Word. I can’t tell the cars apart either. I remember an ad on a few years ago that had people driving around in cardboard boxes. The boxes were kinda cute and then the car being advertised, a silver sedan :rolleyes: , is shown and everyone stares. I guess the message of the ad was supposed to be that this car was so incredible looking, it made all other cars look like cardboard boxes. But what I took away from the ad was that the car was so incredibly banal-looking that the only way to make it stand out in an ad was to surround it by cardboard boxes…
Of course, some of the old 2-or-3-or-4 blade razor commercials claimed that one blade would pull the hair out of the follicle partway and the next one would cut it off at a point which is usually BELOW the surface.
Granted:
(a) I expect that’s a lie, and
(b) if it weren’t a lie, I bet it would result in lots of painful ingrown follicles.
Nonetheless, their claim isn’t necessarily prima facie insane.
There’s a current yogurt ad that drives me up the wall. (yoplait?) They pretty much boldly claim that eating the yogurt results in more weight loss then not eating it at all.
Yeah, right.
[sub]Do you burn more calories digesting it then are present in the yogurt?[/sub]
I’d be skeptical of that claim as well, but there is some proof now that consuming calcium (in dairy form) assists in weight loss. Maybe that’s what they’re saying.
The one from a few years back that got me is not so much expecting customers to be stupid, but in being stupid itself. It featured a woman in an airplane bathroom washing her hair in the sink while making orgasm sounds. While doing so she accidentally hit the intercom button and broadcast her sounds to all of the passengers. She then left the bathroom with perfectly dried and styled hair while all of the passengers looked at her funny.
Now:
- Have you ever seen an airplane bathroom sink? Ain’t no way you’re getting your head inder that faucet.
- Have you ever been in an airplane bathroom? Ain’t no way you’re even wiping your butt, much less washing your hair.
- Why in the name of Purple Jebus on a MaxiPad would an airline install an announcement intercom in the passenger bathroom? "Attention all flight crew and passengers. You gotta see this turd! It’s amazing! Really, come back here and take a look!
Regarding this McDonald’s ad, I feel the guy’s pain (and I strive to deliver it back to Ms. D_Odds on any occassion I can). For me, it’s usually dinner:
Me: “What do you want for dinner?”
Her: “I don’t know. Just cook what you want.”
Me: “I think I’ll make Broiled Komodo Dragon with a Giant Panda liver sauce.”
Her: “No, make something else”
Me: “Like what?”
Her: “Whatever”
Me: “How about Californian Condor Eggs Benedict with a Sperm Whale blubber glaze.”
Her: “No, I had that for lunch three weeks ago. I don’t feel like having it again.”
Me: (making a conscious effort not to throttle her with my apron strings)“Then what?”
Her: “Just make something I like.”
This goes on until I finally guess what she’s in the mood for.
Yes, why give your money to “Big Pharma” when you can be scammed by the supplement companies and Internet scam artists instead?
Incidentally, the claim “Our product is approved by the FDA to grow hair/melt away fat/induce positive vibrations” is complete bunkum in every instance I’ve encountered. The translation of this is “Our product has never been shown to work by any reputable research study, but we hope you’ll send us $79.75 for it, because it did wonders for Lana in Boulder, Colorado .”
On the exercise ads, there’s the one for the TreadClimber - “don’t waste your time on an old-fashioned treadmill again!” Because, you know, their product is like a stair climber and treadmill combined! Except that, if you were to map out the motions you use exercising on their product, you’d be doing less work than a standard treadmill set at an incline.
The power of advertising - we’re looking for a new car, and a Mazda would probably be perfect, but my husband won’t get one cause he hates their commercials that much.
My husband says this a couple times an evening watching tv - “Blabla product - it’ll get you laid!”
Then there’s my favourite addition to really lame slogans such as “What has Brown done for you lately?” - “All the good slogans were taken.”
We like interacting with commercials.
Is this {cringe} an E-Z-Paintr brush?
'Cause, if it is I might have had a hand in bringing it to being. :o
If so, I’m sorry. It was an aberation, an attempt to move my career into retail/commerical product development. :smack: F**king Rubbermaid. :mad:
I now work for a military contractor, where I do a lot less damage to humanity. :rolleyes:
Stranger
Don’t get me started on the Zoom Zoom crap. I want to slit my wrists everytime I hear it.
Not the quote you’re looking for, but this from Roger Dodger:
Roger: You can’t sell a product without first making people feel bad.
Nick: Why not?
Roger: Because it’s a substitution game. You have to remind them that they’re missing something from their lives. Everyone’s missing something, right?
Nick: I guess.
Roger: Trust me. And when they’re feeling sufficiently incomplete, you convince them your product is the only thing that can fill the void. So instead of taking steps to deal with their lives, instead of working to root out the real reason for their misery, they go out and buy a stupid looking pair of cargo pants.
And people wonder why I don’t watch television. :rolleyes:
Stranger
Yes! That’s it, exactly! All advertising is based on creating the perception that people are lacking something (usually sex, money or status). I figured that out for myself awhile ago {preens slightly}, and I believe it holds true for most commercial ads.
“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
–The Princess Bride
So do we. There’s often some kind of unintended subtext in the commercial that on closer examination (read: half a second’s thought) puts the product in an unpleasant light and elicits a snarky response. Like, the Windex commercials, with the crows complaining that they could hurt themselves flying into the incredibly streak-free windows. Windex: Kill two birds with one window pane, muaaahahahaa.
On a different note, we loved the CareerBuilder.com ad - one of the ones with the lone human in an office full of chimps. During a meeting, the human advises his boss chimp, “But sir, I really don’t think it’s a good idea to name a product “The Titanic.”” Boss chimp gets an obstinate look on his face, and flings a banana in the human’s face. Chaos ensues as chimps screech and papers and random objects fly. We laughed our butts off as I yelled at the TV “C’mon, show us what they’d REALLY throw!”
On the subject of car ads, there’s on that parodys those car fix-up shows like “Overhaulin’” and “Pimp my Ride”. The young lady whose car is being fixed up says “It doesn’t even look like my car!” Uh, ma’am, that’s not your car! You brought in a rustbucket silver '62 Falcon; that’s a brand new Toyota (or whatever).
Somewhat similar are the companies that want you to think that their new product is so good that it makes their previous offerings seem like a pile of crap, and procede to do so by disparaging the old product.
One example is the Listerine commercial where a mother, standing in the kitchen among her family, proudly pulls her newly purchased mouthwash out of the grocery bag, and, barely able to contain her joy, announces to the family that she had, indeed, purchased Listerine.
This news sends the family scurrying to comically out-of-the way places to avoid the dreaded Listerine. Why such an extreme and immediate reaction was neccessary is unclear. Was the mouthwash so profoundly bad that it could injure taste buds remotely, without even being opened? Even with the safety seal on? Or was the mother planning to force them all to gargle at her command, right then and there, in the kitchen? Knowing her fondness for Listerine, the latter scenario is a distinct possibility.
Mom is only able to bring her family down from the chandeliers by telling them that this is new Citrus Listerine.
Um… So then, they’ve been happily selling a product for over 80 years that, according to their own promotional material, is so bad that it makes people panic and run in fear? I just can’t see how this is effective advertising.
Keep in mind that for many years the original, unflavored, pee-yellow Listerine was the only game in town, and was so rank-tasting that it was used mostly to punish cursing children, and occasionally to waterproof circus tents. The new campaign may simply be playing on repressed collective memory (which ads do more oftne than you’d think).
I’ve not seen the commercial, and I think I’ve missed something. Okay so he’s at McDonald’s and calls his girlfriend to ask what she wants to eat; what’s he lying about? Is he with another girl or something?
I, too, opened this thread to post about this ad! While I don’t hate this one as much as the first one they had (where that bratty little twat slaps the medicine out of Mom’s hand), I still want to yell at the TV when I see it. “Hey, stupid, he didn’t get ANY of the medicine, so either have him suck it off his pj’s or get another dose, you dimwit!” And anyway, don’t they tell you now to use medicine droppers or syringes instead of regular kitchen teaspoons to dose your kids? The means spillage shouldn’t even really be an issue!
No, it makes Scope users panic and run in fear. You remember Scope? The brand of mounthwash whose main selling point is that it doesn’t taste mediciny, like Listerine?