And invariably the kids on those commercials have all the acting talent of particularly bad porn-stars. Even most kids would be able to read a line better than that.
There are several stores in the small city (20,000) where I live in Georgia that do that one. Almost invariably they are the ONLY merchant who stocks that particular item. (Other stores may have Serta mattresses, but only they have the Serta White Elephant 2000 or whatever, and it has to be a Serta White Elephant 2000 or there’s no deal.)
Sampiro nailed it: the ‘up to’ ploy.
“…and we’ll give you up to 50% off the normal price!”. If this means anything at all, it means an unspecified amount not greater than 50%, so 0.00001% would qualify.
“…makes you your skin look up to five years younger.” One day younger would qualify.
“…deliver up to 200% more power!”. So 1% more power would qualify.
“…achieves up to 35% greater mileage!”. You get the point.
And even though I’m not in the target demopgrahic, just about all advertising for all women’s cosmetics makes me sick. Why do the majority of women put up with this condescending, witless garbage? 99% of it is based on a message which goes something like this: “You’re not good enough as you are! You’re inadequate! If you don’t look like this stunningly beautiful model, who was dealt all the right cards genetically and looks like this after 4 hours prep with a professional stylist and in a studio setting with perfect control over the lighting and 20 hours post-production… then you’re not good enough. But if you buy this very expensive over-hyped tub of stuff squeezed out of a seal’s guts mixed with some denatured alcohol and an emulsifier and given a nice scent, then maybe, just maybe, you’ll turn into a radiantly beautiful sex siren overnight.”
How about one month after your subscription starts?
Thank you Sampiro, this made my day
Another one: Those commercials for prescription medicines where they don’t tell you what the medicine is supposed to cure.
They generally go something like this:
“There’s a wonderful new medicine called Zelcor. Zelcor is great and wonderful, and might improve your life in ways you never thought possible.” (Meanwhile, the screen shows a group of people playing basketball, or a young couple running through a grassy meadow, or some other scene that has no apparent connection to what the narrator is saying.) “But only a doctor can prescribe Zelcor, so make an appointment to ask about Zelcor today.”
But what the hell does Zelcor do, you cretins? Do they really expect me to call up my doctor and say, “Doc, I want some of that Zelcor stuff. I don’t know what it treats or if I have that problem, but I don’t care. Hook me up with some.”
I agree with Diceman about the prescription drug ads that don’t tell you what it’s for.
But there is a flip side: the ads where they do tell you what it’s for, AND THEN they tell you the possible side effects. Like let’s say it’s a drug that treats Anxiety. Great. But possible side effects may include, difficulty sleeping, excessive perspiration and diarrhea. Great. I don’t know about you, but the possibility that I may sweat a lot after getting a few hours sleep the night before and I have to spend all day no more than 10 feet from a toilet may cause me some Anxiety.
I just thought of another, that I call “double-hit” commercials. They typically go
“Blah! Blah! Blah! Buy me! Blah! Blah! Blah! Buy me!” with very similar dialogue and visuals in each half. Two commercials in the same spot!
(I just saw one of those mystery-drug ads. “… Ask your doctor if a free sample of <whatever> is right for you!” Whatever it does.)
2 things:
When commercials (radio or tv) use any kind of alarm-clock sound. This gives me urges to kill if it lasts longer than 3 seconds.
Made-up words, like Sale-abration!! Arrggh!
When does a diet pill cost this much money?
When it works! When it really works!
Who is dumb enough to believe that? Oh wait…
I will not buy any product whose ads start out with a dictionary definition. That might have been clever the first time it was done, but not the 100,000th time.
And the same goes for any commercial containing music from *Also Sprach Zarathustra *or Verdi’s *Requiem. *Or old classic songs that have been vivisected to fit into a 30-second commercial.
And then there are the ones that go "FACT: blah blah blah. FACT: blah blah blah. FACT: blah blah blah.
Or the twenty-something woman who uses wrinkle remover. Unless she’s actually 80, and that stuff really works!
I can’t believe no one’s mentioned the infamous "We made a computer error/the manufacturer sent us too much and our warehouse is overstocked, so we’re selling everything at LOW, LOW, LOW!!! prices. Give me a break.
I also hate it when they seem to play the same obnoxious ad at the same time slot on all the radio stations. So no matter how you try to escape the yelling car dealership announcer, you just keep hearing it over and over. You’d think the stations would understand that the it’s the annoyingly strident ads that make their listeners change the dial.
StG
Oh, here’s another that will be familiar to anybody in the Puget Sound area—though I have to assume some other advertisers do this in other parts of the world.
It’s where they repeat the name of the company about seventy kajillion million zillion times during the commercial without even putting the company name into a complete sentence:
“Glodsson Toyota is having a sale! Glodsson Toyota. Value. Price. Service. Glodsson Toyota. You always get the best value at Glodsson Toyota. Come on down to Glodsson Toyota and see the tremendous savings. At Glodsson!”
Actually, I believe this is the reason they don’t tell you what it does: if they tell you what it treats, they also have to tell you the side effects.
My pet peeve is the commercial that features a montage of “everyday people” (or, worse, children) saying Very Significant things directly into the camera. It is usually combined with the “my this” and “my that” gimmick, inducing uncontrollable rage in this otherwise placid television viewer.
A local hospital advertised that they had reduced recovery times “as much as 300%!” If the recovery time is normally, say, two days, reducing it by three hundred percent would have you recovered four days before your procedure. Now that’s truly impressive.
Quick math lesson advertisers: You can’t reduce anything by more than 100%. You also cannot make something more than 1 time smaller than anything else. Learn how reciprocals work, and you’ll save yourself from making such stupid claims.
My favorite change is from “Don’t settle for anything else!” to “Don’t settle for anything less!” The first statement is actually a claim of quality; it implies that anything besides the product being advertised is of a lesser quality. Which is why you never hear it any more. The second though, is ingenious. It seems to imply that the product being advertised is better than others, but it actually makes no claim regarding quality whatsoever. “Settling” is accepting something of less quality, so “Settling for something less” just defines the word settling.
Diet Dr. Pepper tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper. More than what?
sigh
Well, what can we do except throw things at the telly and not buy the stuff? You’re very right, they are irritating beyond belief.
Ads for sanitary products are a related genre of irritants. Practically every woman on the face of earth is annoyed by those.
However, my prize goes to any ad that presumes to already know what I want and then proceeds to tell me in “you” or “we all” format.
“You want the best for your child” I don’t HAVE a child and don’t want one.
“We’d all like to lose a few inches around the waist” No actually, I’m not yet brainwashed into having low self esteem about my weight, yet.
“You lead a stressful life” It’s not too bad, thank you.
And so on.
Trying to sell something is okay, but these sort of ads try to decide whole lifestyles for people and make them feel guilty if they don’t have the “common sense” desires and feelings the ads tell them they ought to have.
Any commercial for a local business obviously made in about half an hour, starring the owner of the business trying to act.
You St. Louis dopers know what I’m talking about. Becky, Queen of Carpet anyone?
I totally agree about the road noises in ads - that is just wrong!
Ads for sales “on *everything * in the store!” or “*no * exceptions!” or “no legal double-talk!” Then at the end of the ad, they list all the exceptions and provisos.
That freaking gas company commercial where, “Oh no, there’s a power outage! How will the beautiful, perfectly coiffed mommy feed her precious infant? Why, the gas company has made sure you can still heat up that bottle!” Guess what, I can feed my kid if the power *and * gas go out - these bumps on my chest are not merely for decorative purposes.
Not deserving of death, but funny: any item that says “New! Improved Flavor!” I read that as, “Tasted like ass, now tastes slightly less like ass!”
Prediction: 20 years from now
“I have a dream … of low new car prices! I have a dream … of no down payment and easy credit checks! March down to Doper Ford this MLK day and save, save, save, on new Fords, Hondas, and Audis! Get out from the back of the bus, and get into the seat of your dream car!”
It’s even worse when they drive up to you in a white van trying to seel you speakers giving you the same story.