We’ve had far too many ad-bashing threads lately, so I thought I’d go against the grain (as is usually my wont) and ask people to provide examples of TV ads which were clever, amusing if not LOL funny, or otherwise interesting. Now it is true that a good ad will invariably be run into the ground until you finally end up hating it, so I’m mostly interested in initial impressions at the time.
Mine would include the Rodney Dangerfield series of beer ads in the 80’s, esp. the one where all the Rodney clones stroll off the spaceship, which the first time I saw it had me on the floor.
I also liked the Joe Isuzu campaign, with its absurd parody of the car salesman who always tries to bend the truth.
The Energizer Bunny was good early on, but hasn’t been remotely amusing in about 10 years now. The look on the guy’s face in the shower as the bunny strolls by was priceless.
T-Mobile consistently has really entertaining ads. Of their current batch, the one with “maybe you should get uglier friends” is my favorite. Going back a few years, they had one where someone drops his cell phone into the gorilla pit in the zoo. A gorilla picks it up and starts to use it…the owner jumps in to get it back. Here’s the best part – the gorilla puts up one finger in the universal “hold on one sec” gesture. Absolutely killed me.
Okay, this one was really stupid, but I liked it. There’s a new one for IHOP, hawking some kind of new pancakes or whatever; the guy is eating them in IHOP, when a pirate swings into frame and grabs them, screaming “TREASURRRRRE!”
OK, the last (not current) IBM series cracked me right up. (The ones where the IT staff were always dealing with impossible situations created by management.) “I resemble that!”
Most of the PC/Mac ads, too. I love those things.
And the one where the guy is riding the non-existent mountain bike. He does such a great job.
There’s a few more that are just so silly I like them, but that’s all I can remember at the moment.
What made that really funny for me is that the first time I saw it I thought he said “No, Dad got hos.” But his unhappy expression made me realize that he couldn’t have said that and I realized what he actually said.
The one with the large beast-like animal winning the cute blonde girls heart- I forget the product, even though someone reminded me in a previous thread. Its charming, and its not often you see beastialty as the basis for a commercial.
Funny thing about Jack in the Box-in the 70’s when the Rodney Allen Ripley phenomenon was sweeping the nation, us Floridians were completely in the dark about his 15 minutes of fame, because they didn’t (and still don’t) have any franchises down here, hence no ads.
I actually like a coupleof the ones where there is confusion because of the dropped calls. The two I like are the one where the guy is trying to buddy up to his father-in-law and the other is where the guy calls back a girl the day after their first date. I think he says something like,
“I felt like there was a real connection there”…(silence)…“yeah, I mean like a brother and sister, y’know, but not in a weird way, because I wouldn’t ever make out with my sister.”
I like the one in the restaurant also. Ol’Gaffer, do you have link for the “Sexy” one?
One from Kobe Bryrant from a few years ago. What makes it so funny is his says “purely dumbfounded” by the interviewer’s cluelessness and over-the-top enthusiasm, rather than simply reacting with “homophobia.”
Back in the '80s there was a series of Nestles commercials that used this music, but the one I am thinking of… I want to say it’s a woman in a tree swing or something, in slow motion… anyway I loved them because the song was so pretty… something like “Nestles makes the very best… N - E - S - T - L - E - S…” it was haunting. I loved it. I’d buy the single.