You have to get up out of bed the first time in order to fall down.
One that keeps cropping up here and there to bug me is “at [company name], we believe everyone has the right to [our banal and not even remotely necessary product]”
I mean, yes, everyone should have the right to life, liberty, freedom of speech, clean water, privacy, stuff like that, but “We believe everyone should have the right to access the internet on their mobile phone” ? Gimme a break.
What the heck was the name of that late 80’s or early 90’s movie where the Ad guy cracks up and just comes out with incredibly honest ads, which wind up being very successful?
Some examples:
Jaguar: Sports cars for old men who want blow jobs from young pretty women.
Or…
Drink Metamucil or you’ll get colon cancer and die.
Crazy People, starring Dudley Moore.
God I love that song.
Ah, yes. I looked it up and found an old Larry King interview of Dudley Moore and read the transcript (yes, I read a Larry King transcript!).
Dudley Moore pointed out that he actually came up with some of the slogans and that at no point did anyone clear anything with the makers of the actual products and no one ever felt heat for it.
I hear car ads all the time on the radio where they say something like, “This week only, all reasonable offers will be accepted.”
What, other times in the year you only accept unreasonable offers? Fuckwads.
Tab Energy has a wealth of senseless slogans.
“A deliciously pink, low-cal energy drink…”
Okay… deliciously pink? Mindless, but not egregiously so. But “low-cal energy drink”? What next? Low-water hydration drinks?
It actually spells it out right there on the can: “LOW CALORIE ENERGY DRINK”. How on earth can they get away with selling this stuff? And even to include the word “Energy” in a deliberately low-energy product just seems… dumber than dumb.
Well, I suppose it does contain 5 calories per can so you’d only have to drink 400 cans in order to get your daily energy requirements…
I remember an old movie promo that said, “Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short are together again for the first time in Three Amigos!”
Wait, what?
Maybe they thought there would be something wrong with labelling it “Low Calorie Meth and Caffiene Solution.”
Yes, egregiously so, once you realize that the drink isn’t even pink. Only the can is.
The one that gets me every April is that pretentious Masters golf slogan, “The Masters: A Tradition Like No Other.”
Talk about an empty phrase. They ought to change the name of the tourney to Green Jackets R Us.
Well, only the can was labelled as such! 
I worked at a 7-Eleven-type store for a while a few years ago. We had that stuff in stock. In all the time I worked there we never had to replace any of the cans on the shelf because we never sold a single one.
Fair enough, but my point earlier was that the “manufacturers” of “bottled” water often aren’t doing anything special to make the water taste good or better. They’re just hooking a pipe to a city’s treatment plant and piping the stuff straight into the bottles. (I didn’t make up the part about Worthington, Ohio being the source of one brand. Can’t remember which it is, though.)
Obviously, they’re not going to the places you’ve described to get their water, but the point of municipal water treatment is water that’s safe, not water that tastes good. The worse the end result tastes the more polluted the original source probably was and the more chlorine and other treatment it needed, unless there are mineral deposits in there too.
Clean water is one of the major unrecognized benefits of our society’s level of sophistication, the kind of thing you don’t appreciate until it’s gone. The people who sell bottled water want you to think your choice is betwen their product and some dreck from the tap; but for billions of people in the world it’s either bottled water or water that gives you dysentery. Their governments don’t treat the water for them.
I remember talking to a local woman who went to Rwanda on a missionary trip. Water-borne diseases are a fact of life there, and she said peple spend half their day just walking around to fill a jug with enough water to last them a day or so.
Yeah, I guess that’s a bit far removed from the point about bottled water. But it’s what I think of when someone asks me why I would want to drink that “nasty” water from the tap.
Weeeellllll…
I know what you’re saying (since calories are basically energy), but it contains a buttload of caffeine and probably a random combination of guarana/ginseng/taurine/b vitamins. I’d say they’re using “energy” in the more colloquial “hey, I feel a bit more alert and bright” instead of strict calories -> energy.
I think you were whooshed. That was a comedy.
Many many years ago, when I was just a lad, the City of Rochester used to pump out TV ads with the tag line, “It’s got it!”
Last night on the news there was some item about a tainted water supply in some nearby town. Residents were told not to drink or cook with it, maybe even bathe in it. Bottled water would come in mighty handy, I suspect.
Topical Viagra? Yes, years ago I heard that such a thing was in development. I have no idea if it even went to clinical trials.
I loved the diet product that, when taken in conjunction with exercise and proper diet, would cause weight loss.
There’s a local car place that has the jingle: “Bob Baker Chevrolet, where it’s so nice to be nice.”
Senselessness with a gooey center.
The one I have not forgotten 30 years later was the local furniture store which ended its commercials with, “Open every day. And Sunday too!”
Yeah, well, you never know. Last year I tried make reservations at a restaurant that was “Open year-round.” What they failed to mention was “starting in April.”