This is a major pet peeve of mine in movies. How long does it take to teach an actor how to hold an instrument?
This, even if they’re not playing it.
I remember some 60s TV show where the “hippie kids” were walking around looking all FlowerPower-y, and a girl was carrying her guitar with her fingers in the sound hole. That’s stuck with me since (for what, a half a century?) and I’ve kept an eye out for ANYone carrying a guitar like that. Nope.
Years ago, Little Caesars had an series of ads proudly showing that the cheese on their pizzas was like rubber.
The Volkswagen Beetle had a tongue in cheek advertisement about a type of repellent automobile ad. Try a web search for “heap big trading bee”. As the ad said “Ugh”
Wait, I just found one posted:
In the Arthur Hailey book “Wheels”, it was the upper echelon at the big ad agency who rejected all initial ideas. That way they would do more work and increase their billing.
heh look up camacho auto sales or camacho Mitsubishi on you tube for the absolutely worst car dealer commercials ever … makes Cal Worthington look like a genius
heck ill make it easy for ya :
I wonder if that’s the goal. “Man, that guy makes Cal Worthington look like a genius. Now, where should I go to buy a vehicle? I could visit a car lot staffed with no-nonsense functionaries who simply won’t give an inch, or one where clever hagglers can give a little to get a lot when shrewdly outsmarting me — or I could try my luck with that guy. You know what? I kind of like my odds against that guy.”
(off topic)
In video game development, there is the (probably embelleshed) story of the “duck feature” in battle chess.
Basically the developers had gotten used to the producer always wanting to have some input, and making pointless suggestions. So one of the artists added a small duck to many of the animations. It would, for example just flap around the Queen’s feet as she played a walk animation.
And, so the story goes, it worked: the producer said he loved all the animations but “lose the duck”.
There are several auto dealerships in the DC area owned by the same person (family?) and this is their spokesperson in all the TV ads. For some reason that we can’t accurately describe, my husband and I are both creeped out by her in the commercials. I don’t think she ever blinks, and her enthusiasm is too plastic to be real, I guess. She may be a perfectly lovely person, but even if we lived near one of their dealerships, I don’t think we’d buy a car there. But every time one of their ads come on, we shudder a little.
Here’s a recent ad by Krystal Koons
Doesn’t seem too over-the-top to me. She does have a problem keeping her eyes open in bright sunlight.
For comparison, this is Miami’s super-enthusiastic car sales spokes-chick.
That was a fairly calm ad by their standards; often it’s all her gesticulating & wiggling the whole 30 seconds. They’re incessant on local TV.
Off-topic digression: you reminded me of a Monty Python sketch involving the Pope, Michelangelo, and a kangaroo:
But would Camacho eat a bug?
We had a client… well, okay, for any vintage Madisonians, I’m not proud of it, but we did all the Uber-Stupid commercials for Main Appliance back in the 80s.
Well, ol’ grandpa Red Main started with a little appliance shop on Monroe St.
and he used to laugh about his best sales tactic: put one of the price tags in the window on upside-down. The people (esp. UW faculty) walking by would come in to correct him, and they had this attitude of “I’m smarter than this shop owner, I could probably swing a good deal…” And, bingo!
“Fauxslaw”. That, my friends, is a keeper.
Any ad where they mostly yell.
Any ad where they assume zero intelligence. There is one financial services one where they define “algorithm” at length in an amazingly condescending way. Not sure who there intended audience is.
Any ad where they seem proud of causing social harm. I remember a car as where they showed dozens of cars billowing smoke, with the motto “changing the landscape”. Probably, but pass!
Any repeated ad under five seconds long.
Any ad that strongly reinforces a tasteless ethnic stereotype, even if done by that ethnicity. (One of the East Side Mario’s ads).
Subaru’s national ads are so insipid, so clearly created by people who don’t know anything about cars, that I have to admit I would have trouble considering buying a Subaru.
A supplement that supposedly increases your ability to think actually asks “Do you want to brain better?”
Brain better with Neuriva brain health supplements - YouTube
I tried those. I got smart enough to realize what a total rip-off it was.