Today, for the third day in a row, I heard Volkswagon advertise that their seats are more firm than American made cars. Wow! I can’t even imagine how bad their cars are if they think this is their best selling point.
What commersials are working for you?
Forget France. The French can be annoying. Come to Greece, we’re nicer.
Delta: Most of our passengers get there alive.
Sony: Because caucasians are just too damn tall.
Mike Diamond Plumbing has been running a series of radio ads out here, where they talk about how their plumbers show up on time and smell good.
Yes, “smell good.”
While I can logically understand why this would be an appeal for customers – you don’t want someone stomping around your house if he smells like poo – every time I hear the ads, I keep thinking “Geez, all the nice-smelling cologne in the world won’t be worth anything if the plumber isn’t competent.”
AT&T: We’re tired of taking your crap.
[sub]You don’t drive a Saab, do you?[/sub]
Cigarettes are bad. They can kill you or give you cancer or a million other bad things. Go to our website to find out just how bad they really are. Oh and by the way, wanna buy a cigarette?
I believe I heard somewhere that beer companies can show their product, but can’t show someone actually drinking it. This leaves us with a lot of commercials showing people holding beer bottles, about to drink, having just taken a drink, etc. and I find it a bit awkward sometimes.
Worst. Marketing. Concept. Ever:
It was in the 70s or 80s, a TV ad for a new laxative (might have been Ducolax). They were hyping the new form. You see, the laxative came in a gel capsule. It had a soft outer shell. It was brown. It was cylindrical with rounded ends. And in the commercial, they cut into it, showing a thick brown liquid oozing out of the shell.
Form following function, I guess, but I can’t imagine any viewer wanted to put that in their mouth.
WE LOVE THE SUBS!
(I actually like these ads, I just wanted to be the first to say it…)
One of the Japanese car companies (Mazda?) has the slogan “Wake up and Drive.”
I imagine a car that’s so boring and uninspired that people fall alseep behind the wheel.
I remember seeing something on the History Channel, IIRC, that was about the rise of the Women’s Lib movement. They showed a commercial from the period for an instant coffee, that was shot from the POV of a man showing his wife how to make coffee properly. Literally his POV: you could see his hands reach in from the bottom of the frame to fill the coffee pot, measure in the coffee, and chuck his wife under the chin. The upshot was that Maxwell House (or whatever the brand) was the coffee that was so easy to prepare, even a woman could do it.
Cut from that to footage of hundreds of extremely pissed women marching in the streets and setting fire to various supportive undergarments. It wasn’t a causal relation, but damn… talk about misreading your demographic.
How about Denny’s: A Good Place To Sit And Eat. Who’d they pay for that one, a five year old?
IIRC, in the mid 90s Ford advertised one of their truck models (F-150?) on highway billboards with the slogan “it’s full of surprises.” Perhaps one of the worse ways to phrase “it will exceed your expecations.”
Exxon: We’re Exxon. Deep.
We’re Exxon: Do what we say, and nobody gets hurt.
In the early 90’s there were a spate of billboards with a blank black background and in stylishly graffito script the message “No Condom, No Sex, No way.” Based solely on the inference that no one would purchase space to promote AIDs this must have been a rather ambiguous safe sex message.
The recent Mercedes (I think) ads. "Our engines are powered by enslaved demons! If you don’t watch out, they’ll break free and trash your house!" :eek:
KFC’s Chicken Strips – I mean Kitchen Strips – no, Chicken Strips – no, KITCHEN Strips – no, [grabs shotgun, shoots hole in TV]
What can Brown do for you?
As my husband said the other day: “It could dirty my underpants!” Eww.
Why is UPS calling themselves “Brown,” anyway?
They (Datsun…Nissan) were running an ad for this macho truck (Frontier?) it featured “tough guy talk” while they showed the truck sliding around in the mud in slo mo, but the mud was about 2 inches thick and the surface was very smooth (I suspected that it was a parking lot covered with a thin layer of mud), anyway the slo mo shots of this big macho truck showed the body wiggling all over the place and I was struck with the thought “that thing must have a frame made out of warm Jello”, there is NO WAY! I would even consider buying this POS, I laughed every time I saw that stupid ad.
Several years ago a buddy was truck shopping (for a 1 ton, 4 x 4, farm truck) and we went to a Chevy dealership, while walking out with a salesman to look at a truck the salesman said “you’ll love this truck, it rides just like a car”, we turned on our heels, headed back to our car laughing loudly at this moron, we were looking for a truck not a car!.
Unclviny
Two ads that ran in Japan a while back.
Nova English Schools. A man finds himself in front of a tribunal of masked judges demanding to know why he’s not studying English. Whenever he tries to give a reason why, they interrupt him with some variation of “everyone’s doing it!” Eventually he cracks under the strain of their interrogation and agrees to go to Nova, after which he is shackled to a pair of sheep which lead him from the room.
MTV Japan. A young man is sitting on the sidewalk next to a bin of records for sale. He gets up and walks to a nearby toilet, then sits down for a moment. After he gets up he reaches into the toilet and pulls out a double-handful of shit, which he then flings to the ground and begins kneading with his hands. After molding the shit into a flat patty, he drops a heavy press on top of it and holds it down for a moment. When he lifts the press up, the shit has been turned into a vinyl album. He slaps an MTV label on the record and puts it in the bin with the rest.
So that’s where George Orwell’s been all these years!
And…anyone seen that commercial with the piece of talking, skydiving, bubblegum?
It’s amusing enough if you’re watching it…but if you happen to just be listening to the TV, with that ad in heavy rotation, you’re quickly left wanting to jam that slimy little bastard under a theater seat.
Ranchoth
(“What are YOU looking at, you mangy beast?!”)
Canyonero!
Can you name the truck with four-wheel drive,
Smells like a steak, and seats thirty-five?
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Well, it goes real slow with the hammer down,
It’s the country-fried truck endorsed by a clown!
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Hey, hey!
Twelve yards long, two lanes wide,
Sixty-five tons of American pride!
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Top of the line in utility sports,
Unexplained fires are a matter for the courts!
Canyonero! Canyonero!
She blinds everybody with her super-high beams,
She’s a squirrel-squashin’, deer-smackin’, drivin’ machine!
Canyonero! Canyonero! Canyonero!
Whoa, Canyonero! Whoa!