Have you ever seen a commercial that annoyed you so much that you would never purchase the product being advertised? Two current commercials come to mind for me.
Mazda (I think) ad where a couple is hauling a cooler full of snow to build a snowman in someone’s front yard. Not sure why it annoys me so much. Maybe because they couldn’t have enough snow to build the snowman they showed. Maybe because they leave without seeing the people’s reaction. Maybe because… what grownup cares that much about a snowman?
Not even sure of the product, but there is a smug-looking woman who cares more about her cat(s) than her children. Off screen, her kid calls that he hurt himself and she is sitting there with her cat and won’t even get up to go check on the kid. Might be cat food.
That’s a strong affirmative, but it’s usually SPAM that does that to me. I think to myself, “If I ever want this kind of product, I will make sure NOT to buy it from this intrusive, annoying company!”
Recently I’ve seen an ad for Cadbury Dairy Milk where a kid offers his chocolate bar to a woman crying on a bus. I guess the moral is that you should feel good when you make an empty gesture to someone who has serious problems? Why is that supposed to make me want to buy Dairy Milk?
Reminds me of a comic’s routine. His brother would say such things as “The Benz is in the shop, so I had to take the Beemer” and he’d reply: “I know what you mean - the Civic is out of gas, so I had to take the bus.”
(sorry for the hijack, but I think that joke is a hoot!)
There’s one for oven cleaner running now. The voiceover goes on and on about how while you’re cooking for the holidays people are going to be looking in your oven and judging you.
Look, if you’re at my place to eat a dinner that I spent lots of money on, spent hours cooking, and will have to clean up after, and you give me a hard time about a dirty oven, you’re welcome to clean it for me. WITH YOUR TONGUE!
Yeah…put me down for Progressive Insurance. The commercials with the weird “motorcycle-centaurs” is totally off-putting. For one thing, it has weird phallic overtones. It also makes motorcycle riders appear to be total jerks. (Disclaimer: Some motorcyclists ARE jerks.) All in all, it’s a good reason to switch to another company.
Slight Hijack: On a similar note, have you ever seen a product that advertises so much, you gotta think that they are making waaaay too much money, so you must be paying too much for their shit. Looking at you, Red Bull.
You are correct. I’m a motorcyclist, and I’m a jerk.
Once upon a time, Burger King had some commercials called “Whopper Freak Out” where customers (filmed with security camera) would be told that they didn’t have Whoppers and would lose their shit and start yelling, waving their arms around, throwing straws or whatever.
My take-away was that Burger King customers are the worst class of people and it was probably a couple years before I ate there again. Not as a conscious act of protest but because the idea of going there just felt low class and vile.
Back before satellite radio become more easily accessible, the local rock stations had these obnoxious ads for a local ( new ) car dealer, run by two local magnate/tycoon real estate/businessman brothers. Man they really carpet-bombed us, very often having two ads in the same session, separated by a single ad from something else between them. I swore, and still do, that if I wanted to buy the particular brand of car they were selling, I’d sooner go 50 miles away and or pay extra cash, just so that dealer didn’t get any of my business.
A similar question…
Have you ever been a regular customer of a product/company and stopped because they did a commercial that annoyed you?
For the original question…
The last time I bought a mattress I refused to buy from a couple of places because of their commercials. I did go into one of them to check prices and types. I really wanted to tell the person helping me something like “thank you, but I I would never buy anything here because of your commercial”, but I didn’t.
I noticed a recurrent Burger King ad on the football game yesterday. Two out of three customers looked like they were morbidly obese. I wasn’t sure what message they are trying to send – these people really like their chow, so they know the best place to eat?
