Commercials you don't hate

Cafe Society
722

I don’t hate commercials that avoid the following:

  1. Smarmy, smirking spokespeople (looking at you and many others, hotel dot com)
  2. Ads that use children to sell the product. Bonus negative points for singing children
  3. Using animals, or worse, animated animals to sell the product. Bonus negative points for animated animals that wag their rear ends to promote toilet paper.
  4. Repeating the name of the product or toll-free number many many many times during the ad
  5. Audio that is way louder than the program being sponsored
  6. Repeating the ad 5,278,491 times over a limited time period
  7. Cellphone carrier ads
  8. Auto insurance ads
  9. Prescription drug ads
  10. Shysters suing the makers of prescription drugs

That leaves 2-3 commercials a year that I don’t hate.

723

I agree with those, and add my own #11: Glomming on to earworm songs from yesteryear.

724

5,278,490 is the cut-off point? You’re way more patient than I am.

725

#11a: Just when I think “Hey, at least we get to hear that cool song from the 70s!”… nope, they re-recorded it with souless singers.

726

#12 - where the newfangled gadget- usually cooking related - only solves an issue if you clearly have no clue what you’re doing from the start. They usually start with “are you tired of this…”

727

Thanks to TikTok, I recently found out that a lot of those things aren’t made for me - they’re for people with various motor or mobility issues and are, in practice, really, really, really useful. The problem is that the advertisers hire commercial actors that don’t need the gadgets at this point in their lives and when other people who also don’t need them see the commercial, the gadget looks incredibly dumb.

728

Well - we are talking about the commercial(s) here - not necessarily the gadget itself.

729

The one exception: that Claritin commercial that features a guy chilling in a meadow with a tiny puppy. :heart:

730

Did you know?

The original Jake from the original commercial (‘what are you wearing, Jake from State Farm?’ ‘Uh, kakis’ ‘she sounds hideous’ ‘well she’s a guy, so’) was an actual State Farm employee named Jake whose job was to answer calls. He was brought back as the guy in the other cubicle for the 2020 remake (with the new Jake, Kevin Miles).

~Max

731

That’s great. I’m a big fan of that original commercial.

732

Or the Subaru commercials with the dogs. I think the puppy in this one is adorable.

733

Yeah, I still like that one, which is good because they show it a lot.

734

No matter how much she tried to fix it, dinner had unfortunately pasta way

735

Limu on a treadmill!

Sorry, buddy. You’re still not gonna take off.

736

Nope, Limu on a treadmill goes in the commercials you hate thread. I watch baseball, and that one airs at every commercial break, along with “Wet teddy bears.”

737

Actually, some of their commercials without Limu and Doug are pretty entertaining.

“Yep. Everything hurts.”

738

Doug admitting that he’s virtually incapable of talking about anything other than Liberty Mutual:

It’s only good the first time, though.

739

I may have spoken about the hearing aid ad where the visiting daughter tries to discretely whisper-ask her husband if he’s brought condoms (“Condors? Why would I be asking about condors?”} and dad overhears with his super-duper hearing aid. Well, I JUST noticed there’s a little sting at the very end where the bedroom door closes and dad quickly removes his hearing aids. Made me laugh all over again…

740

Maybe not all versions of the commercial show that part, maybe that’s why you didn’t notice it until now. Compare:

~Max

ETA: Nvm, it looks like both had that end part.

741

there are many layers to that commercial. it took me way to long to realize why the father removed the hearing aids.