us. So this award goes to the ad that best exemplifies the notion of selling a product in a way it just should not be sold.
Prediction: Here's the Snickers spot's description:
Actors Betty White and Abe Vigoda will appear in a spot that reminds viewers that Snickers helps allay food cravings.
This could easily qualify for the Carlos Mencia Book Prize, but it sounds so outlandish that we might as well predict it to land here. Also, note to Snickers -- maybe the reason you help allay food cravings is that you are food. Don't kid yourselves, you're not a diet pill here.
The GoDaddy.com/SalesGenie.com/Bud Light/Miller Lite/Emerald Nuts Award for Worst Superbowl Ad
Explanation: What commercial will join the vaunted ranks of CareerBuilder (2009's winner) and SoBe Lifewater (2008)? This one's always a toss-up, but we'll be sure to post another poll to get everyone's opinion on which ad truly stood out.
Prediction: If you haven't already heard about Focus on the Family's spot with Tim Tebow, you can read about it here. We could give this award to just another unwatchable corporate offering, but I think anytime you manage to piss off half the population, you're airing an historically bad ad.
Explanation: This award does need a bit of explanation. SkyMall sells weird shit, but it's the weird way they choose to sell their shit, and their eager, misplaced enthusiasm, that really gets us. So this award goes to the ad that best exemplifies the notion of selling a product in a way it just should not be sold.
Prediction: Here's the Snickers spot's description:
Actors Betty White and Abe Vigoda will appear in a spot that reminds viewers that Snickers helps allay food cravings.
This could easily qualify for the Carlos Mencia Book Prize, but it sounds so outlandish that we might as well predict it to land here. Also, note to Snickers -- maybe the reason you help allay food cravings is that you are food. Don't kid yourselves, you're not a diet pill here.
The GoDaddy.com/SalesGeni
Explanation: What commercial will join the vaunted ranks of CareerBuilder (2009's winner) and SoBe Lifewater (2008)? This one's always a toss-up, but we'll be sure to post another poll to get everyone's opinion on which ad truly stood out.
Prediction: If you haven't already heard about Focus on the Family's spot with Tim Tebow, you can read about it here. We could give this award to just another unwatchable corporate offering, but I think anytime you manage to piss off half the population, you're airing an historically bad ad.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
It's not a good commercial, it's DiGiorno
What is it about pizza commercials and torturing the shit out of their premises?
[Couples playing a game; doorbell rings]
Husband: "Honey, the pizza guy."
Wife: "Sure."
Sure. Because they ordered pizza. That is the only reason for anyone to respond this way.
Pizza Guy: "Me again!"
Wife: "Okay, now this is the last time, all right?"
Pizza Guy: "Thanks! You know, we don't deliver anything like this, this crispy flatbread..." [bites into pizza, has orgasm]
Oh, they didn't order pizza - apparently the pizza guy loves DiGiorno pizza so much that he keeps showing up at this one house. Editorializing much, DiGiorno? The idea that people couldn't tell a frozen pizza from delivery was already a bit of a stretch, but "no pizzeria in America delivers pizza comparable in its deliciousness to ours?" Back right the fuck up.
Also, just add layers to the stupidity of the general concept. How did he even know they had this pizza? If they're making DiGiorno I'm assuming they never called for even one pizza from "Vinny's," so what brought this guy to their door in the first place? One of those animated aroma waves that turns into a beckoning hand when it reaches you? Second, if you don't want to give the guy pizza, stop answering the door. And who is this fucking moocher? "Hey, uh, I know what you guys have in there can be bought in any store, but... I'm just going to keep ringing until you give it to me for free."
Finally, the whole "even people who work for other companies prefer our food!" thing has always driven me kind of crazy as a tactic. Because who cares? Why is that supposed to matter? This guy can't eat his own pizzeria's pizza every day of his life. And even if DiGiorno pizza is just that good, it's probably not so good that I'd never want to eat anything else. (It's actually a lot like the ad I linked to at the beginning. What, exactly, is wrong with the sub guy wanting to eat somewhere other than his own store? He probably eats there all the time. I know the point the ads are trying to make, but it's just lazy.)
I mean, if you're going to insist on making annoying, stupid ads - and I'm sure companies will, which is just as well, lest this site lose its entire raison d'être - couldn't the plot of the ad at least make some goddamn sense? Why even spend money on writers and actors if you can't bother with that? At this point they might as well just go back to the Bulova watch face. Which is more likely to get you to the store, this annoying nonsense or a ten-second clip of a nice-looking pizza being pulled out of the oven with a voice saying "It's DiGiorno time!" Yeah, me too.
[Couples playing a game; doorbell rings]
Husband: "Honey, the pizza guy."
Wife: "Sure."
Sure. Because they ordered pizza. That is the only reason for anyone to respond this way.
Pizza Guy: "Me again!"
Wife: "Okay, now this is the last time, all right?"
Pizza Guy: "Thanks! You know, we don't deliver anything like this, this crispy flatbread..." [bites into pizza, has orgasm]
Oh, they didn't order pizza - apparently the pizza guy loves DiGiorno pizza so much that he keeps showing up at this one house. Editorializing much, DiGiorno? The idea that people couldn't tell a frozen pizza from delivery was already a bit of a stretch, but "no pizzeria in America delivers pizza comparable in its deliciousness to ours?" Back right the fuck up.
Also, just add layers to the stupidity of the general concept. How did he even know they had this pizza? If they're making DiGiorno I'm assuming they never called for even one pizza from "Vinny's," so what brought this guy to their door in the first place? One of those animated aroma waves that turns into a beckoning hand when it reaches you? Second, if you don't want to give the guy pizza, stop answering the door. And who is this fucking moocher? "Hey, uh, I know what you guys have in there can be bought in any store, but... I'm just going to keep ringing until you give it to me for free."
Finally, the whole "even people who work for other companies prefer our food!" thing has always driven me kind of crazy as a tactic. Because who cares? Why is that supposed to matter? This guy can't eat his own pizzeria's pizza every day of his life. And even if DiGiorno pizza is just that good, it's probably not so good that I'd never want to eat anything else. (It's actually a lot like the ad I linked to at the beginning. What, exactly, is wrong with the sub guy wanting to eat somewhere other than his own store? He probably eats there all the time. I know the point the ads are trying to make, but it's just lazy.)
I mean, if you're going to insist on making annoying, stupid ads - and I'm sure companies will, which is just as well, lest this site lose its entire raison d'être - couldn't the plot of the ad at least make some goddamn sense? Why even spend money on writers and actors if you can't bother with that? At this point they might as well just go back to the Bulova watch face. Which is more likely to get you to the store, this annoying nonsense or a ten-second clip of a nice-looking pizza being pulled out of the oven with a voice saying "It's DiGiorno time!" Yeah, me too.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
She aches just like a woman, but she breaks just like a GPS
Guys, you can stop wondering. The mystery of what women want has been solved... by Jared.
That's right: women want diamonds. All women. In fact, even GPS devices, which lack a gender aside from the sex of the person who recorded their canned audio tracks, want diamonds, provided you've got the female voice setting on. I guess if this guy had the male voice switched on it would have demanded he go out for brewskis and presented directions to the nearest bar. Because in ad world, every member of a group is exactly the same, even when that member is not even a person and therefore not even actually a member of the group in question.
GPS: "Navigation system activated. Oh, look - he went to Jared."
Guy: "Ex... cuse me?"
That is also the reaction I would have if my GPS started talking in sentient fashion. Fair enough so far... I guess.
GPS: "What's in the bag, Dave?"
How did the GPS know his name? (I know, it's a reference to 2001, please don't tell me how I missed the joke in the comments.) Come to think of it, how does the GPS know what Jared is? How is the GPS capable of "seeing" objects in the car? Also, we can see in the next shot that the GPS's perspective is aimed at Dave's face. How did it even see the bag?
I know, I know - these are trifling questions, really. But I can't stand commercials that refuse to stand on even the smallest shred of believability. If I can't trust the agency to have thought of obvious things in the plot - such as why, for even one second, it would matter whether or not a reindeer had a "map" - why should I buy into what they're selling? Isn't the whole point of most television commercials to present a short story that in some way indicates why I would want a product?
Dave: "A diamond necklace?"
GPS: "May I see it?"
Women! Right? Even when it's not really a woman! It's a piece of machinery, but it has a woman's voice, and therefore it has the craven desire for expensive jewelry of which all women are possessed!
Dave: "Uh, can I just get directions, please?"
Okay, where is this guy going that he even needs the GPS? He's buying a diamond necklace at Jared, at - according to the GPS's screen - 12:23 pm. He's wearing a shirt and tie, which means it's probably a weekday and he came from work. So... he probably has to go back to work! Does he really need directions to retrace the exact path he already took to get to the Jared in the first place? Also, if he had to ask directions to get to the Jared, shouldn't the GPS already have known where he was going?
GPS: "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
[doors lock]
Because GPS systems are wired directly into a car's power locks, too. Also, does the GPS realize it can be turned off via a button on the front? This isn't exactly Dave Bowman floating around in HAL's core here. On the bright side, if you're this dude, looks like you just found yourself a way to get your GPS to give it up.
Voiceover: "The Hearts Desire collection at Jared uses only ideal-cut diamonds, to best see the diamonds' true inner fire."
Um, what? This is some grade-A diamond-merchant bullshit, right here. "True inner fire?" I know, that's a technical diamond term... which the diamond people conjured up in an attempt to ascribe passion and emotion to a fucking piece of rock. I hate everything about this. It's light reflecting. Since when is that worth thousands of dollars? How about we just go outside and I'll spray the garden hose in the direction of a light source? It's real purty.
Also, Hearts Desire! Diamonds aren't just "a girl's best friend," they're her "heart's desire" - literally what she truly loves, wants and needs. She doesn't love you - she loves the expensive diamond jewelry your masculine earning power can provide! Even if "she" is a normally inanimate piece of machinery.
Dave: "Now can we go?"
GPS [with the necklace draped over it]: "Oh, Dave. You shouldn't have."
Later, the GPS gave Dave the best blow job he'd ever had. The end.
"You shouldn't have?" He didn't! That necklace isn't for you, GPS. (Good thing he bought a necklace, too, since most other common types of jewelry wouldn't fit on a GPS.) What am I supposed to come out of this ad thinking? That when I walk out of a Jared holding a bag I will instantly be mauled by every woman in the vicinity, each desperate to be the recipient of the shiny, shiny rocks I just purchased? Will empty cars, steered by female-voiced GPS systems, follow me through the parking lot? Because hey - if it looks or sounds female, it's a woman, and if it's a woman, it wants diamonds. And how do we know that? Because companies trying to sell diamonds keep telling us. Makes sense to me!
That's right: women want diamonds. All women. In fact, even GPS devices, which lack a gender aside from the sex of the person who recorded their canned audio tracks, want diamonds, provided you've got the female voice setting on. I guess if this guy had the male voice switched on it would have demanded he go out for brewskis and presented directions to the nearest bar. Because in ad world, every member of a group is exactly the same, even when that member is not even a person and therefore not even actually a member of the group in question.
GPS: "Navigation system activated. Oh, look - he went to Jared."
Guy: "Ex... cuse me?"
That is also the reaction I would have if my GPS started talking in sentient fashion. Fair enough so far... I guess.
GPS: "What's in the bag, Dave?"
How did the GPS know his name? (I know, it's a reference to 2001, please don't tell me how I missed the joke in the comments.) Come to think of it, how does the GPS know what Jared is? How is the GPS capable of "seeing" objects in the car? Also, we can see in the next shot that the GPS's perspective is aimed at Dave's face. How did it even see the bag?
I know, I know - these are trifling questions, really. But I can't stand commercials that refuse to stand on even the smallest shred of believability. If I can't trust the agency to have thought of obvious things in the plot - such as why, for even one second, it would matter whether or not a reindeer had a "map" - why should I buy into what they're selling? Isn't the whole point of most television commercials to present a short story that in some way indicates why I would want a product?
Dave: "A diamond necklace?"
GPS: "May I see it?"
Women! Right? Even when it's not really a woman! It's a piece of machinery, but it has a woman's voice, and therefore it has the craven desire for expensive jewelry of which all women are possessed!
Dave: "Uh, can I just get directions, please?"
Okay, where is this guy going that he even needs the GPS? He's buying a diamond necklace at Jared, at - according to the GPS's screen - 12:23 pm. He's wearing a shirt and tie, which means it's probably a weekday and he came from work. So... he probably has to go back to work! Does he really need directions to retrace the exact path he already took to get to the Jared in the first place? Also, if he had to ask directions to get to the Jared, shouldn't the GPS already have known where he was going?
GPS: "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
[doors lock]
Because GPS systems are wired directly into a car's power locks, too. Also, does the GPS realize it can be turned off via a button on the front? This isn't exactly Dave Bowman floating around in HAL's core here. On the bright side, if you're this dude, looks like you just found yourself a way to get your GPS to give it up.
Voiceover: "The Hearts Desire collection at Jared uses only ideal-cut diamonds, to best see the diamonds' true inner fire."
Um, what? This is some grade-A diamond-merchant bullshit, right here. "True inner fire?" I know, that's a technical diamond term... which the diamond people conjured up in an attempt to ascribe passion and emotion to a fucking piece of rock. I hate everything about this. It's light reflecting. Since when is that worth thousands of dollars? How about we just go outside and I'll spray the garden hose in the direction of a light source? It's real purty.
Also, Hearts Desire! Diamonds aren't just "a girl's best friend," they're her "heart's desire" - literally what she truly loves, wants and needs. She doesn't love you - she loves the expensive diamond jewelry your masculine earning power can provide! Even if "she" is a normally inanimate piece of machinery.
Dave: "Now can we go?"
GPS [with the necklace draped over it]: "Oh, Dave. You shouldn't have."
Later, the GPS gave Dave the best blow job he'd ever had. The end.
"You shouldn't have?" He didn't! That necklace isn't for you, GPS. (Good thing he bought a necklace, too, since most other common types of jewelry wouldn't fit on a GPS.) What am I supposed to come out of this ad thinking? That when I walk out of a Jared holding a bag I will instantly be mauled by every woman in the vicinity, each desperate to be the recipient of the shiny, shiny rocks I just purchased? Will empty cars, steered by female-voiced GPS systems, follow me through the parking lot? Because hey - if it looks or sounds female, it's a woman, and if it's a woman, it wants diamonds. And how do we know that? Because companies trying to sell diamonds keep telling us. Makes sense to me!
Sunday, December 27, 2009
For the love of Carl's J
Things Kim Kardashian is famous for:
(1) Having an abnormally large ass
(2) Having a sex tape
(3) Having an unwatchable reality show about her annoying family
(4) Dating NFL "star" Reggie Bush
If you can think of how one of those connects to salad, I'm all ears.
This is, of course, the same company that figured Paris Hilton washing a car was a good way to sell a hamburger, or that professional mannequin Audrina Patridge was a good spokesperson. I'm not necessarily surprised that their latest pitch involves a more or less attractive woman who really should not be famous at all. That's apparently their thing. But that doesn't make it any less annoying.
Kim Kardashian: "I'm such a neat freak. Everything's gotta be clean, crisp and tasty."
What? This copy makes no sense. Also, what kind of neat freak fucking eats a salad in bed and/or with their fingers? Fuck you, Carl's Jr. ad writers.
Also, when your pitchwoman is most famous for having a sex tape, do you really want to go here:
Oh, you do? Okay. Mmm, jizzed-on apples. Delicious.
(To go off-topic for just a minute, here's an underrated fact about the whole sex tape thing: neither Kim Kardashian nor her sex-tape paramour Ray J were particularly famous. Usually people notice/care about sex tapes when they star people who are already famous, like Pamela Anderson or Rob Lowe. But Kardashian and Ray J were not really famous. If anything, they both had small amounts of fame, but only for having connections to much more famous people; Kardashian was a socialite friend of Paris Hilton's - someone else whose fame springs heavily from a sex tape - and Ray J is the brother of singer Brandy. Then they made a sex tape and somehow both of them got TV shows out of it. The math on that is a little weird, right? But I digress.)
Kim: "And while the best things in life are messy..."
Uh... I don't even know what to say about this. Let's just move on.
Kim: "It's fun to get clean." [gets into bathtub]
This is basically nudity-free pornography at this point, isn't it? How can the FCC even justify letting Carl's Jr. run this on television? On the one hand, okay, there's certainly no nudity or bad language, and you could argue that any children who are young enough such that this ad is "inappropriate" for them simply won't see the innuendo in things like a drop of glistening translucent salad dressing falling within inches of Kim Kardashian's cleavage.
On the other hand, the dialogue makes no sense and is completely inconsistent. As a result, the ad can't claim to be doing anything other than trying to sell a salad by introducing sex into the mix. Why, here comes the tagline:
Announcer: "Who said salads can't be hot?"
Well, I can't say I would recommend eating a fully-dressed salad (a) in bed, (b) in the bathtub, or (c) with your fingers. So if that's what it takes to make a salad "hot," I guess I'm saying salads can't be hot.
Announcer: "The new Cranberry Apple Walnut Grilled Chicken Salad... one of three new premium salads at Carl's Jr."
Wait a minute. You would have to assume that an ad like this is built to appeal to men (specifically heterosexual men). And what they're selling is a cranberry apple walnut salad? Not to stereotype, but come on, that is approximately the least manly salad imaginable. This ad, which implicitly compares a woman eating an apple slice to oral sex, cannot possibly be aimed at women, even though they are the clear market for such a salad. The burger commercials at least made sense from this standpoint - the guys watching can (theoretically) drool over the hot chick in the bikini while also getting excited for the enormous burger she's eating.
But this is a salad. The kind of guy who is watching an ad like this and thinking about going to Carl's Jr. because he likes big butts and cannot lie is probably not the kind of guy who is going to Carl's Jr. for a salad. And even if he were, making your salad dressing visually recall semen is not the way to get him in the door.
(1) Having an abnormally large ass
(2) Having a sex tape
(3) Having an unwatchable reality show about her annoying family
(4) Dating NFL "star" Reggie Bush
If you can think of how one of those connects to salad, I'm all ears.
This is, of course, the same company that figured Paris Hilton washing a car was a good way to sell a hamburger, or that professional mannequin Audrina Patridge was a good spokesperson. I'm not necessarily surprised that their latest pitch involves a more or less attractive woman who really should not be famous at all. That's apparently their thing. But that doesn't make it any less annoying.
Kim Kardashian: "I'm such a neat freak. Everything's gotta be clean, crisp and tasty."
What? This copy makes no sense. Also, what kind of neat freak fucking eats a salad in bed and/or with their fingers? Fuck you, Carl's Jr. ad writers.
Also, when your pitchwoman is most famous for having a sex tape, do you really want to go here:
Oh, you do? Okay. Mmm, jizzed-on apples. Delicious.
(To go off-topic for just a minute, here's an underrated fact about the whole sex tape thing: neither Kim Kardashian nor her sex-tape paramour Ray J were particularly famous. Usually people notice/care about sex tapes when they star people who are already famous, like Pamela Anderson or Rob Lowe. But Kardashian and Ray J were not really famous. If anything, they both had small amounts of fame, but only for having connections to much more famous people; Kardashian was a socialite friend of Paris Hilton's - someone else whose fame springs heavily from a sex tape - and Ray J is the brother of singer Brandy. Then they made a sex tape and somehow both of them got TV shows out of it. The math on that is a little weird, right? But I digress.)
Kim: "And while the best things in life are messy..."
Uh... I don't even know what to say about this. Let's just move on.
Kim: "It's fun to get clean." [gets into bathtub]
This is basically nudity-free pornography at this point, isn't it? How can the FCC even justify letting Carl's Jr. run this on television? On the one hand, okay, there's certainly no nudity or bad language, and you could argue that any children who are young enough such that this ad is "inappropriate" for them simply won't see the innuendo in things like a drop of glistening translucent salad dressing falling within inches of Kim Kardashian's cleavage.
On the other hand, the dialogue makes no sense and is completely inconsistent. As a result, the ad can't claim to be doing anything other than trying to sell a salad by introducing sex into the mix. Why, here comes the tagline:
Announcer: "Who said salads can't be hot?"
Well, I can't say I would recommend eating a fully-dressed salad (a) in bed, (b) in the bathtub, or (c) with your fingers. So if that's what it takes to make a salad "hot," I guess I'm saying salads can't be hot.
Announcer: "The new Cranberry Apple Walnut Grilled Chicken Salad... one of three new premium salads at Carl's Jr."
Wait a minute. You would have to assume that an ad like this is built to appeal to men (specifically heterosexual men). And what they're selling is a cranberry apple walnut salad? Not to stereotype, but come on, that is approximately the least manly salad imaginable. This ad, which implicitly compares a woman eating an apple slice to oral sex, cannot possibly be aimed at women, even though they are the clear market for such a salad. The burger commercials at least made sense from this standpoint - the guys watching can (theoretically) drool over the hot chick in the bikini while also getting excited for the enormous burger she's eating.
But this is a salad. The kind of guy who is watching an ad like this and thinking about going to Carl's Jr. because he likes big butts and cannot lie is probably not the kind of guy who is going to Carl's Jr. for a salad. And even if he were, making your salad dressing visually recall semen is not the way to get him in the door.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Damn that Biz Markie, he's so hot right now
Leave it to the advertising machine to unearth another one.
At the risk of making some readers of this blog (and for that matter some authors of this blog) feel old, "Just a Friend" is now twenty years old. Granted, it was a #1 hit, but is one completely out of context line from the end of the song really a sufficient building block for a commercial in 2009?
RadioShack Ad Exec: Okay, we need a popular song for our ad, but we don't want to pay that much. Someone name some one-hit wonders from 15 or 20 years ago.
Underling 1: Deep Blue Something!
Underling 2: Deee-Lite!
Underling 3: Bobby McFerrin!
Underling 4: You're all idiots. The right answer is Biz Markie.
Underlings 1, 2, and 3: Ohhh, of course, you're right, etc.
Exec: Do I know the song you're talking about?
Underling 1: You know, the one that goes "You, you got what I need..."
Exec: Oh, right. So we could use that, and be like, "The Shack has got what you need this Christmas."
Underling 4: No way. We should use the "Oh, snap, guess what I saw" line. It sells cameras without even changing the words!
Exec: There's a line that goes like that?
Underling 4: Uh, yeah. It's only the best line in the song. Why, I heard a group of teenagers quoting it to each other on the street just the other day.
Exec: I guess I'll take your word for it. Run with it, people!
[Later.]
Underling 2: Did you really hear a group of teenagers quoting the "Oh, snap" line to each other?
Underling 4: Of course not. But that's my dad's favorite line in the song. Every time he hears it he gives me a piece of candy. So when this thing runs, cha-ching!
Underling 2: Aren't you too old to be doing things based on the fact that you would get candy?
Underling 4: Hey, there's Kit Kats in this vending machine today!
Note that the things Biz sees in the ad are breakdancing penguins (breakdancing, also extremely timely!) and a rabbit acting as a DJ, because I guess if you use a rap song in your commercial then everything related to it also has to be "urban."
The most unfortunate fact about the Radio Shack ad, albeit something which they probably could not have known about when they decided to run it, is that there's currently another ad using the exact same song, and in much better fashion:
What the Heineken ad lacks in Biz Markie's actual presence it more than makes up for by playing the part of the song that everyone actually knows, rather than some random part that happens to sound a little bit like he's using a camera. Sure, it's at least as much a 30-second ad for the song as it is an ad for anything else - and frankly I could stand Heineken being a little clearer on the fact that this is an ad promoting not driving after drinking - but it's significantly more fun than the stupid Radio Shack ad and well-intentioned to boot.
At the risk of making some readers of this blog (and for that matter some authors of this blog) feel old, "Just a Friend" is now twenty years old. Granted, it was a #1 hit, but is one completely out of context line from the end of the song really a sufficient building block for a commercial in 2009?
RadioShack Ad Exec: Okay, we need a popular song for our ad, but we don't want to pay that much. Someone name some one-hit wonders from 15 or 20 years ago.
Underling 1: Deep Blue Something!
Underling 2: Deee-Lite!
Underling 3: Bobby McFerrin!
Underling 4: You're all idiots. The right answer is Biz Markie.
Underlings 1, 2, and 3: Ohhh, of course, you're right, etc.
Exec: Do I know the song you're talking about?
Underling 1: You know, the one that goes "You, you got what I need..."
Exec: Oh, right. So we could use that, and be like, "The Shack has got what you need this Christmas."
Underling 4: No way. We should use the "Oh, snap, guess what I saw" line. It sells cameras without even changing the words!
Exec: There's a line that goes like that?
Underling 4: Uh, yeah. It's only the best line in the song. Why, I heard a group of teenagers quoting it to each other on the street just the other day.
Exec: I guess I'll take your word for it. Run with it, people!
[Later.]
Underling 2: Did you really hear a group of teenagers quoting the "Oh, snap" line to each other?
Underling 4: Of course not. But that's my dad's favorite line in the song. Every time he hears it he gives me a piece of candy. So when this thing runs, cha-ching!
Underling 2: Aren't you too old to be doing things based on the fact that you would get candy?
Underling 4: Hey, there's Kit Kats in this vending machine today!
Note that the things Biz sees in the ad are breakdancing penguins (breakdancing, also extremely timely!) and a rabbit acting as a DJ, because I guess if you use a rap song in your commercial then everything related to it also has to be "urban."
The most unfortunate fact about the Radio Shack ad, albeit something which they probably could not have known about when they decided to run it, is that there's currently another ad using the exact same song, and in much better fashion:
What the Heineken ad lacks in Biz Markie's actual presence it more than makes up for by playing the part of the song that everyone actually knows, rather than some random part that happens to sound a little bit like he's using a camera. Sure, it's at least as much a 30-second ad for the song as it is an ad for anything else - and frankly I could stand Heineken being a little clearer on the fact that this is an ad promoting not driving after drinking - but it's significantly more fun than the stupid Radio Shack ad and well-intentioned to boot.
Friday, December 25, 2009
There's a bunch of crap for that
I cannot stand commercials that simply refuse to make a lick of goddamn sense.
This means nothing. This is nothing. Why do the reindeer need "maps"? The maps are supposed to show Verizon's 3G coverage in the United States. (Santa Claus, if real, is not located in the United States.) The reindeer somehow need 3G coverage? And it somehow matters that all eight (nine?) of them have Verizon's network? Good luck getting a reindeer to work a phone, by the way. Shouldn't Santa just have a phone? The reindeer are all pulling the same sleigh - even if their 3G coverage was in any way relevant, I'm pretty sure seven out of eight would be sufficient.
Hey, here's a thought. Maybe instead of completely wasting the first ten seconds of the commercial on nothing at all, you could have spent some of that time doing anything to explain why Blitzen's "map" is a problem, other than having the smarmy-ass reindeer next to him just go "Uh, your map?" No, you'll stick with that? Okay.
The jabs in this war between AT&T and Verizon are really getting increasingly ridiculous. See, for particular example, this AT&T ad:
"Hey, you see this thing that has no connection to reality whatsoever? AT&T totally does it faster than Verizon!" Most of the AT&T commercials in response to Verizon's "there's a map for that" ads have really been oddly evasive (presumably out of necessity). Verizon's talking about our coverage? Better talk about download speeds! But be sure to make it really opaque by not giving any real examples and instead discussing how long it would take to download a complete human being. What? Or how about this one:
Really, you have to love the way both of them are pretending that the other's network is a total piece of shit when, if we take all the claims in these ads at more or less face value, there are perfectly legitimate reasons for each to be preferred by certain people. If you live somewhere where both have coverage, maybe you'd prefer AT&T and its better download speeds. But if you live in one of the many, many places that apparently don't get AT&T, maybe you'd prefer Verizon. Over nothing.
Ultimately, though, I think Verizon comes out on top, mostly because AT&T's biggest initial response was a classic example of selective omission:
You notice what he's not saying in there, of course - 3G. Verizon's ads talk about how their 3G coverage is better, so AT&T responds by saying, "Verizon's talking about coverage. Well, here's who AT&T covers!" Not who AT&T covers with 3G... just people who can use AT&T wireless phone service at all. Yeah, that's not deceptive. You'll notice that they don't mention the 97% of Americans thing in any of their ads talking about 3G speed and such. Also, in this ad they only mention ten cities, most of which are very large. Wow, you have coverage in major US cities, AT&T? No way! (Not the first time AT&T has felt it necessary to brag about having coverage in large American cities as though that were uncommon, it should be noted.)
For being somewhat less deceptive and not using a Luke Wilson in full smug as their spokesman, I give this round to Verizon. On the other hand, if this ad means that we've finally gotten rid of that awful family and their one-note joke about wanting to use new minutes, AT&T wins by default.
This means nothing. This is nothing. Why do the reindeer need "maps"? The maps are supposed to show Verizon's 3G coverage in the United States. (Santa Claus, if real, is not located in the United States.) The reindeer somehow need 3G coverage? And it somehow matters that all eight (nine?) of them have Verizon's network? Good luck getting a reindeer to work a phone, by the way. Shouldn't Santa just have a phone? The reindeer are all pulling the same sleigh - even if their 3G coverage was in any way relevant, I'm pretty sure seven out of eight would be sufficient.
Hey, here's a thought. Maybe instead of completely wasting the first ten seconds of the commercial on nothing at all, you could have spent some of that time doing anything to explain why Blitzen's "map" is a problem, other than having the smarmy-ass reindeer next to him just go "Uh, your map?" No, you'll stick with that? Okay.
The jabs in this war between AT&T and Verizon are really getting increasingly ridiculous. See, for particular example, this AT&T ad:
"Hey, you see this thing that has no connection to reality whatsoever? AT&T totally does it faster than Verizon!" Most of the AT&T commercials in response to Verizon's "there's a map for that" ads have really been oddly evasive (presumably out of necessity). Verizon's talking about our coverage? Better talk about download speeds! But be sure to make it really opaque by not giving any real examples and instead discussing how long it would take to download a complete human being. What? Or how about this one:
Really, you have to love the way both of them are pretending that the other's network is a total piece of shit when, if we take all the claims in these ads at more or less face value, there are perfectly legitimate reasons for each to be preferred by certain people. If you live somewhere where both have coverage, maybe you'd prefer AT&T and its better download speeds. But if you live in one of the many, many places that apparently don't get AT&T, maybe you'd prefer Verizon. Over nothing.
Ultimately, though, I think Verizon comes out on top, mostly because AT&T's biggest initial response was a classic example of selective omission:
You notice what he's not saying in there, of course - 3G. Verizon's ads talk about how their 3G coverage is better, so AT&T responds by saying, "Verizon's talking about coverage. Well, here's who AT&T covers!" Not who AT&T covers with 3G... just people who can use AT&T wireless phone service at all. Yeah, that's not deceptive. You'll notice that they don't mention the 97% of Americans thing in any of their ads talking about 3G speed and such. Also, in this ad they only mention ten cities, most of which are very large. Wow, you have coverage in major US cities, AT&T? No way! (Not the first time AT&T has felt it necessary to brag about having coverage in large American cities as though that were uncommon, it should be noted.)
For being somewhat less deceptive and not using a Luke Wilson in full smug as their spokesman, I give this round to Verizon. On the other hand, if this ad means that we've finally gotten rid of that awful family and their one-note joke about wanting to use new minutes, AT&T wins by default.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
The unfunny valley
You guys know the cartoon dude on the Airborne package, right? What? You don't? You barely even know what Airborne is? Oh, inexcusable, friends. That is a famous cartoon spokesman, right there. So famous that he has to be used in a commercial, even when it's completely awkward and weird-looking.
Yes, that classic character, "Mediocre illustration of some guy in a suit on a plane." If you can come up with a single reason why they couldn't just have had him transform into a real guy for this ad, I'd love to hear it. I'm almost positive that would have been cheaper and taken much less time, and it would not have looked horribly creepy to see a human baby being handed to a human man. Unlike here, where it's completely weird to see the baby awkwardly loaded into the arms ofsome guy in a green Lycra bodysuit our "hero." Is the baby so upset because it's half-human, half-cartoon and is teething with garish, animated teeth that will sing and dance across its gums?
I do enjoy, on some level, how delightfully desperate this ad is. It's almost like it's a response to dwindling business travel as a result of the recession. "Wait, Airborne isn't just to help boost your immune system while traveling on planes, where diseases can run rampant! You can use it at literally any time! For example, when life gets 'out of control' or 'catches up to you!'" Come on, Airborne. Those aren't even really two different things, to say nothing of the fact that the situations involved are textbook examples of "this is structured like something that's supposed to be funny, but you could not point to a single thing that is actually funny about it." My teenage daughter brought a questionable boyfriend home? Oh no, my immune system! Maybe if she had an actual human father she wouldn't feel such a need to rebel. Or maybe she's lashing out because he's clearly never home - at the end of the ad, his wife kisses him and says "Night, dear," and what does he do? He gets right back onto the airplane on the box! "Well, that's my 15 seconds at home for the year. See you in 2010, kids!"
Also, isn't the whole point of Airborne that it's an "on the go" type of thing? Look at that little tube it comes in! I'm supposed to use this even at my own house, where I surely have orange juice and vitamin supplements already if I'm that concerned about my immune system? This reminds me of those Cookie Crisp ads from the mid-90s that tried to sell a children's breakfast cereal (albeit an inappropriate one in the first place) as a snack to adults. If your product already has a very clear role in the marketplace, trying to ridiculously reposition it is rarely a good move. "No, really, you can use Airborne anywhere! Please use Airborne anywhere!" Not happening.
Yes, that classic character, "Mediocre illustration of some guy in a suit on a plane." If you can come up with a single reason why they couldn't just have had him transform into a real guy for this ad, I'd love to hear it. I'm almost positive that would have been cheaper and taken much less time, and it would not have looked horribly creepy to see a human baby being handed to a human man. Unlike here, where it's completely weird to see the baby awkwardly loaded into the arms of
I do enjoy, on some level, how delightfully desperate this ad is. It's almost like it's a response to dwindling business travel as a result of the recession. "Wait, Airborne isn't just to help boost your immune system while traveling on planes, where diseases can run rampant! You can use it at literally any time! For example, when life gets 'out of control' or 'catches up to you!'" Come on, Airborne. Those aren't even really two different things, to say nothing of the fact that the situations involved are textbook examples of "this is structured like something that's supposed to be funny, but you could not point to a single thing that is actually funny about it." My teenage daughter brought a questionable boyfriend home? Oh no, my immune system! Maybe if she had an actual human father she wouldn't feel such a need to rebel. Or maybe she's lashing out because he's clearly never home - at the end of the ad, his wife kisses him and says "Night, dear," and what does he do? He gets right back onto the airplane on the box! "Well, that's my 15 seconds at home for the year. See you in 2010, kids!"
Also, isn't the whole point of Airborne that it's an "on the go" type of thing? Look at that little tube it comes in! I'm supposed to use this even at my own house, where I surely have orange juice and vitamin supplements already if I'm that concerned about my immune system? This reminds me of those Cookie Crisp ads from the mid-90s that tried to sell a children's breakfast cereal (albeit an inappropriate one in the first place) as a snack to adults. If your product already has a very clear role in the marketplace, trying to ridiculously reposition it is rarely a good move. "No, really, you can use Airborne anywhere! Please use Airborne anywhere!" Not happening.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Imitation is the sincerest form of fattery
Say this much for Burger King - very few companies would make a commercial in which they come right out and say, "We're ripping off the product of our closest competitor."
Of course, you also have to consider that Burger King is apparently so stupid that they can't figure out how to make a Sausage McMuffin with Egg without stealing "blueprints" for it, even though all the ingredients are in the name.
I'll give the ad this: it gets the point across. "Hey, you like the McDonald's breakfast? We've got the exact same thing - seriously, it's pretty much identical - but we'll sell it to you for a dollar." McDonald's typically sells the same item for $2.49, a fairly significant difference.
Still, it strikes me as odd. Doesn't this pitch sort of smack of giving up? BK will always be the little brother to McDonald's, but this really just feels like "I'll show you! I'll start my own lemonade stand and I'll only charge ten cents a glass!" Has Burger King just decided they can't win on the merits of their food and is resorting to "we'll sell you McDonald's food for less than McDonald's will"? What's next, standing outside McDonald's restaurants with free sample trays?
Of course, you also have to consider that Burger King is apparently so stupid that they can't figure out how to make a Sausage McMuffin with Egg without stealing "blueprints" for it, even though all the ingredients are in the name.
I'll give the ad this: it gets the point across. "Hey, you like the McDonald's breakfast? We've got the exact same thing - seriously, it's pretty much identical - but we'll sell it to you for a dollar." McDonald's typically sells the same item for $2.49, a fairly significant difference.
Still, it strikes me as odd. Doesn't this pitch sort of smack of giving up? BK will always be the little brother to McDonald's, but this really just feels like "I'll show you! I'll start my own lemonade stand and I'll only charge ten cents a glass!" Has Burger King just decided they can't win on the merits of their food and is resorting to "we'll sell you McDonald's food for less than McDonald's will"? What's next, standing outside McDonald's restaurants with free sample trays?
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