You know what ad I hate? The Soft & Dri one with the women sort of marching/dancing in tank tops, grey camoflauge pants, and aviator sunglasses, while they do a cadence about deodorant. They’re unsmiling, they’re not lipsynching well.
Frighteningly, I didn’t have digital cable, I was still on the analog version and was paying so much for so little!!
CrankyAsAnOldMan, I forgot about that commercial! I hate the bad job done on the lip sync too!
I have to admit that the Organic Shampoo commerical in the courtroom still makes me laugh… Dr Ruth’s “I hope those boys come with the body wash!” just kills me!
Even irritating commercials (for example, the old Gilbert Godfreid (whose name I don’t care to know how to spell) McDonald’s ads) serve a purpose. Which is to get your attention. They KNOW it’s annoying. But it gets your notice, and that’s what they’re after. For small priced, non-major purposes, it works.
You will notice though, that car ads try their best to be non-irritating. Large purchases in general try to make you happy. Sometimes they fail miserably - that’s the ad agency’s fault. But car companies want you to like them. McDonald’s doesn’t care if you like them or not - they just want you to notice them.
And, when all is said and done, Jack in the Box has the best ad agency on the face of the earth. I wanna work there!
[marketing major hat off]
I have DirecTV. I love it. I get my baseball games.
Um… OK, but how do you account for the vast number of horrid, idiotic, home-made ads by local car salesmen? Loud and flashy. Waaay irritating, IMO. I’m only happy to see the commercial over. Certainly not inspired to go to the dealership and run the risk of actually meeting those same, shrill, annoying salesmen. Bleh.
Personal least favorite commercial: Britney Spears prancing around singing “ba, ba, ba” for Pepsi. She sounds like an overgrown Smurf. Not that I drink much Pepsi anyway, but if I did, this commercial annoys me enough to stop.
Easy. Car DEALERS don’t have the money to spend on analysis and competent advertising. Car MANUFACTURERS, on the other hand, do. You see a Chevy Impala commercial produced by General Motors: it’s beautiful, with shots of the car speeding along a wet, winding mountain road next to the ocean. You see a commercial from a Chevy dealer, and it’s nothing like. (Example chosen because that’s what I drive, so that’s what I notice.) You don’t really notice most car manufacturer ads until you’re actually in the market for a car.
There’s one move they do where they flex both of their biceps on their left side, then they swing both arms over and flex their biceps on the right. It looks like they’re a bunch of monkeys. <Insert funny gorilla noises>
I hate those 7UP commercials with Orlando Jones. I especially despise the one where they do blind taste tests with chum, bile, dishwashing soap, detergent, etc. Of course all of the people choose 7UP. The funny thing is that I would rather drink my brother’s urine than 7UP.
I don’t think that accounts for it entirely. Many of the local ads I’ve seen are so excessively tacky it must be deliberate. Really, you don’t need much money to do better than that. You don’t need an expensive analyst to tell you that screaming your sales pitch at top speed while flashing neon colored prices across the screen is tasteless. They must think it sells cars. Maybe it does. Just not to me.
HAHAHA, reminds me of an old Conan O’Brien “Weird Ads” skit where the supermarket flyer advertised mayo for whatever price, then in small print underneath it said “Men who don’t get mayo at home have been known to look for it outside the marriage.”
The diamond ads are downright foul. There was a billboard near here recently with a big pair of earrings on it that said something like “Your wife told us to show you these” or something obnoxious like that. Like I spend all my time scheming and conniving to get pretty, pretty diamonds! PRETTY, PRETTY! SPARKLE PRETTY! DIAMOND = PRETTY PRETTY LOVE!
