irrespective of how good they might be.
Here in the UK, I could not conceive of buying a Mazda (Zoom! Zoom!), insuring with Churchill (Oh Yes!), or wearing Allure after shave because of the irritational nature of their ad campaigns. I realize this is illogical and by extention makes me a twat, but I cant help it!
I have many more, but how about you? Are there adverts you hate so much you’d never use the products, irrespective of how good they might be?
MiM
I don’t eat a lot of fast food, but I’ve maintained my vow never to eat at Carl’s Junior, based on my hatred of several disgusting commercials they made featuring young guys smacking their chops and dripping their food all over.
Gillette Fusion razors (actually, pretty much any TV-advertised razor) - the hype is just so completely overblown, I have no respect at all for them.
“Head On,” especially since it doesn’t work.
“Head On,” especially since it doesn’t work.
“Head On,” especially since it doesn’t work.
I remember an old thread on this, but my #1 entry on this list has to be the Geico Gecko ads. Every time I see that idiot lizard start prattling on and on about the scam he is selling I reach for my gun. In one ad he actually has an insulting tone of voice for anyone who dares to not take advantage of Geico’s wonderful corncopia of savings. Go f*** yourself then who needs you.
[Quiet voice] I use Fusion razors…
We get the Mazda ads here too-anyone else bugged a little by the subtle racism in using these African rockers to sell their car? Or am I reading too much into that?
GEICO car insurance. Not if they were half the price of my current insurance would I go with them.
What other company simultaneously runs TWO of the ten most annoying ad campaigns in America? Even the beer, soda and cell phone companies can’t claim that dubious prize. I’m speaking, of course, of the stupid, forced “gecko” ads (NOBODY in the history of the PLANET has ever mispronounced your company name as “gecko”) and the gouge-my-ears-out-with-an-ice-pick caveman ads.
On preview, I see John DiFool has beaten me to the GEICO whipping post. I get bonus points for mentioning the stupid cavemen, though. :mad:
Pepto Bismol
Oh god yes. Especially with that horrible line dance they invented for their commercials.
I want to drown the Bell Canada beavers: Frank and Gordon. I fucking hate Frank and Gordon. I turn off the radio when I hear Frank and Gordon. If you live in Canada I am positive you feel the same.
(Unfortunately it’s somewhat difficult to boycott Bell Canada.)
It’s a cliché to say it, but I’ll never use CILLIT BANG!!! with BARRY SCOTT!!!
What makes this campaign even worse is that it’s actually a very cynical campaign, deliberately made to look low budget shit, and Barry Scott doesn’t exist. It’s so postmodern it hurts. Also I heard this one woman used Cillit Bang! on her bath and it took the enamel off.
I’ll help you.
I WON’T BUY ANYTHING THAT BILLY MAYS IS SELLING.
Dang…TDN beat me to it. I can only add: <font size="+4">
It would be a very long list, but items on that list become “obsoleted” when I can no longer remember which product was the one being advertised in this or that stupid ad.
I don’t generally go nutso about it: if Brand ObnoxiousAd is the only product on the shelf, it’s the only supermarket in Tinytown where I must shop, I need some of that product-type, and no substitute will usefully do, I’ll buy it.
Since I’ve been without TV since '84, only a few items are on the list due to remembered television commercials (MacDonald’s, Proctor & Gamble). Ads of more recent vintage will almost always be radio ads which are more likely to be local businesses (Rockaway Bedding).
Most ads are very badly done, intrusive, either humorlessly & totally INTO their product or their sense of humor sucks. Ads are a big part of why I quit watching TV: the combo of annoying interruptions that would increase in frequency and duration as the plot built to a climax, on the one hand, and the sense that there was a deliberate conspiracy afoot to keep TV programming dismally boring so as to make most of it scarcely better than the stupid ads, on the other.
In the era before solid-state televisions, I grew up as a kid with my Dad having spliced in a switch into the line leading to the TV speaker, and run it out on a long cord. Every time an ad would come on he’d turn the sound off. So I was taught early on to view ads as illegitimate intruders on my time and attention.
AXE body spray, if I were in their target market, which I’m not. To be fair, though, not only are their commercials off-putting, but their products smell like hog piss.
Mucinex. Those little talking mucus people gross me out.
Those “please don’t squeeze the Charmin” commercials, which have got to be the most offensively stupid commercials ever produced by so-called professionals. They started airing back when I was a kid, and they still made some as late as the late 90’s. To this day, I would quite literally use newspaper or corncobs than buy Charmin.
Ditto on Axe body spray. Not only do the commercials annoy me, the stuff smells like it should be called Ass.
Enzyte. I don’t care if I were impotent and Enzyte was the only thing between a life of great sex or a life of celibacy - I wouldn’t use it. I hate smiling Bob, I hate the fucking whistling, and I really hate that they always play back to back 30 sec commercials on every fucking commercial break.
I will never subscribe to Netflix because of all of their popups on every freaking website in the world.
I, for one, am not willing to trust my future financial solvency with anything having to with this guy. I reminded of The Far Side cartoon How Nature Says Do Not Touch.
