Not a wise slogan. Reminds me of a deranged stalker, or the dorky kid in the classroom that you were nice to once and he never left you alone after it.
I also find “Anti-Commercials” are particularly condescending (eg the new line of Hardee’s ads, where they dis on themselves).
Oh, Oh, any Old Navy bit, especially if Fran Dresher is invovled. I know it’s
meant to be stylized, but jeez, even the minorities they feature seem über-Aryan.
I’m not sure, but I could swear I saw a new one last night on Adult Swim using Space Ghost.
A great one here in the UK recently was the recent launch of a bottled water made by Coca-Cola called “Dasani”. It was marketed as something like “pure as bottled water gets” but they soon had to admit that it was actually tap water with some minerals added.
Further hilarity ensued when it was found that the additives were carcinogenic. Dasani was pulled from the shelves and you won’t be seeing it in the UK anytime soon.
I live in a small town in Germany. A guy living in our appartment complex works for a marketing firm that sponsors track and field sports athletes.
The company is called “Athletic Sports Sponsoring Team”. The name shown on the company cars is … wait for it …
ASS Team
:smack:
Muahahaha …
A German marketing company, choosing an English company name and then displaying it as ASS-Team … I grin whenever I see their cars.
And we musn’t forget Jerry Della Femina from his book about his life in advertising:
I was inspired by Della Femina’s book early in my career. So inspired, in fact, that I was once ended a presentation to a client with the words “And if this doesn’t work, we’ll torch the place and collect the insurance!”
I had forgotten the next line from Della Femina’s book.
“Nobody laughed.”
I’m with you. I always think of the slogan that ran during the 80s when our local town had a water shortage: If its brown, flush it down, if its yellow, let it mellow.
I hated the slogan then, and everytime I hear UPS call themselves Brown, I think of it.
Yeah, Mercedes has been on a roll lately, haven’t they. Does anyone remember the ads for, IIRC, the new Mercedes C-class a year or so ago? They were trying to highlight the idea that this Mercedes cost a lot less than you would expect a Mercedes would cost. Their tag line was “The new Mercedes C-class: It’s not what you’d expect from a Mercedes.”
For some reason, I only saw this ad a couple of times. . . .
Those Hardee’s ads either took some serious intestinal fortitude or desperation. Considering the large number Hardee’s closures around here in the last five years, I’m guessing the later.
I always had to wonder about U-Haul’s slogan, “An Adventure in Moving.” Who in their right mind wants moving to be an adventure?
The whole “I’m lovin’ it!” ad campaign from McDonald’s gets on my nerves. It’s not bad enough to be funny, it’s just plain bad.
I think that was Mitsubishi. Mazda is “Zoom Zoom” 
Count me as another person that thinks the UPS “what can brown do for you” is flat out awful. Who ever though of it, and conviced UPS to use it, must have been some kind of salesman.
It would have made sense if it was a nickname everyone in the world had been using for years, and everyone refered to the UPS store or UPS drivers “the brown guy” or “the brown store” and UPS said hey, let’s just go with it. Everybody calls us that anyway.
But no one does. And I’ve never heard anyone refer to them as “brown” since the campaign started.
As stated by previous posters, it evokes a gross and “dirty” image.
There was an ad they ran when I used to live in California. I don’t even remember who it was that paid for it, though probably it was one of those cigarette companies doign the public service thing. Anyway, it had a relatively good-looking man standing there smoking a cigarette and a teen girl came up and asked him for one. The commercial was something about how you can get in trouble for giving cigs to minors or whatever, but the big line they said (and I think it was even written on the screen) was something to the effect of: “She better be damn cute.”
I’m thinking a) why the profanity? b) profanity in an anti corruption of minors commercial? c) is it okay to give cigarettes to minors if they are cute? d) what if she’ll sleep with him? can he give her the cigarette then?
It annoyed me to death every time!
One that has always bugged me: OutBack Steakhouse’s tagline: “No Rules, Just Right”
Uh, dude, you are a RESTAURANT…I hope you have some freaking rules to follow!! Such as: wash your hands after you go to the bathroom, don’t drop my steak on the floor then brush it off and bring it to me, don’t let the bartender spit in my beer–yeah, those kind of rules!!
This one isn’t as dumb as you think. They’re saying Denny’s isn’t a fast food restaurant - that it’s a good place to sit as well as to eat. Most fast food restaurants have tiny tables and uncomfortable chairs to encourage customers to leave. Denny’s message is that you can stay there a while.
I’ll third “What can Brown do for you?”
It was particularly strange to see it scolling across the screen on the History Channel recently, during a show about Hitler’s SA* nazi thugs.
Man, I don’t see how they can get away with this one. I mean, surely the record companies would be up in arms for revealing industry secrets?
If a UPS truck burns rubber peeling out of the parking lot, would you call that “leaving a Brown streak”?
I’ve been told, but cannot confirm, that just before the SARS scare, the Hong Kong Tourist Board was planning to use the slogan Hong Kong Will Take Your Breath Away.
