Ooh! I thought of a new one!
More recently, in a play off of the “X-treme” motif, late-night diet pill ads have started including “Warning: These pills are ONLY for those who are serious about losing weight” and “If you only want to lose 5 pounds, these are NOT the right pills for you”. I can’t believe some people are guillible enough to fall for this crap!
I also wish the ‘Putz!’ and/or ‘Smack’ smilies still worked…
Any commercial that features the sound of someone eating…oh, that sets my teeth on edge and sends me scrambling to change the channel.
hill
I was shopping for furniture the other day, and one of the stores we visited was infested by the crew of a local radio station. The DJ announced (I swear I am not making this up) – “Save 40% to 75%… everything is over HALF OFF!”
Presenting…razors…from…THE FUTURE!!! :mad:
Why, oh why, OH why, do razor companies think I’m going to be impressed with some model dude in his underwear standing in the cargo bay of the Starship Enterprise while space-aged razors fly around him in formation showing off their one/two/three/four/five blades and “sensitivity strips”? It’s just a goddamn RAZOR!!!
During a comedy special on Comedy Central, I believe it was Kevin James (The King of Queens) who brought up this same point. His conversation with the doctor on this mystery medicine when something like this:
remembering that the commercial says to ask your doctor “Oh, doc, I almost forgot. I’m suppose to ask you about Zinlotac.”
Doctor: “You have anal warts?”
Y’all reminded me of some more.
Luckily they didn’t send me a bogus bill, but I did start receiving mysterious, unsolicited issues of Essence magazine and another mag aimed at black women. The first one I got had a big headline on the cover:
As you may have guessed, I am a white woman. I called them and told them I didn’t think I was their target audience.
Nothing is so embarrassing and infuriating for me as a lawyer than to see Joel Bieber “flying” around the screen in a cartoon spaceship, advertising his legal services. I have no words.
Finally, it took about three hearings for me to truly and deeply hate Chrysler’s pathetic “Hemi” ads.
What about piggyback commercials? You know, two in a row for the same product? Enzite does this with stunning regularity, and it pisses me off to no end.
I’d rather pound my nuts flat with a wooden hammer than listen to this crap.
This expression makes my teeth stand on end. Yeah, my teeth!
“It’s a no-brainer!”
Well that’s a good thing, because I’m a slackjawed witless moron, and I ain’t got much brain to go around!
I don’t want things to be no-brainers! I want brainers!
Also, car beeps. Thank you.
Any ad where some nobody is introduced like he’s famous (“Try the workout program endorsed by fitness personality Melvin Obscuro!”). Anything that calls itself “natural”. Anything “free” that you have to pay for.
And any euphemisms or metaphors for making your dick bigger, like the TV ads with the guy who never stops grinning. What a sad day it is when spammers give more information about their product than real advertisers!
Coincidentally, one commercial has them all: “Hi, friends. I’m Bill from Vital Basics, and I’m so confident you’ll enjoy natural male enhancement that I want to send you a free bottle! You only pay $4.95 to help cover the costs of shipping.”
Sorry, pal, I’ve used the mail before, and $4.95 doesn’t just “help” cover the costs of shipping a tiny bottle of snake oil, it covers shipping, and handling, and then some.
The one that really gets me is the TV ads where a bunch of different people are shown, one after another, and they’re all saying different parts of the same monologue. Invariably, they’re all staring creepily directly at the camera, and making some Extremely Profound Point about something or other. This technique is used for Public Service Announcement ads all the time, but I see it used to hawk stuff sometimes too.
And then to drive home some point even further, they’ll have a bunch of the people all repeat one part of the monologue. Argh!
Person 1: The U.S. Constitution…
Person 2: …is the document that guarantees…
Person 3: …our freedom…
Person 4: …freedom…
Martin Sheen: …freedom.
I hate it!
The Dirt Cheap ads are worse though. “The more she drinks, the better you look!” What a lovely sentiment. :rolleyes:
I find those quite amusing.
Mind you, this does remind me of a really bad one. This is a bit long and ranty but here we go.
Carlsberg beer in Ireland and the UK have this ad campaign where a guy goes looking for a room and is shown an unfeasonably swanky hourse full of soccer watching babes and a balcony that overlooks a soccer pitch.
Punchline: Carlsberg do don’t housemates, but if we did they would probably be the best housemates in the world.
They have a few variations with nightclubs, holidays etc. It’s quite a good and popular campaign. So what happens when the local radio station decides to make their own version?
“If a well known Dutch Lager company did breakfast shows, our breakfast show would probably be the best breakfast show in the world.”
Quite apart from the fact that the statement makes no sense at all, Carlsberg is Danish.
Oh, and one more thing. What about all those ads that says things like : “be you with product X”, “show your true individuality with product Y”. Presumably they want to flog as many of 'em as possible, so that’s a but Life of Brian, isn’t it.
Okay, I’m done now.
I think most of us have seen these kinds of things in the mail. You get what looks like a Really Important Notice from some government agency. Your name and address are in ALL CAPS. There’s even a fake government-looking seal printed in the corner. You don’t dare toss this out without checking to see what it’s about first, so you open it, only to realize it’s advertising. The other one I hate are the companies advertising pre-approved loans who send you a fake check, made out to you in the amount of $50,000. Yeah, right.
Many of the gimmicky products advertised on various cable TV stations will compare their own product’s ease of use and convenience to doing it the old-fashioned way. The person doing it “the hard way” will usually be shown in black and white video performing the task in a hopelessly clumsy and awkward manner. One example is the Perfect Pancake. When they cut to the shot of someone trying to cook pancakes without a Perfect Pancake, the stove is a mess and there’s oil and butter splattered everywhere.
How could I have forgotten The Last Refuge of the Persecuted Smoker? I don’t care how low your prices are, I’m not buying liquor and cigarettes from a places with ads featuring a guy in a chicken suit. “Cheap! Cheap! Fun! Fun!” Riiiight.
I think the worst one was for a turban-style headwrap for after showering. Rather than using a plain old towel, you could buy these specially-made towels to wrap your wet hair up in. The woman was shown trying helplessly to wrap her hair up turban-style, and then it just all fell out as she looked on sadly. I mean, come on, what woman doesn’t know how to wrap her hair up in a towel?
AND IF YOU CALLED IN THE NEXT 10 MINUTES, THEY’D SEND YOU AN EXTRA ONE FOR FREE!!!
This is more of a bad habit among reviewers and columnists than a direct advertising technique, but it still drives me mad. Private Eye have run a regular spot for ages now called “The Neophiliacs”. It features incidences of idiots claiming that X is the new Y.
For example, black is the new brown. Heritage (ie wandering around old buildings) is the new sex. 2001 is the new 1978.
It is quite formidably stupid. And people are doing it every day. People are being paid to do it, and they’re being respected for it!
I’ve just about had it with the “film noir detective” knockoffs.
It was a dark and stormy night…suddenly a disheveled dame appeared…
“You gotta help me Mac, I haven’t slept in weeks!”
“You must be suffering from a too-firm mattress, toots! Let me tell you about the SuperSnooz SleepSystem!”
GROAN SO LAME!!!
Radio ads do this the most, but TV ads are guilty on occasion as well. GEICO currently has one running that is completely retarded.
I see people have already mentioned Enzyte (a.k.a. Smilin’ Bob is hung to his kneecaps), but since I went on a rant about those commercials last night I’ll put the same rant here for posterity.
At first, I thought they were kinda funny in a creepy way. But now, I have to think - if I was a guy I’d feel like these commercials were screaming “YOUR DICK DOESN’T WORK RIGHT! FIX IT!!!” Hell, I’m female and after seeing those commercials I feel like my unit is subpar - until I realize I have no unit.
I asked my husband why he doesn’t get sick of ol’ Smilin’ Bob and he says he just tunes them out - much like women tune out cosmetic commercials, I suppose.
The only other commercial that comes close in my book is TrimSpa or whatever the hell it is Anna Nicole Smith is hawking. The new version is slightly less ridiculous, but the original…well, just picture it:
Anna Nicole gets out of a stretch Hummer (bad enough right there) to a crowd of adoring paparazzi and wild cheers from her fans (we’ve now entered totally ridiculous) and while she poses, primps and preens for the cameras we hear shouts from “reporters” along the lines of “How did you do it?” and "You look amazing! " Her response? “TrimSpa, baby!” and…the most meaningless comment ever…“I’m Back!”
At this point in the commercial we have gone beyond Totally Ridiculous and entered the magical realm of You Bastards Will Buy Anything, Won’t You?
“I’m Back”??? Back from WHERE!!! A universally mocked reality show? The dark alleyway of Celebrity for All the Wrong Reasons? And where, pray tell, does she think she has arrived back at? The whirlwind fame and fortune of doing TrimSpa ads? Is she going to marry another nonagenarian? This woman’s inspiring life story is supposed to be a selling point for TrimSpa?
Yes! Milburn and I regularly joke about the “5 or 6 vanity pounds” - I’m not sure though, does having these 5 or 6 extra pounds make me more vain? However, Leptroprim is NOT for me. (And if it were, I’ll hold up a giant size pair or jeans to prove it.)
Another lame gimmick: those DirecTV ads where a famous actor reads a customer letter. I guess that’s not so bad, but what’s really irritating is the “ad-lib” segment after the letter has been read, where the crew filming the commercial breaks out into applause and hysterical laughter at the painfully unfunny “quips” that the actors make.
The worst offender is Joan Cusak weighing the words “wow…great” while everyone hoots with laughter. Gimme a break.