OK, it’s a Subway commercial. Husband walks in on wife, who is snarfing down some chocolate ice cream. He gives her a look like ‘Ha, I caught ya!’, but she says, “It’s OK, honey, I had Subway for lunch”.
OK, I get that part…she had a healthy Subway sandwich and that justifies her chowing down on some Haagen-Daas.
Here’s what I don’t get: The husband then gets a look like, ‘well, I’ll show her’…and in the next scene he is prancing around in a cheerleader outfit, out in his driveway washing the car!!! His wife runs out the door horrified, since the neighbors are filming this bizarre scene. Then he looks up at his wife and says, “It’s OK, I had Subway today!” and continues prancing.
There’s not much you’re missing, honestly. The point is s’posed to be that she justified her indulgence by saying she had Subway, so he got the idea to do the same. It was OK, because he had Subway.
Actually, that one I think is kinda funny. The ice cream isn’t the point, it’s the indulgence.
The one I wanna know about is McDonalds new “I Love This” campaign (or whatever it is. One of the “storylines” is a girl stepping outside of her apartment building and getting locked out. Unfortunately, she’s clad only in a pair of boxers and a pillow that she clutches against her bare chest. But, luckily for her, a gentleman exits the same door (the door she is now hiding behind) and she is able to re-enter her abode.
Why was she running out into the street naked in the first damn place?!
I had to look up the lyrics on the web before I had the first clue what the “Happy Jack” thing for Hummer was about. Even after I found out, I can’t understand why they used that song.
OTOH the music to the Mitsubishi ads has made me glad to hear them repeated. Cool stuff, even if I can’t understand but one or two words in them. The beat and the sound are worth the trouble.
Then there’s the Lincoln ads with that funky/jazzy beat.
Ever notice in the car ads that there are rarely any other vehicles around? Either an open road (nearly always wet) or a deserted city street. Guess they don’t want you to get the impression that you’ll spend 80-90% of your time in that fine machine stopped or barely moving. Deceit, yes?
I’ll second that. That’s not normally the sort of music I’m fond of, but it’s quite catchy for the Mitsu commercials. I got tired of the Barenaked Ladies song One Week three years ago, though, so I don’t know why they’re still playing that one commercial with it.
What I don’t get are those stupid Dell interns commercials. I mean, I get them, but WHY OH WHY ARE THEY SO STUPID?
Another entire category of ads I don’t understand is the one for prescription medicines. Three things bug me:
Do you tell your doctor what medicines you want to take? (I don’t)
Is there any hope by the manufacturers that after you hear 20-30 seconds of nothing but side effects and dangers that you’re going to get dressed and race to the store to stand in line to order some of this stuff?
In more than half of them you never get any real idea why you would want to take them in the first place unless it would be the hope that you could play softball better or own a yacht.
Then Dell has been successful, though I’ll not ever buy a Dell computer (they’re too expensive, anyway). Ugh.
Zeldar:“3) In more than half of them you never get any real idea why you would want to take them in the first place unless it would be the hope that you could play softball better or own a yacht.”
Heh. I had no freaking clue what Claritan was for I dunno how long after they started advertising it.
There’s a nurse against a blue sky. “Ask your doctor about Claritan.” Uhhhh. Why? For all I know I’d be asking him about bizarre sexual habits.
Drug companies don’t want to spend so much time on side effects, either, but a law was passed that mandates it. If they play up the benefits of the drug, they must disclose the most common side effects.
To get around this, sometimes they don’t mention the benefits of the drug at all. If they don’t play up the good, they don’t have to mention the bad.
One thing I’ve noticed is they will run the full add with the side effects listed early in a show. After that, it will be the abbreviated version where they tell you to ask your doctor about the drug.
There have been several ad campaigns over the past maybe five years that stick in my mind as pushing the envelope on vagueness and being provocative. MLife and Rogaine spring to mind. How long was it before we found out what the product/service even was? Sure, I was interested because of the tantalizing nature of the ads, but by the time it became clear what all the hype had been about I was well past caring. I also objected to the ploy and refused to have anything to do with the product/service, just out of meanness. It’s a good way to get me to boycott stuff. I can’t think of how many products I refuse to buy simply because I hate their ads.
Here’s one I don’t understand at all: The commercial opens with this woman being attacked by some kind of horrifying were-creature that looks like it’s about to eat and rape her, in that order. She screams, tries to escape, then fends it off with a golf club and drives it back, gradually, to the garage – where it climbs back into the engine block of her husband’s Mitsubishi. He comes downstairs, says “Oh, there you are,” and gets in his car. She tells him he forgot to lock it again. He apologizes as he drives off.
Seriously, this commercial is disturbing as hell. I’m supposed to want to buy a car with a frickin’ demon in it? It’s not particularly funny – it’s just disturbing.
I s’pose it’s a guy thing. Many men who are into the macho mentality would like to think there’s a screaming Mitsu-beasty under the hood. It parallels the Chevy Monte Carlo ads with the Tasmanian Devil from the Warner Bros. cartoons.
You know, I know that’s what they were going for. And if the wife didn’t seem terrified when the thing attacks her by the washing machine, it might have worked. But they made it a little too scary to be effective.
The Tasmanian Devil isn’t really scary – that one worked.
I saw that last night and asked my husband, “Why would anyone want a product that apparently destroys your home, your relationship with your wife, and is evil incarnate?”
Our dog looked up at us and told me to stop being so literal.
I think it’s time to stop watching TV.
Okay, I’ll chime in here. What the hell’s up with those cellphone/walkie talkie commercials where the people are having the totally abbreviated conversations on the phones? I think it’s Nextel. Why are they covering their faces with beeping gadgets when they can just talk to each other? They’re in the some fucking room!
Opus1, that one bugs me no end. I have been avoiding the cell phone craze even though my wife bought one to use in emergency situations and we do take it on trips. I think we’ve used it maybe 10 times in over a year.
But the desire to have a cell phone drops off immediately once I see these stupid commercials. The “Can you hear me now?” thing is bad, but this thing you’re describing makes me want to blow up the TV whenever it comes on. Stupid is too kind a word for it.
That one massively creeps me out. Especially because it doesn’t look faked – it actually looks like he’s nuzzling up to some nursing canine.
It also irritates me. “Raised by wolves” usually means that you have no manners or no idea how to act in polite society. It has nothing to do with your taste in food stuffs.
Another one that irritates me – the vanilla Pepsi one where the clerks are turning the machine on and off. The line “Dance, monkeys, dance” makes me think that they might as well have chosen “Vanilla Pepsi, the drink of idiots and sadistic losers” as their slogan.