So, this is the premise of this ad. There are people out there who have hoarded so much wealth that they've run out of legitimate ways to spend it and are purchasing yachts for their dogs. And we aren't supposed get mad. We're supposed to believe that, like the regular guy in the ad, we can, on a waiter's salary. invest so smartly in the stock market that we too can become fabulously wealthy so that way everyone's happy! Right? I mean, as an hourly wage-earner, there's really no reason you shouldn't be able to save up a little nest egg and then invest all of it in the Wall Street casino and then probably your stocks will double in value, then double again and again until your meager pitiful little life savings becomes a vast fortune. Because that's how it works, right?
Are you poor? Are you living paycheck to paycheck? Are you struggling to make ends meet? Well, whose fault is that? Yours, of course, because youi aren't doing what the smart dog-yacht-owning people are doing and increasing your wealth exponentially with on-line investing. What are you stupid or something? All you have to do is go on line, put in all the extra money you have lying around, pick a stock that is going top be the next Google or the next Amazon or whatever and bingo bango you're rich!
It reminds me of the old Steve Martin bit about how you can be a millionaire and never pay taxes. First - get a million dollars.
Okay, first of all, this is just not clever. It's not exactly an original idea to have some ambient noise drown out a speaker when he/she uses an expletive.
It's been done.
And it's been done with much more likable, charismatic speakers. (At least once on an episode of Seinfeld).
But putting that aside, Is this really supposed to make me want to try your new sauce? Because every time I hear "____ Sauce," my brain automatically autocompletes it to "shit sauce." I mean, it's a one-syllable expletive, there aren't a lot of good oiptions.
Also it looks like this.
And it's "%@$#" sauce, so I assume that's four letters. So what is the least unappetizing word it could be?
Dick Sauce?
Fuck sauce?
C**t Sauce?
There's really no good option.
I guess maybe "Hell Sauce" if it's super hot? But you really don't need to censor the word "Hell." Not even on network TV in primetime.
Popeye's has a terrible ad campaign anyway, with the lady who's trying to walk the line of sounding like she could plausibly be from Louisiana without sounding like some kind of stereotype. (Spoiler alert: She can not) But this is a whole new level of dumb.
If you'd've asked me yesterday, I would have said the worst political ad of the year was this Ted Cruz nonsense: https://youtu.be/MvKElqdUxZg in which a man named Raphael who goes by "Ted" takes a shot at a man named Robert for going by "Beto" while "singing" a third-rate "country" "song" about how you can't be a liberal in Texas as if no one remembers Ann Richards or Jim Hightower or Molly Ivins.
But today, I heard this crime against humanity:
Watch it if you want, but it will be the longest 44 seconds of your life.
Actually, yeah, go ahead and click "play" or you won't get what I'm talking about but don't be a hero. Bail out when you start to feel your brain collapse in on itself.
Okay, first of all, what the hell?
I mean, seriously, what the hell is this supposed to be? Someone got paid to make this thing?
And where did they find this poor kid to "sing" this atrocity? I don't want to be the kind of person who gets shitty about kids but for fuck sake, this kid couldn't carry a tune in a bucket with both hands duct-taped to the handle.
And someone, presumably another small child, is tentatively picking out the tune on one of those plastic recorders they give to kindergarteners to instill a lifelong hatred of music in them and their entire families.
I mean, presumably they would want you to watch the entirety of this ad, right? Yet it seems designed specifically to drive you away. If this was my child playing her very first recorder recital while my other child who had just overcome some disease that had kept her from singing was bravely singing along with her, I wouldn't last more than a minute before surreptitiously pulling the fire alarm and running out of the school auditorium straight to the Hallmark store to buy apology cards for everyone I had dragged in to hear this performance.
And they don't even bother to make the lyrics rhyme or even fit into the metre of the song.
AND, in case someone watching this ad still had a shred of sanity left, they top it off with constant "boing boing" sound effects which, if they would have drowned out the "singing" or recorder "playing," might have had some value, but it doesn't even do that.
This seems like it was designed less as a campaign ad and more as something that would be played on a loop to prisoners in Guantanamo Bay to force false confessions.
Okay, the first couple seconds, where he's punching a beehive I kinda get, but the rest?
First of all, why does Stallone feel like he has to use what I assume is his entire Spanish vocabulary to tell the other guy that his black eye is not good? I've had a black eye, I assume most of you have had one at one time or another (judging by your disrespectful attitudes!) everyone knows that a black eye is not "bueno."
Then he tells him to "be bold" by putting the steak on his eye. How is that bold? Hasn't this been a folk remedy for a black eye since forever? Also, does it even work? * Okay, it doesn't matter if it works, there's just nothing "bold" about putting a steak on a black eye. It's just a thing people do.
Then the other guy, who seems to speak English by the way, so I don't know why Stallone feels he has to pantomime things for him, tosses the streak on the grill and replies "be bolder!" How does that make any sense? How is using a steak for its intended purpose "bold?" Like, I could put the steak on my eye, but I'm going to do something, well. . . a little bit risky. You might think I'm crazy, but I'm going to take this slab of meat and cook it! And then presumably eat it. I know, I know, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? Fortune favors the bold!
And this is somehow supposed to make me want to buy their beer? I don't get it.
* according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology: Despite what you see in movies or on television, you should never put a
raw steak or other raw meat on a black eye. The bacteria on raw meat
poses a high risk of infection, and this method of treating a black eye
has no scientific basis.
The guy in the Domino's salad commercial just seems like the personification of the concept of toxic masculinity.
There's just such an ugly hostility to this ad. So much anger and contempt for the salad eaters who all just happen to be women, and all sort of seem smug and arrogant. It's like a 30-second helping of "women! Am I right? Always ruining all the fun!"
Also, there's this whole like "Ungh! Must eat man food! Salad for girls and girlymen! Must eat something to clog artery!" It reminds me of the "Just a Salad" episode of Seinfeld where Jerry's masculinity is called into question because he's trying to eat healthy.
So, fine. If it'll keep you broads from ruining pizza night, we'll start selling salads. Okay? Happy now? Geez! Can't we big tough macho men have one little thing we enjoy without you dames comin' along and spoiling it?
Hey, can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em, am I right?
Also, maybe try working on getting pizza right before you branch out into other foods, hmm?
What the hell is wrong with this kid's mom? The kid's father is deployed overseas. The kid, who obviously misses his dad, writes him letters. Now any normal mom would put those letters into an envelope and send them to the dad. But no, not this mom. She lets the kid fold the letters into paper airplanes and toss them over the fence, littering the neighbor's yard with sheets of paper.
she doesn't say to the kid "how far do you think you can throw a paper airplane? 30,40 feet? Maybe 50 with a tailwind? Do you have any idea how many feet it is to Iraq? Come on, we're going to the post office.
I mean, it'd be one thing if the dad was dead and the kid is trying to throw letters to Heaven, then I could see where you'd just humor the kid. But if the curmudgeonly old neighbor hadn't discovered a soft spot in his heart and mailed the letters to the guy's Army base (which, for some reason he knows where the guy is stationed), the kid would have just thought that his dad was ignoring his letters and doesn't love him. All because the mom was too stupid to buy an envelope and a stamp, or such a negligent parent that she has no idea that her kid is doing this and has anyone in this family heard of e-mail?
But, I guess that's their target market. The first few times I saw this ad, I assumed it was for UPS or FedEx or the Post Office, but no. It's for "Paper and Packaging." Paper and Packaging apparently need an ad campaign now. This commercial is apparently aimed at people who are thinking "Gee, I sure wish I had some sort of substance on which to write my words, and also some sort of, I don't know, container, I guess, to transport that substance from one place to another," see this ad and say "Paper? Packaging? Eureka! My prayers have been answered!"
Okay, Chevy has been running these "focus group" ads for a while now and first of all, Chevy, you're not fooling anyone. They all begin with the text "real people, not actors." They may not be professional actors, but come on. Those people are acting. No one in a focus group is this enthusiastic. Have you ever been in a focus group? I've been in a couple. Not to brag, but I helped choose the name "Zeltzer Seltzer."
Of the choices we were given, it was the least dumb.
If it had been up to me, I'd have gone with "Helter Skeltzer."
Anyway, in a real marketing research focus group, people are just there to get their 25 bucks or whatever it pays nowadays and go home. No one is excited. Especially when they know that the company is Chevrolet. So they know the product is going to be a car. And not a very good one. It's not like it's Steve Jobs walking out on stage and people are waiting in breathless anticipation to see what the latest hi tech gadget is going to be. But the super-annoying little weaselly guy says "today, I'm going to show you the 2017 shitmobile" and these not-actors act like kids on Christmas morning, just dying to see what Santa brought them.
Also, if you have any doubt about whether these are "real people," one of these ads has the weaselly guy take everyone's phones and toss them in a woodchipper and they're all like "whuuut???" No one yells or swears or says "what the hell is wrong with you?" or punches the weaselly guy right in his annoying weaselly snout.
(Okay, in the long version, a couple of them do make half-hearted attempts to stop him, but most just chucle and gape at him like he had suddenly broken into La Habenera" or something)
Also, there's one where he tells the people to describe the vehicle using only "emojis," and no one says, you know what, I don't really need the money that bad, let's just forget this while I still have a shred of dignity. I'm going to go home and take a Silkwood shower and then try to drink this memory away." No, they all gleefully choose various stupid little drawings to form some stupid little description of this stupid car or truck or whatever and they all act so proud of themselves and I die a little inside.
I believe this translates to "go fuck yourselves, millennials."
But this one takes the cake. They bring these people into a room and say I'm only going to show you half the car. Then the wall slides open for the big reveal. . . . . . It's a Hatchback! And they are DELIGHTED! They're really acting like this is some new innovation in the field of auto design. Like they think people don't know that hatchbacks have been around since at least the Seventies. And no one thought they were cool then, either. Practical, sure. But not cool.
I mean, the Pintos were kinda cool when they exploded I guess,
but that didn't happen nearly often enough.
One of the girls in the group even says, as though it were a compliment, "business in the front, party in the back," a phrase only ever used to describe the word's most embarrassing hairstyle.
Also, what "party" in the back? Has there ever been anyone who has seen a guy driving a hatchback and thought "now that guy knows how to Partayyyy!"
Damn, girl. This party's off tha CHAIN!
Anyway, here it is if you haven't seen it. I'm not responsible for any computers thrown out of windows.
I assume, and correct me if I'm wrong, that for a young LGBT person, coming out to one's parents is probably one of the scariest, most gut-wrenching things you can do. Knowing that your parents may reject you, may disown you, may treat you with contempt. . . I can't imagine how much nerve it would take. One woman I know told me that when she came out, her mother said "you sicken me." They've since repaired their relationship, but still, that had to be an unimaginably hurtful thing to hear.
So to take something this fraught with emotional hazards, so angst-filled and use it as a cheap joke to sell your cars is sinking pretty damn low.
And even if it weren't offensive, it's just a really stupid ad. Why in the hell would the father be upset by his son's choice of rich-guy douchemobile?
Goddammit, we're a BMW family, how dare you turn your back on your heritage?
If he had told his father he was converting to Islam or something. It's a fucking car, who would possibly be that butthurt over a fucking car?
Who has two thumbs and hates you for your choice of auto? This guy!
And there is nothing in this ad to recommend the Infinit. They don't ever say that it outperforms the BMW or is more reliable or holds its resale value better. It's just this idiotic idea that "just because your father drives a Beemer doesn't mean you can't buy an entirely different luxury sedan. Oh, sure, it's likely to upset the old guard, the traditionalists will never accept it, but you're the new Pepsi generation and you don't have to play by their stuffy old rules." which no one has ever thought ever.
No one is sitting around with $50k burning a hole in his pocket thinking "man, I wish I had the guts to buy an Infinit! But I'm not a courageous man, I'll probably just by a BMW so no one gets upset. Damn this middle-child syndrome! When is it MY turn to be happy?"
Also, fuck you, Infiniti, for trivializing the "coming out" experience. Taking a flippant, jocular approach to what is often (I assume) an extremely painful and highly anxiety-filled moent in many a young person's life is just really shameful.
Honestly, I love this ad. This ad makes me laugh every time I see it. And it's cute as heck. But it's really not a good ad. In fact, I would argue that it is bad. A bad ad, as it were.
And here's why.
This ad does NOT make we want to buy a Subaru. (it's Subaru, right? I think it's Subaru.) This ad makes me not want to buy any car at all. I mean, the whole point of the ad is that owning a car is a huuuuuge pain in the ass. Watching this ad makes me want to sell my car and move somewhere with a decent subway system. Like Paris. This would be a really good ad fro moving to Paris. But for a car company? Not so much.
Who made this ad? Who thought "maybe if we make our product seem unbelievably unpleasant to own, then. . . um. . . wait. I had something for this. . . " How did they think this was going to sell cars?
How many levels of approval does an ad have to get through before it makes it on the air?
The whole point of this ad seems to be that it's howlingly funny that this man:
. . . who is supposed to be, what, Yanomami? Guarani? anyway it's apparently supposed to be hilarious that this guy can speak proper English. This guy who is painted up like an extra from one of the Road movies, speaks like an intelligent, educated person and that's just supposed to funny? How is that not racist?
Trying to make the eating of a hamburger into an act of unbridled eroticism. Which must be working, because they've been doing this for years. I have to imagine that a lot of teenage boys are getting very disappointed when they bite into a burger and find it to be nearly entirely unlike sex with Kate Upton. ( I assume.)
And the green M&M has been around for a while.
But it seems to be getting worse.
Recently, Payday candy bars started running ads implying that their peanutty treats have genitalia.
And that they want to engage in some mutual exhibitionism with you.
Then there's this Klondike Ice Cream Kandy Bar ad which. . . well, see for yourself.
I don NOT want to think about the food I'm about to eat having sex with other food. How is that not creepy? And you're eating their baby? The Klondike guy and the candy bar lady get it on and then she gets pregnant, delivers a half-ice cream / half chocolate bar baby and you eat that?
Then there's this:
They're just coming right out and saying that a chicken fucked a box of french-fries and the abomination of "chicken fries" is the unnatural, ungodly bastard offspring of this coupling. And you should eat it.
Well, no thank you.
I don't want to think about the chicken I'm eating maybe having had sex with another chicken, let alone the level of depravity with which this hen hath debased herself. - conceiving the spawn of, not just another species, but a different classification of nature, a plant which is, by the way DEAD! It's been chopped up and fried. And she has lain down with this tuberous corpse and produced its ungodly spawn? She should be burned at the stake! Or at least on a rotisserie, maybe with a nice garlic and sage rub, after being brined overnight? Mmmmmmmm. . .
Liberty Mutual Insurance has recently been running a series of ads featuring the whiniest bunch of mopes complaining about their insurance coverage. They are so annoying I actually find myself on the side of the insurance companies. I find myself yelling things at the screen like "you got into an accident, of course your rates went up, idiot!"
Yeah, the accident is "no big deal" to you, but the insurance company has to pay out, so naturally your rates go up because you are a worse risk than they originally thought and goddammit, you just made me defend a fucking insurance company!
Jeezus Christ, you had the car for what, one hour, and you wrap it around a fucking tree? How is that not your fault? That tree wasn't moving, ya know. And what, the insurance company is just supposed to pretend like this is just one of those things that happens to people? You've made one payment on your policy and they're already out like 20 grand because you can't avoid a fucking tree! And you're going to whine about this? Like it's so unfair that your rates went up after you did the most cartoonishly irresponsible bit of driving possible? You're a menace! You're lucky they didn't cancel your policy, notify the DMV and make it their goal in life to prevent you ever buying another car. But sure, be a big baby about a rate increase, that's super endearing.
Then there's this moron:
So it's insurance for people who can't grasp the concept of depreciation?
That's a hell of a target market.
Look, I understand that you're entering an over-crowded marketplace. The "energy drink" market is pretty saturated already with Red Bull, Monster, Rockstar, Nos, Amp, Full Throttle, etc. etc. etc. . . . which are all pretty much the exact same thing with different made-up artificial flavors like "Khaos," "M-80" and "Bubbleberry." (Seriously, these are all actual names of energy drink flavors)
So it's tough to stand out. You have to come up with some kind of gimmick to set yourself apart from all the many many many other choices out there, and being "the one that tastes good" was going to take way too much effort, but this?
Your selling point here is, what? Your beverage gives you seizures? Then hallucinations? Boring, annoying, corny hallucinations? Wow, good luck with that!
First of all, this is just so maudlin and dreary. My grandma would have called it "schmaltzy." And using the strong emotional reactions that people have about the troops to sell your product is unseemly at best. It's just really tacky.
But the really odd thing is the choice of music. The song that they play under the ad is "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" which most people know either as a church hymn or as the song Robert Mitchum sings in Night of the Hunter. So it's either kind of sacrilegious or creepy.
Night of the Hunter, by the way, is an underrated movie. You should give it a viewing if its on Netflix or Hulu or whatever. Kind of a sad story about this movie, it was the first feature directed by actor Charles Laughton. The reviews were so cruel that he never directed another. Which is a shame because the problems with this movie were in the script, not the direction. He actually does some pretty cool camera stuff with light and shadows and whatnot. Check out Roger Ebert's glowing review : http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-night-of-the-hunter-1955
These are a bunch of grown-ass women screaming like teenyboppers who just saw the Beatles, and they're screaming about a phone that literally anyone can obtain? Nobody got this excited when the first mobile phone was invented, and that was a way bigger deal than a new, slightly different version of an existing phone.
How do they expect anyone to sit through this ad to the end? It's ear-shattering. It actually hurts to watch this ad. I have no idea what the deal is being offered because I've never seen the entire thing. How can this possibly be an effective ad?
Although at least it isn't as depressing as this one:
I don't get how this is supposed to encourage anyone to trade in their old phone. Because , is it just me, or do you feel really sorry for the old phone? My God, the desperation in that phone's mechanical voice is just palpable. The poor thing just seems terrified at the prospect of being deserted, yet the desertion process just grinds steadily along. This is more heartbreaking than the end of Shane.
How could anyone watch this ad and not pick up their phone, cradle it to their bosom and gently whisper, "don't worry Siri, I'd never trade you in?"
So you're saying that your wristwatch is a Star Wars robot leopard? Because what I'm getting from this is Star Wars robot leopard.
Although, to be fair, if it was a Star Wars robot leopard, then it might make sense for the kid in the end to be gazing longingly at it it through the shop window.
I mean, how old is this fuckin kid, like 10? What kind of a piece of shit kid is gazing dreamily at a Cartier fucking wristwatch like it was the coolest new toy he's ever seen? What the hell is wrong with this kid? He should be wanting a new bike or a Playstation or maybe a puppy, but no. All this sad, dainty little aristocrat wants is a god damn Cartier wristwatch?
And how is his father encouraging this? Like "why, that's a fine ambition, son. You've quite an eye for the finer things in life. You'll make some wintry, soulless heiress a fine husband someday. After all, you're never too younbg to be a stuffed shirt!"
How does he not smack the back of this kid's head and yell "snap out of it, young Niles Crane! We're going to Toys 'R' Us?"
Or behold your future!
Also, people buy things like Cartier wristwatches because they are status symbols. No one cares if behind the face beats the heart of a Star Wars robot leopard. Just make 'em fancy and expensive and you'll do just fine.
Okay, this woman speaks perfect English.
Perfect. Better than me.
See? that should have been "better than I," that's how poorly I spoeak English and I'm a goddamm 'Murican!
So, this woman speaks perfect English, why are you pointing at pictures? And why do you even have a picture of back pain? And you've been on this plane awhile. She's already started the beverage service, and you've been sitting there long enough that your back has seized up, but let's pretend that you're the kind of solipsistic prick who wouldn't have noticed how a lowly service industry person speaks. Maybe then we could excuse the initial picture-pointing, but once you've asked your first question, and she answers in PERFECT NON-ACCENTED ENGLISH, why the fuck are you still pantomiming "not having a heart attack" and "experiencing back pain?" Is it really just impossible for you to accept that this foreigny-looking woman could possibly speak English? Like she says "I have Bayer Aspirin" and you think "weird, her language bears a strong resemblance to English. I wonder what 'Bayer Aspirin' means in her language?"
And also, too, why does Bayer tyhink that they need to raise awareness that ASPIRIN is a pain reliever? Everyone knows this. The word "aspirin" is generally used as a generic term for analgesic, like people will say "I have a headache, do you have any aspirin?" and then other people will reply "sure," and then hand them Tylenol. Everyone knows that aspirin is for pain, that's it's main job. Preventing heart attacks is just sort of a sideline, a hobby. Saying "aspirin is good for pain relief" is like saying "did you know that soccer balls can also be kicked?"
The formula for this type of ad is usually pretty simple.
The pretty girl likes our product, so you should buy our product because of some reason. I guess maybe the pretty girl will get mixed up about what it is that she likes and will accidentally think she likes you because you are eating/drinking/driving our product?
Anyway, this ad tweaks that formula a bit. For some bizarre reason, they went with "pretty girl likes soccer, so you should buy a car?"
I had to see these ads several times before I even realized they were ads for cars. I thought they were promos for the World Cup, maybe ESPN spots? It can't possibly be an effective ad campaign if I'm confused as to what the ads are for.
I did final;ly figure out that they were car ads, but that didn't really make them much better. Because when I went to YouTube to find the video, I searched for "Hyundai World Cup ad." So, good job, Kia, the one car-related thing your ads made me think of was that Hyundai is the official car sponsor of the World Cup. Money well spent, Kia!
