What commercials have made an impression on you but you have no idea what was being advertised? The one that sticks in my mind is ”Lamp.” And yes, I did feel crazy at the end of it. Having YouTubed it, I guess I should have been able to guess who it was for.
What are yours?
The commercial where they play Smoke on the Water on gearshifts. I think it’s about a car brand, but can’t find it with a quick search.
There’s also a commercial from the same company that did those awful Head-On commercials but for non-head aches.
There was an advertisement for something or other (I think some kind of antacid or other such troubled tummy aid). The off screen singers were going on about holiday leftovers to the tune of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. All I can clearly remember was day five when they sang “Flaming turkey wings”.
ETA - actually just found the ad - it’s for Pizza Hut.
The amazing, incredible “Toys” commercial from Nissan.
This dazzling piece of creativity cost a million dollars to produce, ran on Seinfeld and Monday Night Football, won industry awards and earned its creator an appearance on Oprah.
It also managed to get Nissan sued by Mattel, and even worse, failed to get anyone interested in the car. It was so ineffective that Nissan dealers rebelled against corporate for building a $200 million campaign around the commercial.Two decades later, it’s still used a case history for failure.
There are TONS of commercials like this for me. I know the product they’re selling but I couldn’t tell you the brand. I like those “mayhem” insurance ads but I don’t know what insurance company it is.
The same for beer, pick-up trucks, and cell phone carriers.
Those annoying Hump Day commercials from a few years ago. Everyone in my office would walk around saying ‘Hump DAY!!’ on Wednesday. Without googling, I think it may have been Progessive or Geico insurance, but it could have just as easily been Bud Light.
Or Lima Emu… and Doug!
That’s one right now I couldn’t tell you the product or brand.
NATIONWIDE WAREHOUSE, NATIONWIDE WAREHOUSE, NATIONWIDE WAREHOUSE!
I guess the next time I need a warehouse I’ll go there.
I use a DVR to skip commercials almost all the time. I’ve actually watched those commercials because I was stumped as to what the deal was.
Still am.
Yesterday, Comcast Xfinity dropped a commercial where two old friends reunite. As it turns out, both of them have wives and kids now. The product IS featured in the commercial, but it’s overshadowed by the joy we feel in seeing this holiday reunion.
Here’s the full four-minute version.
And that IS really Henry Thomas–and looking good, too.
Don’t worry. Someone who took Communications 101 is bound to come in here to let us know that in fact that commercial was a success just because we’re talking about it now.
The old Chrismahanukwanzakah commercials. I can remember that they were plugging cellphones, but I have to look them up every year, because “Virgin Mobile” completely slips my mind.
That made me cry and now I’m making my husband watch it. That was something.
HA! Ain’t it the truth. And when sales of twenty year old Nissans take off, they can say they were right.
Funny thing is, I like that commercial. I’d forgotten about it, but it still is neat. But I didn’t want a Nissan (or a woman that looks like a Barbie doll) then, and I still don’t.
nm
I guarantee a commercial featuring child porn would be memorable for years, but would it be a success?
Especially if the producers did jail time for it?
Of course, there were those ads with Brooke Shields and those jeans.
I think you left out an important part of the story, but thanks for linking to that article. it explained (and I like reading in-depth anyway), among other things that: the car in the commercial was no longer being produced. So even if one were interested in the product and the spot “succeeded” by driving them to the showroom, they couldn’t buy the car. Paraphrasing the article, the dealers would have been left telling the customers something like “yeah, how about that Z? Can I interest you in a Sentra?”
One ad that cracked me up: kids are arguing over which of the company’s pizzas is the best — maybe their Meat Lovers? Maybe their Supreme? Possibly the one with the five different cheeses? — when Dad pulls up in the driveway, and they ask him which of their pizzas is his favorite. But, he amiably explains, he can’t pick one; why, that’d be like asking him to pick his favorite kid.
The kids, though, insist. “Okay,” he says, thinking it over. “Well, it’s Billy.”
(No idea which pizza place it was for.)
Not exactly. The article overlooked that, while the 300ZX had ended production, that production was for that year’s models. All the cars that were going to be available that year were already either on the dealer lots, or ready to be shipped by Nissan to the dealers. Otherwise, why would the company produce a million-dollar commercial in the first place? It’s not like dealers could bait-and-switch customers into a more expensive car; the 300ZX was the most expensive car Nissan had!
Based on production numbers, the 300ZX was a failing model, and the commercial did nothing to convince either customers or Nissan otherwise.
Back when I was in college, circa 2000, there was a Superbowl ad about “cat herders”, showing a bunch of stereotypical cowboys herding cats across the southwest as if they were cattle. It was a funny and memorable ad, but I’ll be damned if I could tell you what company it was advertising. I think it was some sort of IT related company, and given the time period when it aired it’s quite possibly a company that went belly up after the dot com bubble burst.