The overstock.com ads work my nerves. It’s all about the o. No, it’s about me never buying from you because of those ads.
The worst for me are the homemade ads around here. A car dealer has an ad that is the bastard child of a monster truck rally and that OxyClean guy. Then there’s the cell phone place. The owner is this tool who’s stiff as a board in his delivery, throwing in a twitchy arm movement when prompted. He’s surrounded by people who are obviously family and friends dressed up to look hip, being hip by speaking hiply into their hip cell phones, but it’s clear they’re just mouthing the words (hiply), while the owner-tool robots around the store and the camera zooms in and around in an attempt to be hip. They were so busy being hip they screwed up the lighting and it’s all bleached out, too.
Then there’s the computer guy who does websites and tv ads. He’s his own worst enemy when it comes to advertising. In his ad most of the light in the room is provided by a single monitor so it’s like a cave. Some completely random guys talks and then the owner sloooowly turns around in his seat to sort of glare at the camera ala Orson Welles. Then great big clunky lettering flashes onto the screen to announce that this has been a Goofydude (or whatever) Video Production, like it was Gone With the Wind and credits were required.
I’m getting rather annoyed by the “I want to buy the World a Coke” commerical. The 70’s version was at least in keeping with the cheesiness of the Decade. This one is just sad.
I don’t know how I forgot about that one. Like Coca-Cola is some sort of metaphor for world peace or some shit. Yeah, you want to buy the world a coke, but most of the world just wants a fucking bag of rice and some water without a side helping of dysentery.
Is that the one with the dickhole playing a dobro and rapping the verses. He’s supposed to be some sort of hip street musician or something with a gathered crowd and the words are changed to “I’d like to teach the world to chill.” Man, I’d love to do a Belushi with that dobro.
I really hate ads from the American Military, which recently have been implying that life in the military is more exciting/meaningful than civilian life.
Exciting? Meaningful? When in six months you’ll get schlepped off to a desert where it’s likely you’ll get maimed or killed by disgruntled natives?
Har bloody har har.
Then there’s this really obnoxious man, self-styled “Super Dell” Schanze, whose main tactic for touting his knockoff computer shop involves screaming at the camera. He also really, really likes guns and sports cars, and once bought a one-hour night spot just so he could spout his rather interesting views on The Meaning of Life.
But even those aren’t as HORRIFIC as the ads for the local amusement park, which decided to hire a barbershop quartet to sing a jingle for it. It’s both thoroughly obnoxious and demonically catchy, so that even hearing half a second makes it ring in your brain for hours afterward, and you despise yourself for ever hearing the entire thing in the first place so it keeps going over and over and over…ARGH! Even thinking about it has started it up! If it were a traditional quartet, fine…but it’s got lots of beatboxing for whatever gods damn reason, and horrific squealing.
At least two of those locations listed are to now closed stores. I haven’t seen the other locations listed, maybe they do still exist, but many of my other construction buddies (who work all over town) have also mentioned the current lack of BKs in this city compared to when there happened to be BKs (that we knew of) everywhere. Playing further with the locator and the various suburbs brings up other locations that are closed former BKs. Any current eyewitness testimony of there still being open and active BKs in OKC would be more than welcome, btw (this is a fairly spread out city, it’s possible we’ve overlooked a location or two*).
If’n they do still have some here, it’s still an annoying commercial, although not so entirely annoying as it would be if the lack of BKs holds up to closer examination. Does anyone else feel oogy after seeing these commercials?
I’ll do a complete :smack: if that’s the case. Thanks!
(I hope you’re right, btw. BK is one of the better fastfood burgers out there, imho.)
Just guessing: whoever their ad manager is is in love with whoever does the Taco Bell ads. It seems there’s a move afoot to make the gullible public turn to ad campaigns for new words, slogans, gestures even. The one they’ve been running in this market has some young professionals dining on some new Taco Bell concoction that might just as well be their way of sweeping the floor or emptying out those bins that won’t sell directly. It’s a taco wrapped in a soft shell with lots of melted cheese and other leftovers thrown in and the guy springing the new delight on his lunch mates is going on with some bastardization of “chewy cheesy cruchy slimy” (or the like) with the portmanteau of “chu-ee-chy-imy” or whatever it is. Sucks.
They even had one lately where there’s a dance move and another with some hand jive. I can just see people aping these moves when they’re around the water cooler, as a subtle signal to sneak out, toke some rope, and head on down to the new head shop known as Taco Bell.
But a bank? Beats me who/what they’re aiming at, but, like I say, it’s most likely an imitation jag one ad group has for another with the main idea of out-dumbing them.
What’s even creepier is when you get an obviously American ad that’s been dubbed over in Australian voices - there’s a surreality about the chirpy chipper faces and soccer mom behaviours that are meant to go with those Aussie accents. Most Australians just aren’t that chirpy-sounding…even the voice-over artists aren’t. It just makes it seem like a Monty Python sketch or something.
I’m not arguing with the righteousness of their cause…than again, maybe I am. For all I know the proceeds of the CCF go straight to buying gold plated iPods and rave parties in the Vatican, I don’t know.
But I’m not going to hand over the moolah just because some bloated, bearded baby-boomer with a striking resemblence to David Ogden Stiers stands next to a starving street urchin and tries to guilt me into it. For all I know the guy used to be a CIA field agent and is responsible for the parlous state of Dirtstreetistans economy while keeping it safe from democracy.
Preach it. Even worse is their website; I swear the first time I saw the addy at the bottom of the tv screen I thought my eyes were going bad. It’s www.coqroq.com, which sounds like it ought to be some kind of bizarre chicken-headed thrash metal fetish site.
We used to have a local radio commercial that ran every 2.5 seconds on every station within a 20 mile radius; I have no idea what it was for but it featured an obnoxious woman chanting, “I know some things you don’t know!” in that sing-song manner 1st graders use when they taunt each other. I hated that commercial.
I work at a language school that has classes mainly in the evenings, so I’m at home in the late morning/early afternoon when the infomercials come on. Now, the infomercials here in Japan sell the same kinds of things that they do in the States, like excercise equipment, health supplements, food “processors”, etc.
How do I know they’re the same as in the States?
Because half of the time, they don’t bother making a Japanese infomercial. They dub the American infomercials into Japanese!
The strangeness is similar to hearing Aussie accented voices from obviously American footage, but an order of magnitude greater (in my not-so-humble opinion). What’s even weirder, you can still hear the English track faintly under the Japanese.
That’s who’s in the commercials? I’d noticed the “If you can find a better car, buy it” tag occuring regularly on commercials, but the cheesiness made me assume it was some local car dealer with too much money who just had to get his granddaughter on TV. Jason Alexander was surprising for a local commercial, but, hey, actors sometimes make horrible choices and end up in crap to pay debts or whatever.
We get one from a Des Moines car dealership, and the ad stars the owner. He’s 80-something – nothing wrong with that, but his dentures click!
Another one is from a place where that sells eyewear. (Another pet peeve – what’s wrong with “glasses”?)
That one also stars the owner. I’ll bet she thinks she’s attractive as hell, and she’s not bad for an 80-year-old, but honey, that’s what models are for – to make your product look good. Use them!
I have nothing against old people. I’m old. But I’d never use myself in an ad for my business (if I had a business).
I do. He was big news in the 80s remember.
We have some businesses around here that put their kids (4 - 18 yrs or so) in the commercials. Can’t understand a damn thing they’re saying. I’ve seen kids in other, well produced commercials, I can understand them. Tell your kids to spit out the rocks they’re chewing on and speak clearly. And no, I don’t want to see a commercial that’s nothing but out takes of your kids royally goofing up on the 900 takes it took to get them to say “Updee dan!” whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean…
Have y’all experienced the pleasure of Trunk Monkey ads yet? The first couple of times it was funny now they are annoying as all hell. Yet they are supposed to make me want to buy a used car.
Another one that irritates me for no good reason is the one for the antibacterial hand soap where the mother is using her grimy shoe to try to pry a door open so she and her pwecious widdle darlings won’t have to soil their pristine hands on the dirty dirty door handle. I know she’s an actress, but I really want to find her and smack her. With a shoe. A dirty dirty shoe.
