Publix had a Valentines Day Ad where a little boy asked his mom’s help in baking a cake for his valentine. Turns out the cake was for mom the whole time.
For Mother’s Day there were 3 or 4 families - dads and kids making breakfast together - the kid’s finally ask, “is it time” and one little kid runs to the stairs yelling, “mom!”
Both of these sweet commericals are very moving.
I love Target’s commercials. Always very well done with striking visuals and good music.
I also used to love the one for American Express I think, where a guy is in a pet store trying to buy a pair of rabbits and the man at the counter keeps demanding proper i.d. It takes so long that the rabbits begin multiplying and at one point the store employee picks up one of the bunnies as if it were a phone.
It’s an oldie, but in the late seventies/early eighties there was a McDonald’s commercial which had a guy singing to his little sister. “Little sister–baby sister…you were six, I was ten…you cried DESPERATELY for a little ATTENTION from me.”
I always loved that one. The fact that the age difference was approximately the same between me and my own little sister didn’t hurt.
Did this Citroen C4 ad get aired in the US?
It’s brilliant. The car turns into a transformer and then boogies down.
I don’t usually like car adverts. Miles of open road, good weather, fantastic scenery. Not like real life.
But Honda have done a couple of decent adverts. One shows a ‘chain reaction’ of car parts, the other features a choir imitating a car journey…
(I did find both these on the Web, but I’m not sure if I’m supposed to steer you to them.)
I like the Honda Element ads with Owen Wilson as the voice of the car, having bizarre conversations with little animated animals. Especially one with the crab. “I pinch.”
The Verizon commercial with the two guys dancing to “Push It” by Salt and Pepa. Still cracks me up every time.
My current favorite is a Home Depot ad. A guy wants to paint his den, and as he wanders through the store, all types of mascots, cheerleaders and the like try to get his attention. He finally makes his selection. The ad ends with him sitting in his chair in a room colored with the Oakland A’s colors, passing popcorn to the A’s Elephant while they watch the game.
I like amena. It’s one of the cellphone carriers in Spain. They go for, uhm, how do you say “hortera”… uhm… you know the “Love Shack” video? OK, that’s about as amena-style hortera as it gets. Some people do hortera taking it seriously; amena, like the B-52’s, does it with their tongue planted firmly in their cheek.
The last batch:
some guy playing a piano. He’s singing a pretty bad ditty about being a piano teacher. The whole thing looks a lot like the bad adverts you get for local businesses in movie theaters, only the voiceover in this one doesn’t sound like whomever’s reading it has a bad cold.
First time we saw it, and right after Mom said “oh my God, what a LOUSY ad!” - the voiceover changed to a different voice saying “with amena’s new business prices, you’ll save enough to get your business advertised!” That’s where we realized the piano guy was wearing an amena-green sweater; compared with previous amena campaigns this one has almost no green.
They’ve been rolling out other versions (a private hospital, a travel agency…) and the thing is, as soon as an ad bad enough to play in a movie theater comes up, people say “hey, is that for amena? I hadn’t seen that one”. And yes, it is for amena.
I also like the latest “do you like driving” for BMW. A BMW ad that makes me feel snuggly about my Yaris… “the people who always have to pass; the people who need more HP; the people who buy a car for its looks… maybe they’ve missed the whole point”
I like one with M & M’s where it’s raining candy and the camera pulls up into the sky and you see the park is shaped like a kaleidoscope.
There’s one now for Target stores where there’s a '60’s mod look to it and lots of primary color squares everywhere then just the woman tossing bright green squares.
Happy images.
My favorite is for Kraft Easy Mac. There is a guy in his dorm just sitting there with a spoon and a container. His room mate walks in, says
Roomie: “What are you doin?”
Guy: " Eatin cottage cheese"
Roomie: “But thats a milk carton. Cottage cheese doesn’t come in milk cartons”
Guy: “OK”
and the guy continues to eat his “cottage cheese” with his spoon
I like the recent cellphone ad where a prospective customer is at a loss for words at how attractive the cellphone program’s terms are.
“Let’s step over to the Wheel of Adjectives,” the sales rep suggests.
The customer spins the wheel, reads it and says with gusto, “That’s amazing!”
I like the cell phone commercials with the silliness over how great their deal is:
“You should make a big deal out of this” followed by the cut to the guy singing their deal in an operatic style.
“I feel like jumping up and down and screaming in joy.” “we have a room for that.” followed by the happy customers doing dances of joy over their new cell phone plan.
Not that I’m going to buy this particular phone or plan or anything - it just strikes me as funny.
There’s the Sony Bravia ad with the ten thousand colored balls bouncing down San Francisco. It’s really beautiful. As with the Honda ads referenced by glee above, I’ve never seen it broadcast here in the US, so I’ve only seen these ads after downloading them.
And that’s really a good point; if the advertisers can make their ads compelling enough, we’ll hear about them through word of mouth and will seek them out.
I like the Sprint (I think) ad where there is some typical white-collar WSP corporate bigwig in his expansive office with windows overlooking the city. His flunky notices his cell phone,
Flunkie: “Is that your new phone?”
Bigwig: “Yes, with Sprints fair and flexible plan I can call whomever and whenever I want. It’s my little way of sticking it to the man.”
Flunkie: “But you are the man.”
Bigwig: “I know.”
Flunkie: So you’re sticking it to yourself?"
Bigwig: “Maybe.”
That’s the one I came in here to mention. I first saw it on a day when I was sick, and it was one of the few things that day that made me laugh.
“No peench?” 
My other favorite is a radio commercial–I think they’re for Budweiser or Bud Light, and feature an overwrought-80’s-style-hair-band vocalist and the announcer saluting “unsung heroes.” What’s great about them is that while the announcer is saying things about the person, the singer is dropping in funny asides (for example, one of them is about “Mr. Egg Nog Inventor,” and the singer chimes in with “what the hell is nog?” In another one I just heard last night, the honoree is the inventor of Buffalo Wings (which are, according to the commercial, so good because you can’t tell if they’re wing, or leg, or rear end) and the singer’s comment is “Hope I’m not eating rear end!”)
These never fail to make me chuckle.
The new Vonage ads are pretty funny. There’s one where a woman is explaining how easy it was to install. In the background, her husband is doing all of these really bad dance moves, the look on her face after she sees him is absolutely priceless. The other has a guy in a lobster suit passing out flyers in the background. I literally can’t watch that one without cracking up.
Also, cute is the Cheerio’s ad with the little girl walking toward a bed singing “Happy Mother’s Day” to the tune of Happy Birthday. She’s just singing away when her dad pokes his head from under the covers and says “Huh?”. The look on that little girl’s face makes me wonder if the director didn’t surprise her to get that reaction.
There’s a new GE Ecomagination ad that seems aimed at the DVR crowd. It’s the one with the elephant dancing and at the end several text screens flash by quickly. I think they intend that you freeze frame through them to read the text, but I wasn’t able to do so using my Comcast DVR. They know that people are fast-forwarding or skipping through the commercials and they’re trying tactics to capture attention.
Of course that’s “Real Men of Genius”…those Bud commercials are really hilarious. And effective because evidently they have been running different ones since 2000. (Originally it was called Real American Heroes, but they changed it after 09-11)
Here’s a link to a list of all the different “guys” they have saluted over the years…
Real Men of Genius
These are two that first came to mind when I saw this thread. Another is from Geico–I know, I know, I’ll be in the minority here, but I get so tickled at the “cavemen” he’s apologizing to. One of them is so metrosexual–and I love the other one saying, “I don’t have much of an appetite, thank you.” Unsaid, of course, (but stated clearly by the look on his face) is the rest–“since I’m sitting across from such a bigoted asshole!”