I think it was Sprite’s “Trust your gut, not some commercial” campaign. I loved those commercials.
Every single commercial that interrupts a story/show I am watching has the opposite effect on me. Its like some irritating guy turning around in a movie theatre during the movie and trying to get you to buy something.
If they must advertise, what is the most effective is public donations and service. Companies that actively support education, decrease poverty, fight disease, and act with integrity are the ones that get my support. TV or no TV ads.
I saw one tonight.
A guy is hanging up his laundry in only his socks with a big black box over the more interesting parts of his body. Two women poke their heads over the fence and one remarks “Wow! Look at those…socks. They are so clean. MMMMM.” I would like to thank Purex Laundry Detergent for making a commercial that I can’t watch with my mother.
That just solidified that I will never buy their products.
That reminds me of the laundry commercial ad with the woman who gets caught in other people’s yards with her nose buried in their underwear, and then she hightails it outta there. I’m torn between amused and horrified.
No one has mentioned yet the deodorant commercial where the woman is so afraid she’ll get white marks on her dress that she has her friends dangle the dress out the window, then she leaps head first into it and down to the ground below. It is so dumb that it actually makes me feel embarrassed for the actors involved.
There was a short-lived Gatorade ad campaign that featured various athletes shattering into pieces. It was genuinely creepy as hell.
Oh yeah, there was a (chewing gum? mints?) commercial with the guy eating a whole pack of the things, and his head froze and snapped off into his girlfriend’s lap in the car. She screamed, the taxi driver screamed, and the disembodied, frozen head was looking around, wondering what was happening. Do people actually want to give their target audiences nightmares? Is that something to aim for with advertising?
There’ve been a number of radio adverts that have made me switch channels after the first few seconds.
That bean commercial where the dog wants to sell the secret recipe. It makes me wish I ate beans just so I could purposefully not buy theirs. But alas, I only not buy theirs 'cause I hate beans.
There was a Super Bowl (I think) commercial by Honda (I think) where the Hispanic father and son were speaking both English and Spanish, just like their car used both electric and gas–both of which were for the child’s future.
(1) How is the kid supposed to understand that?
(2) The Spanish-language part was obviously dubbed in sloppily by somebody else, who actually, ya know, speaks Spanish. It jars awkwardly with the flow of the commercial. I’ve seen the ad in all-Spanish on a Spanish language channel and it didn’t work because it wasn’t a “bilingual” commercial…but at least the dad’s voice was only done by one guy!
FWIW, I’ve never heard or seen a California-specific Geico ad.
Spongemonkey, and how can you find that entertaining? 
Ugh! I’m glad I don’t live in LA and I only have to hear that crap on KNX. Man, LA is legendary for terrible local commercials. Or should I say–LA is the king! 
I thought that commercial was hilarious. YMMV (YMDV!)
Lots of people say this, but the truth is that very few people notice those things. You might, because you know how to find out which companies are doing it and which aren’t–but J. Random American doesn’t have any idea. Good on you for being informed, but I highly doubt that Domino’s (or whomever) would get more business from the general population by withdrawing all TV ads and using all their ad money to build libraries in public schools. How would anyone know? Unless they plastered Domino’s logos all over the libraries, which is IMO much more reprehensible than TV advertising.
There was this van commercial going on awhile back, showing various shaggin’ wagons from days past. '60s music was playing, and it was generally trippy. “Oh, that one has a fountain. Gooooolly, that ones got animal furs!” Just stuff like that.
After several seconds generally getting a buzz going, wondering what this damn thing is selling, text comes up. “Respect the van,” it says. All right. First, I’ll look at some more vans, if you don’t mind. “Gee witickers! That one has a crushed velvet bed and Booty Punch Massage Oil! Wait…”
Then the text comes back: “Some families were started in one,”
WHAT?! No, I don’t want to know that! Take it back! Hippies having sex is a bad enough imagine, with hemp condoms and several layers of dirt, but I don’t want to even think of where I started, especially not in some bizarre clown sex shop on wheels.
The worst part? I think the van was called The Odyssey.
Yeah, I saw that on the Super Bowl as well, but thankfully not at all since then. That was a horrible, horrible commercial. I think I actually ranted about it in one of the Super Bowl Ad threads going on at the time.
Now they have these Gatorade Rain commercials where the rain causes a volleyball to erupt into an athlete. OK, but the rain coming down looks like the product, which also happens to look like piss.
That commercial turned me off too, but what bothered me was they showed all these unique, creative (ok totally tacky) customized vans, and they’re comparing a white-bread plain-vanilla Honda Odyssey to those rolling love machines. They’re both vans but that’s about it.
:ahem: SPONGmonkey, and I dunno…I just do. Some people find Pamela Anderson entertaining…I like Spongmonkeys. No accounting for taste, I guess. 
What about the kids from the Welch’s grape juice commercials? Are there going to be enough buses for them too?
shudder I hate those kids.