Reading the thread about songs in ads made me think of a couple of ads that just irritate the hell out of me.
The first is the Sprite campaign about “Image is Nothing” and not drinking a soda just because a famous athlete drinks it. Then why in God’s name are you paying Grant Hill to be in the ad???
The second either insults the intelligence of the viewer or the writers of the ad have no idea what they’re talking about. I believe it is for on on-line mortgage brokerage (but I could be wrong here). It shows a young couple sitting at loan officer’s desk wanting a MORTGAGE, but, as the young woman says “we have no collateral.” To which the loan officer responds, “that’s ok, no collateral needed is our motto.” HELLO! The mortgage IS the collateral on the note for the loan.
Ok, I’m done ranting. So are you with me on these two? Any other ads really bug you this way?
My biggest advertisement pet peeve is a radio ad for Brakes Plus (I think that’s the name of the place.) Anyway, they have this ditzy woman pretending to call there and ask questions about getting her brakes replaced. Towards the end, she asks “My husband told me that my car needs expensive metal brake pads. Do you have those?”
The whole thing of “My husband told me” is just annoying to me. C’mon, we know the woman is a ditz, but do you have to extend that to ALL women? Is it possible that SOME of us might know what kind of brake pads our car needs without the help of a guy?
To be completely fair, the local diamond store does the same sort of thing towards men. They like to advertise engagement rings & such things, and one of the favorite routines is to play on just how stupid men are about jewelry. They end up making men sound so damn stupid that it’s almost offensive.
Coming from a family of doctors, I would have to say that ads for PRESCRIPTION drugs annoy me the most. My dad comes home and tells us about how patients demand drugs they don’t need/would cause complications/would be lethal, simply because “the TV said it would help!”
Actually the thing being mortgaged usually only qualifies as collateral for about 80-90% of the value and something else would have to be put up for collateral for the rest. The problem that I have with that ad is that I don’t believe them. I think somehow they find a “creative” way to get collateral for the part not covered by the home itself and it is all a matter of semantics.
Sorry, Devil, you’ve got this one backwards. In most cases, a bank will only lend UP TO 80% of the value of the home (the rest is your down payment). In some instances they will finance more, but then the customer will need to pay for Mortgage Insurance which covers the bank should you default on the loan. However, some of the higher rate lenders (Money Store, American General, etc.) will give loans above the value of the property (as high as 120%), in addition to giving a lien on the home the borrower will normally also sign a security instrument so the lender has claim to their “household goods.”
I can’t stand those commercials where the adults are idiots and the kids are obviously “cool” because they ridicule (and sometimes physically attack) said adults. Feh. Cereal commercials are usually the worst offenders (Frosted Mini-Wheats, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Apple Jacks). It’s not that I’m an adult, resentful of kid’s disrespect of me. I’m still a kid (eighteen), and I’ve been hating those commercials for years.
Any advertising in college bowl games. The Frito Lays Sugar Bowl just sounds like crap to me. Any company could score a great coup if they purchased the rights to a bowl game and announced they would be keeping it advertisement free.
As for Grant Hill and Sprite…Their whole refrain goes “Would you want a NBA basketball player doing surgery on you or handling nuclear reactors or flying a plane? Why would you want to have one tell you what to drink?” Well dipshits, maybe because athletes perspire and thus drink a lot of fluids. They might know which ones are crap.
Ads that have a phone ring tick me off because, on the right radio, I think its my phone. Same deal with radio ads that feature sirens. I always think i am being pulled over.
I can’t stand ads directed at women that stereotype men as lazy, know-nothing obnoxious boors.
For example: There’s an ad for Nestle Treasures candy with a woman extolling the virtues of chocolate treats. She says that when you eat them you should just relax and ignore everything else, “In other words, be a man.”
Or the “A man’s home is his castle, maybe he should clean it” type ads.
Sure, some men might be lazy idiots, but not most of them. At least, not most of the men I know.
I’ve noticed the same trend on Father’s Day cards. My husband and I had the hardest time picking out cards yesterday because our fathers are not the beer-swilling, remote-control hogging, babe-in-a-bikini ogling type, and neither is Mr. Na. There are very few humourous inoffensive cards available.
You know, I’m only 28, and those same commercials bug the crap out of me. I don’t know about most of you people, but if I had acted like that when I was a child, I would have been beaten like a red-headed stepchild.
I also can’t stand the one Weight-Watchers frozen dinner commercial where the roommate comes in squealing “your blind date is here and * heeeeeee’s goooooorgeous! " Then roommate stops, and in this way too overly impressed, breathy, nearly-jealous voice, "you look * great!” Commercial cuts to this vapid looking model in a red dress just twirling around her “new figure”. Commercial finishes out with typical close-ups of really gorgeous looking food that is supposed to not only help you lose weight, but is going to really taste good. This commercial drives me insane for several reasons:
This tries to push several buttons with “young females”. This assumes that not only are we trying to diet constantly, but that we’re always trying to be a step ahead of other women, and the only thing we actually care about in terms of a blind date is that “he’s gorgeous”. What about kind, pleasant, virtuous, honest, or intelligent?
They really want us to believe that some 300-calorie pasta dish in a microwaveable box is really going to be tasty. Yeah, right. Just pass me the carrots, thanks.
And, I just hate how this girl is just twirling around like a stoned-out deadhead with this absolutely blank smile on her face. Oh, please, can’t I kick her just once?
The worst one for me is the ‘pre-owned’ bullshit. I know this shouldn’t annoy me. It’s not really dishonest. But it irks the living shit out of me. I want to scream at he screen ‘IT’S A USED CAR, NOT PRE-OWNED’!
And while we’re on the subject of commercials, when did drug companies start listing possible side-effects at the end of their spots. There was an ad for a drug for social phobia that listed side effects of nausea, diareah, migranes and high blood-pressure. Sounds like the cure is worse than the disease.
I would imagine they are either required to, or that it is some sort of CYA-type self regulation. But, yeah, it makes you wonder how bad you want to cure what’s ailin’ ya. The scariest is the one for Propecia (I believe) about women who may be pregnant handling broken tablets! Yeah, I feel safe with this stuff around.
I hate any comercial that was really good and creative that plays for weeks and weeks and weeks…It just proves that your product is a one hit wonder.
I also hate those comercials that really show you what your eating. Like the “A&P freshness comercials”. They take you out to the farm and show you the cows, and the shake and bake comercials have talking pigs and such talking about how good they taste tith shake and bake.
But just to contradict myself…I really liked the Makes beef sing commercial with the singing bull. It craks me up.
Along the same lines as the Weight watcher meal-rant, I absolutely cannot stand commercials for metabolife, metabolite, anything from GNC, fat trapper in a bottle, exercise in a bottle, etc etc.
I hate how these commercials blatantly lie about their products and what the product does and how safe they are. Since I am a dietitian, I know that the general public will believe this crap in a heartbeat…If it makes losing weight look easy with no work involved at all, then people will pay ridiculous amount of money for it. And I know I can sit back and say, I would never spend money on that stuff, it doesn’t work, b/c I’ve been educated in this field…but the general public has NOT. These evil commerical-makers will do ANYTHING for money. And its sickening.
Martha Stewart. Anything advertised by Martha Stewart. Anything authorized by Martha Stewart. I don’t wish her death or dismemberment, but I would like to slap her face, just once. It’s a good thing!
There’s a weight-loss product ad here in LA that bugs the hell out of me. It has this little girl (about 10) saying, “You’re just a big teddy bear. You don’t have to be so big” or some crap like that.
There’s this radio commercial for a tanning salon that makes me what to take a baseball bat to my radio every time I hear it. It has this ridiculous jingle, “Every now and then I gotta get away and do something for me, gotta get away and spend a little me time, you know what I mean…” Yeah, I’m going to have some “me time” (a phrase I loathe) and I’m going to spend it giving myself skin cancer. Wee. I become physically ill just thinking about it. And then, this moronic voiceover starts, and the guy is going on about how first you come in “a couple a three times” to start your tan (a couple of three times? like 6 times? AAARRRGHH!).