And speaking of the Post Office: There’s a commercial for the USPS, against the closing of post office branches. One of the reasons given is that they keep people employed. So we’re supposed to keep these places open just to protect their jobs, even though the branches are operating at a loss? Why don’t we just build millions of new branches, and solve the entire unemployment problem?
Apparently, if you need to stand in line in Nevada, you have to go to one of the “blue” towns, where all the lines are . . . or to the one “red” town, where you can stand ON line.
Tengu-I agree with the 1st reason you dislike the Geico commerical. It makes NO DAMN SENSE!
Nope. My suspension of disbelief will not accommodate Ripley ever again leaving the surface of the Earth.
This annoys me for a different reason. What would I do for a Klondike bar? I would walk to store and buy one! Actually, I’d probably be more likely to by a Drumstick or a similarly more appealing ice cream confection.
I think I may have mentioned the Totino’s commercials before. The ones where kids mention all sorts of things they enjoy doing, then claim “But our favourite thing is eating Totino’s!” Your favourite thing in the entire world is eating frozen pizza? Go get a real hobby!
They’re an accounting and auditing firm. As someone who has been deposed twice in lawsuits involving BDO I can honestly say their motto is more like… “Audit Schmaudit… We’ll sign off on anything!”
There was a car company that advertised for a while with the tag line, “To each their own.” I believe I developed an aneurysm from that one.
I also saw a late-night commercial for some product and noticed that on one important screen, the ordering page (Call Now! Operators are standing by!) or somesuch, the product manufacturer’s name was spelled incorrectly. WTF?
Doesn’t bother me but it pisses of my wife every time a credit card commercial shows them swiping a card upside down so that the card loo will be right side up.
That woman can pop up in the back of my car anytime she wants.
Those Education Connection commercials have me lunging for the remote the second I hear the opening beat. There are at least 4 variations of the ad, all with some cheesy “GET CONNECTED! FOR FREE (for free)! WITH EDJACAYSHUN CONNECKSHUN!” Probably the most ridiculous of these is the one with Shannon Doherty.
Not even muting the television helps that goddamn* Jack-in-the-Box “marrying bacon” commercial.
*I will consent to the existence of a merciful god if I’m promised that everyone involved in the creation of this commercial will burn in a lake of hellfire for all eternity.
What people? You obviously haven’t been there. They have the longest stretch of paved highway with absolutely no services in the US–most of the width of the state. Hwy. 50, “The loneliest road in the world”, according to the signs.
On topic:
In general I don’t mind ads for legal firms trying to drum up clients for class-action suits, but I hate it when they try to sound sympathetic. You’re a bunch of money grubbers and everyone knows it. You’re not fooling anyone!
And someone help them pick one pronunciation for ‘mesothelioma’.
I don’t know many commercials that bother me for silly reasons, but I sure do know plenty that bother me for good reasons. I’ll just mention one product: breakfast cereal! My suspension of disbelief is monkey-wrenched out of all ability to function by any commercial where people are shown ordering cold cereal in restaurants, or evincing utterly orgasmic surfeits of pleasure on eating it. For that matter, the cartoon bee used in some of the Honey Nut Cheerios commercials looks downright psychotic, or at the very least hopped up on some sort of stimulant drug. And, like the Nasonex bee, he too seems to be male notwithstanding the high squeaky voice.
Oh, OK, I’ll mention one other product–toilet paper, or as the marketing euphemism puts it, “bath tissue”. The Charmin bears are nauseating; is it really a problem for some kids that fragments of TP are left “behind”? Also, when not using sentient talking cartoon bears, why does so much marketing for TP–whether commercials or product packaging–use babies? Babies are among the minority of people who don’t use toilet paper, at least in TP-using economies. And here, too, nearly all the babies seem to be boys, to the extent one can make an estimate.
Silly reason? Commercials for Viagra and Cialis. You know, I’m just minding my business, probably watching a baseball game and suddenly everything is about boners. I don’t want to think about other guys boners. Now I’m thinking about them running around with raging boners, possibly for four hours or more. It’s unsettling.
Some cheap toilet paper does shred during use. Cheapass (yes, that’s intentional) TP comes in two varieties, the kind that will shred if you look at it, and the John Wayne version (it’s rough, tough, and doesn’t take any shit from anybody). Neither kind works well as toilet paper. But yeah, the Charmin bears, especially the cubs, are less than charming. The original idea behind the commercial, to play on the old “does a bear shit in the woods?” meme, was sort of clever. Now, it’s just cloyingly cute.
Most of it is unedible props, actually. IIRC, ice cream is often plaster.
Rebranding campaigns. I begin by not understanding the need to change logos and so forth when you actually have a high recognizability, but the ones where they pronounce the name of the product or brand in a way people in the target market doesn’t. They sound both clueless (dude, people will have problems recognizing what is it you’re talking about) and condescending (no, no, you’re doing it wrong…).
I do correct Anglos who turn the ch in my lastname into a k, but there are a lot of English words where ch is pronounced “as in chocolate” - and my “mispronounced” lastname isn’t a brand with wide recognition. If it happened to be, I’d shut up and smile.
I hate this one for Honey Nut Cheerios, for a number of reasons:
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Adults should never use the word “yummy” when speaking to anyone except a very young child.
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The cereal is all the same, it’s stupid to pretend the waitress had it mixed up.
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The server’s “I got that wrong, didn’t I?” just grates on my nerves!
Well, at least they’ve not yet gotten to the point where they show the finger popping through “cheap-ass” toilet paper. Could be just a matter of time, though.
Q
Annnnnnnnd, bookmarked.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that if you’re advertising a food, than you have to actually use the real product, though you’re allowed to do shit to it to make it look nicer.
Ahh, yes, here we go:
“In general, Federal Trade Commission laws require the main product for sale is what’s featured in the ad, not a styrofoam mockup or different product altogether. But the other foods featured don’t have to be real at all. An ad selling ice cream cones must feature the actual ice cream cone, but the “ice cream” can be made of clay with plastic sprinkles and dyed corn syrup ‘hot fudge’”