Every time I see that ad, when that scene occurs I think, wait-a-minute, this is such a HUGE announcement to give (even though they already have a child it’s still important) that you tell your husband as an off handed comment while he’s doing something and you’re doing the laundry. Really?
I always have to laugh at the ads for television sets. They show their TV and brag how great their set is and how vibrant the colors and picture is. Well, if their picture looks so good maybe it’s because MY TV screen is really good.
The creepy Colonel Sanders KFC $20.00 family meal commercials make me want to never again visit a KFC. They also remind me to occasionally pick up a fried or rotisserie chicken meal from Publix - good chicken, two sides, and rolls for ten or twelve dollars.
Those Burger King ads where the King is basically stalking some guy… standing outside his living room window, in his bed…
See, that one is clever because it subverts your expectations and makes the point that you shouldn’t get attached to your junk (get new junk at IKEA instead!).
The Swiffer commercials made it clear that the mop/broom does have feelings and had its heart broken. As noted, someone eventually wised up and switched tacks (specially addressing the issue in fact).
I actually like the one, “Just ask the family that lives in the back of my limousine!”
You mean the Burger King Auton?
The current ads for Hormel where they totally and shamelessly rip off Weird Al’s parody My Bologna (even down to having an accordion player singing the song) certainly isn’t going to have me rushing to buy their “pepperona”.
Before anyone says, oh well, ripoff of a ripoff, it’s different in many ways from what Al did when he parodied My Sharona. Al gets permission (baring a few cases of miscommunication regarding artists vs labels) even if as parody he doesn’t strictly need to. Further, Al actually changed the song into being about something new, from being about pining after a girl, to a silly tribute to a luncheon meat. All Hormel did is change which variety of processed meat is being sung about. Ripoff, not parody. And unless I’m mistaken, the original song by the Knack didn’t have an accordion arrangement, that was all Al’s doing, mainly because that’s the only instrument he knew how to play and it was before he had a full band to back him up. Rip. Off. Fuck you, Hormel.
There was a laxative commercial quite a few years ago. I don’t remember the brand, but I remember the commercial.
They showed one of their pills. It was brown and cylindrical. Then they cut into the caplet, and brown liquid oozed out of it.
Form follows function and all, but this was overdoing it.
Yeah, the Swiffer one sounds like some ad person wanted to rip off the IKEA ad without actually understanding what made the IKEA ad so effective.
Several years ago there was an advertisement for an electric razor. The narrator says, “hello Monday. Goodbye weekend.” They show some guy shaving the stubble that he neglected all weekend while he was out partying, etc.
Why the hell would you want people to associate your product with Monday mornings?
Axe Bodyspray went after the teen/early twenty market hard, and was so successful at branding themselves with that demographic that it killed their sales with every other age bracket.
And all this time I thought it was the stench.
Nationwide’s commercial for last year’s Super Bowl backfired horribly.
And some 30 years on, Burger King’s Where’s Herb campaign is the textbook of how NOT to do an ad campaign.
That actually was a part of it, but not quite the way you’re thinking. The campaign was so successful at making the connection between using their product, and getting laid, that kids would douse themselves in it, thinking that more Axe = more sex. What would have been largely inoffensive when applied lightly became eye-watering when applied by the gallon, and that’s the smell that got associated with the product.
A commercial for Pop Tarts that aired a few years back featured computer animation of a boy so excited about eating Pop Tarts for breakfast that he starts dancing. The dance step ended with the moonwalk. So a product aimed at children linked themselves with Michael Jackson.
Saw the ad tonight for Jublia, for treating toenail fungus. If it doesn’t backfire, I don’t know why. “Common” side effects listed are ingrown toenail, redness, itching, swelling, burning, stinging, blisters and (my favorite) pain. It doesnt’ mention the uncommon ones. It’s like watching an ad on The Onion, but apparently, it’s real.
In 2000, these Carl’s Jr commercials got their own thread, here. ** Zuma**, the OP, described it well.
The two I hated most were the ones set in: a) a gym and b) a library. Gym guy was getting catsup all over his shoes and the middle of the gym floor. Library girl was chomping loud enough that everyone was craning their necks to see WTF. Both were just wrong. I stopped going to Carl’s Jr, not as a protest so much as because the association made me ill and angry.
At the end of that one I chirp aloud, “Bye Daddy!”
In the long run, it created the undesirable association “Axe body spray” = “loser who is pathetically desperate to get laid”.