I don’t know how noticeable it is or not, but I like that commercial partly because it’s recursive. If you pay close attention, you see that the very first random act of kindness (the woman keeping the man from walking into the oncoming traffic) is repeated at the end (the woman who kept him from walking out is the recipient of the next-to-last RAOK), as if in a time loop.
One I still laugh out loud at is the Cingular ad with the daughter in Vegas with her boyfriend calling her mom. The connection drops and the mom is frantic that the daughter is going to marry the boyfriend there. At the end, the mom looks quickly to see if the dad is around and stage-whispers “Jennifer! Don’t make the same mistake I did!”
I have loved every single one of the Aflac duck commercials. The first was always my favorite. The way he kicks the bread crumb back at the guy cracks me up every time.
I don’t really have a favorite commercial, but my grandfather’s favorite right now is the Verizon FIOS ad in which the young boy is asking the Verzion tech about what he does. He explains using extremely complicated words. The boy replies, “nice truck.”
My favorite commercial was aired nearly a decade ago. It was for some start-up internet company. They show a stadium filled with cheering people and your typical event-announcer person.
“It´s a beautiful day here celebrating XXX company´s inauguration, and as a special treat for the marching band, we´ve released a pack of live wolves into the stadium!”
Then it cuts to a shaky camera following the action. The marching band members are running across the field screaming in terror, beating savage wolves off with their trumpets and trombones.
As a student who was in high school marching band, I don´t think anything ever tickled me more.
…
I am also especially fond of the orange juice commercial with the talking sandwich who has olives on toothpicks for eyes.
I have no idea why Cyberian Outpost’s commercials didn’t work. The idea was to have viewers remember the web site, outpost.com, by showing it in bizarre fashion. Besides the marching band, they also had a spot in which they attempted to fire a guinea pig from a cannon into the web address.
When I realized what was happening on that commercial, I cracked up. I think it’s the only one of those Vegas commercials that I like.
The Petsmart bulldog one is cute, too. As for the Dairy Queen ones, I liked the first one, with the ice cream girl moving in and borrowing the waffle cone guy’s chocolate syrup, and was delighted to see in the next commercial that they apparently are now lovers.
I also love the stupid Alltel commercials with the other cell-phone carrier guys constantly threatening Chad. My favorite is when the chubby guy for Sprint suggests beating him with a tube sock full of wood screws.
“What? My dad’s a carpenter.” That especially cracks us up at our house because Carpenter is our last name. We’re all easily amused, though.
A current favorite is the cell-phone ad where the family is sitting around the table discussing who’s in their “favorite five” and the son reveals he’s chosen his sister’s friends. I love the parents’ reactions. (The same series also has good ads with Charles Barkley and the “Secret Lovers” ad.)
No longer being broadcast, but I loved the M&M’s commercial where the three M&M characters were sitting in a store eating M&M’s and a customer makes them stop because “that’s just disturbing”. And the one about the three guys hanging out in their office, dancing to some music, when another guy comes in and tells them to stop goofing around because of some big problems. They take a five second break, show they’re on top of everything, and go back to goofing off.
I enjoy the one about them kidnapping the dog, I think it’s named Fluffy, and then they threaten the lady. She tells them that it isn’t her dog and some guy looks over and goes “Fluffy??” then chases them. Cracks me up each time, plus the dog is cute.
I have noticed that. I also noticed the :60 one, where it starts out as a very small thing, where a woman pushes a coffee cup away from the edge of the table, then goes to a very big thing, where another woman pushes a man away from a tower of falling boxes.
I really don’t like the Verizon “network” commercials, but I can’t help cracking up at the one with the mob guy. “You get service out here? I’m always doing business out here and it’s a crap shoot.” Just makes me giggle.
I admit to really getting into the “hairapy” commercials that were a series of 1 or 2 minute shorts in the dating life of a couple. I would have watched a series about them.
I can no longer remember any of the specific commercials, but there was a year (around the first year of Survivor) where there were a series of commercials by different companies where it was clear that there was some marketing agency somewhere where clearly scientist had fed liquid crack into the water supply to see what sort of ad campaigns would develop. A bunch of non sequitor or really odd commercials, some on the borderline of very bad taste, all of which me and my friends just loved to pieces. I think a bunch of them were in the superbowl that year too, but since then there haven’t been any real interesting commercials in the same vein.
