Actually, the commercial with the guy getting blown away by his stereo was for Maxell, not Memorex.
IIRC, the Memorex commercial had an opera singer recorded onto a tape, then played back next to a glass, breaking it. (“Is it live, or is it Memorex?”) Some of my Memorex CD-Rs have a picture of a broken glass on them, and my Maxells have a guy sitting in a chair with his hair blowing back.
Now that’s a wave of destruction that’s easy on the eyes!
Oh, I do stuff like that. I will eat “just one” Lay’s potato chip, simply out of spite.
I discussed double entendres in commercials with my husband last time we did a thread on it (those hamburger commercials - “I’d hit that!”), and he is firmly convinced that any double entendres or dirty meanings in commercials are 100% intended. I tend to agree with him - the company gets the extra play of having a commercial people notice and talk about (and write threads on the internet about), but they have plausible deniability all sewn up.
Just for a lark, try listening to commercials without watching them. It sounds like you’ve got porn playing on your tv, they’re so suggestive.
“Toyota” 
Technically, there is mugai kogata torakku (“open, small size truck”). Or even the quaint pikku appu. Which I suppose isn’t a Japanese “word”, but they are Japanese words. Kind of like the English words for “pickup truck”.
Couldn’t agree more. I can’t understand why this would make people squeamish.
If the company is associating its chicken sandwich or nuggets or whatever with a live chicken, that at some level tells me “We make this out of an actual chicken, not sawdust and horse meat.”
Chickens are TASTY. Cows are TASTY. Pigs, TASTY. Yum! Kill them, slice 'em up, and cook 'em!
There has been one recently for cat food, I think… fer cryin’ out loud, the woman rolls over in bed and says, kind of suggestively (so I thought): “Good morning, Tiger!” Then her husband props his head up behind her and says “Hey, Tiger!” And then they show a cat coming in to greet them in the morning. WTF?! I mean, it’s not… blatant, I don’t think, but when that woman purrs the words “good morning, Tiger”, my first time seeing the advert, I was thinking, okay, ice cream? Herbal Essences? KY Jelly?
CAT FOOD?
As for local commercials, anything by Seattle* Stereo Warehouse are horrendous. Granted, we went there to get Mr. Stasaeons little 300ZX prettied up with a nice sound system, and they did a fantastic job and had great prices… but the adverts are so, so bad. My BIL dryly remarks that the proprietor is “45 going on 10.” When we went there, he was helping us pick out what we wanted, and he’s about the same as he is in the commercials. He came across like a middle aged guy trying too way hard to be “cool”. He kept asking us if we were going to be listening to lots of heavy metal, then telling us all the different bands he liked and how he liked to keep his stereo pumped. Enthusiam, great. Shoving it down my throat, not so much.
Wow. I have to make a point to travel to St. Louis just to see that commerical. In the Central New York area we have Billy Fucillo who it seems, has bought up the majority of advert space in Syracuse. Buses, billboards, TV; you can’t go anywhere without seeing that guy hocking his cars. All the ads feature him, so its rather Big Brotheresque. One thing I don’t miss about CNY is that tool.
OMGLOLAOL1111! I can’t believe it took 50 posts to mention those Truth bastards. Stop it, just stop it.
I cannot stand most of the ad output from Taco Bell over the past few years. From the “I’m FULL!” ads to the uber-annoying “Good to go” ads, they make me hate hate HATE Taco Bell.
I really, realy hate the “good to go” ads more than anything, though.
There is what I believe to be a regional ad for carsoup.com that features a variety of super-annoying spokespeople who all are way too shiny. By that I mean that they look like they have a thin film of sweat on them. One guy in particular stands out, as he has a gap between his teeth, a la Letterman, and he has an unwavering shot-eating grin throughout the commercial.
Die, carsoup, die.
How’d this thread get this far without a mention of Enzyte?
Old Bob’s got a boner from here to Sunday and he has to boink that escapee from the Stepford Wax Museum of a wife?
I’d rather go through life limp as a noodle than even consider trying that crap.
Well, this may not properly count, because I’m not much of a beer/ale drinker anyway. But if I were, I think I’d still stay the hell away from “alexander keith’s pale ale” because I hate and am annoyed by that guy with the sideburns in the ads.
(For anybody who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, the Keith’s commercials all feature a guy with an annoying celtic-type accent, [I understand the brewery is based in Nova Scotia, where there was a lot of immigration from Scotland and/or Ireland,] who hangs around in bars and mocks/annoys/lectures anybody who isn’t giving a Keith’s “the respect it deserves.” Insisting that a neck brace be made after someone is a little enthusastic with a minor toast and cracks the neck of his bottle, lecturing someone that ‘a beer drinker plus a hand talker equals a spilly talker, sprinkling the pride of Nova Scotia on the floor’, and asking someone who ordered his Keith’s with a wedge of lime “how long have you had the scurvey” and when he says he doesn’t, telling his friends that the poor boy must be in the delirious stage.)
The only thing I wish for, watching those commercials, is that either someone else in the bar would punch him out, or that I could swing my fist through the television screen and do it myself. (And I’m normally far from a violent person.) I suppose he’s effective in raising a little bit of brand awareness to stick in my mind so much, but does associating your brain with such a negative and annoying spokesperson really help get sales??
No no no, they have an Updated, Modern version of the commercial which advertises Memorex CDs–IIRC, some rock band playing loudly, complete with electric guitars, then it cuts to a picture of a CD and the words, “Is it live, or is it Memorex?”
I just bought some last night, as a matter of fact, and they actually have the slogan printed on the CD itself.
My headphones are the rubbish-y Phillips kind with the blue earpieces–bad, but I’m glad I have them, as they’re practically unbreakable. I used to go through several pairs of headphones a year because I’d manage to step on them. 
I don’t like the Checkers commercials. The “You gotta eat” slogan makes me think “When you gotta go, you gotta go” and this makes me think of urine and/or feces.
Plus, the people in the commercial are always doing stupid, irritating things.
GAAAHHHH!!!
You have just reminded me of the one commercial that I hate so much I sometimes simply turn off the tv and go do something else. That’s a lot of hate.
“I’d like to teach the world to chill…”
Chill?! Are you fucking kidding me? CHILL?!?! Go fuck yourselves for bastardizing that commercial. It used to be good tune, but now it has been desecrated.
Ah well, saved me the trouble of opening a pit thread in Cafe Society to be able to rant about it here.
“Smoke pot, and you could grow up to be President! …Uh, wait.”
Actually, I suspect it won’t be very long — a couple of decades at most — before this changes, as many of us will just be buying our shows directly. The pricing scheme will work something like this: “ABC, Lost. First two episodes are free. Next five episodes: $10, or buy the whole season now for $40.” Lower-rated shows will be cheaper, as will be impulse-type shows that get high ratings because they’re fun when you surf to them but that you don’t go out of your way to see (a lot of reality programming falls into this category) and previously aired seasons (“X-Files season 2, $8”). You’ll also be able to subscribe to entire channels, which will be mostly for specialty content, like Fox News or the Food Network. Individual episodes will be delivered to your Microsoft Teleputer Homestation 3000™ via fiber optic line on a set schedule, one show a week, over the “season,” except for channels like Fox News which are always on. There will still be obnoxious product-placement and stuff, and there may be a sponsor message at the beginning, PBS style. And I suspect the networks will stay in business, offering their content with old-fashioned commercial breaks and superimposed ad bugs to those who can’t or won’t buy shows individually, as well as syndication channels (like TVLand) who won’t be able to actually sell their programming. …Hmmm, I wonder if there’s a thread in this notion…
Oh, the memoriex! I was working as a sales rep for Maxell (part of the Hitachi group) at the time of this ad, which featured Mussorgsky’s Night on a Bare (or Bald, if you prefer that translation*) Mountain.
I remember drawing a picture of our MD, Mr Yamaguchi, during a particularly boring meeting at our Telford headquarters, complete with thick horn-rimmed glasses and a speech bubble with his motto: “Sell More Bideo!”
Well I recently heard a crazy radio ad. It starts out with this guy saying “Hey, I’m a baby. In the womb.” Then it goes on about how it hates when mom eats spicy foods, and something about going kung-fu on her appendix, and I don’t remember what all. Being pregnant myself I’m trying to figure out if it’s an ad telling me to eat healthy for my baby or whatever, or something totally different. Then, all of the sudden, a voiceover comes on that says “Hardees Spicy Chicken Barbecue Sandwich…It’s not for babies.” WHAT? This is going to make someone want one how?
Then, immediately after that (I guess they are packaged together), comes one about some kids going to prom, and the limo they rented is really an ice cream truck. Seems due to Hardees new ice cream shakes, the truck guy needs another way to make money. It ends with one of the guys saying “I’m so not getting lucky tonight.” Yeah, I love advertising where they make a joke about kids having sex.
Speaking of which, several years ago while I was in California I saw an PSA about not giving cigarettes to minors. It had a man standing there smoking, and a teenage girl walk up to him and ask for a cigarette. Then both the voiceover and the words pop on the screen “She better be damn cute”, before going on to talk about the trouble you can get into for giving out the smokes. So I’m watching this commercial thinking “but if she is cute enough, who cares about the penalties for giving her cigaretts…heck, she’s young AND cute, the guy should give her more than just a cigarette…” What exactly are they trying to say? And, of course, why on earth they are putting profanity in a PSA of all places???
Kids “getting lucky” on prom night is a pretty standard cliche, and there’s some truth behind it. Teenagers do have sex, you know, and I don’t think they look at it quite the same way you do. Perhaps the ad was targeted at them.
One I heard about, an anti drugs campaign in schools. The kids were given pencils bearing the message it’s not cool to do drugs. Unfortunately, once they had been sharpened a couple of times, they said **cool to do drugs. ** After a bit more sharpening, they simply said do drugs.
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There’s a series of adverts running in British cimemas which is supposed to have two effects, to promote Orange brand mobile phones, and to remind the audience to switch off their phones. Example plot, Carrie Fisher comes seeking funding for her movie, an historical drama about a pair of 18th century lovers who are kept apart, and can only correspond by letter. The Orange execs decide it would be better if the lovers comunicate by text messages. As Carrie leaves in a huff, the execs mime waving lightsabres. It finishes with the message “don’t let mobile phones ruin your movie, switch off now”
Okay, so it’s a great reminder to switch off. That part works fine. However it makes the Orange guys look like a bunch of jerks, and doesn’t encourage me to buy their product.
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The classic one has to be **You’re never alone with a Strand ** which put Strand cigarettes out of business.
i think the new e.p.t. pregnancy test that now reads “Pregnant” and “Not Pregnant” is rather offensive to the public… it’s like we were dumbasses who couldn’t work the previous line/blue tests before.