There’s an East Coast supermarket chain called Shoprite that runs a Can Can sale every January, accompanied by, of course, the jingle “Now Shoprite does the can-can selling lots of brands of everything in cans cans…” etc. to the tune of the traditional can-can song.
This year, they’ve added a mustached MC, who responds to the can-can dancers with “Oui, oui, mon cheri…” And every. Single. Time. I think, “No, if he’s talking to one, it should be 'ma cherie,” and if he’s talking to them all…"
Use of the word “challenge”. “Take the <our product> challenge!” or, alternatively, “Tired of <product> that doesn’t work? Challenge that thinking with <our product>.”. Invariably, the challenge boils down to: Step 1) Buy our product. Step 2) You win the challenge! Congratulations!
The trend of having women be manipulative, shrill bitches to their husbands/boyfriends who just meekly go along with it. I call them the “pussy-whipped Steves.”
We have a local establishment that has an annoying commercial. To a bombastic orchestral soundtrack, we hear a female narrator ponderously intoning, “The Wooster Inn: A place…to dine. A place…to meet. A place…for friends.” And so on. The thing that annoys me is that the narrator pronounces “a” not as a schwa but as the first letter of the alphabet. When the commercial comes on, my son and I always say, “A place…to mispronounce the indefinite article.”
BofA has a commercial touting their cash back percentages. It shows clips of people saying “one”, “two”, “three”, “one”… and so on.
Kit Kat has those annoying rat-a-tat-tat snapping and chomping of candy bars. The disgusting open mouth shots notwithstanding, it is a lot of the same noise over and over and over and…
JG Wentworth has that one where everybody on the bus starts singing opera to get your money NOW! Fat Loud Opera Men In Drag? Bad on sooo many levels.
Seems like each promo for Conan’s nightly show find some way to be annoying. I don’t have any one gripe, but I think he’s annoying in general.
I’m not surprised that I’m not the only one who hates that commercial. Insta-channel change! There are lots of others, but that disgusting Kit Kat crunching commercial is one of the worst.
I often wonder if TV stations or advertisers realize how annoying commercials can cause people to change channels or press mute. Along those lines, the other thing with commercials in general is when they jack up the volume level to about double of what it was for the program. Same deal, instant mute or channel change.
They used to run an ad for Grape Nuts where a guy was sitting on a log at a campsite and didn’t hear the bear approaching from behind because he was crunching away on cereal. The crunching sound, with swishy saliva undernotes, made my skin crawl. I could not grab the remote fast enough!
Bumbling Dads who can’t make a simple breakfast for the kids without burning down the house, who can’t do simple chores without an ensuing disaster, who can’t wash a load of clothes without flooding the house, who can’t change a diaper without infinitely smarter Mom stepping in to set him straight.
There was one a few years ago, I think for some kind of calcium supplement, that had this sort of crackly-snappy background sound. The first time I heard it I thought, “what is that, the breaking bones sound effect or something?” and it weirded me out so bad that all I could think of whenever that commercial came on was snapping bones. Definite channel change moment.
TV show promos that say something like “It’s the most controversial episode of *The Good Wife *yet!!!”
No, no, no. You don’t get to call your own show “controversial.” If somebody else takes notice of it, and there’s some actual public debate over it, then maybe there’s a controversy. But not just because you say so.
The phrase “All-New” in promoting TV shows. “It’s an **All New **Chef With Pants On Fire” or whatever the show is. What are they normally only partially new? Sometimes, they’ve only shown one or two episodes in total and are making this claim. So what?
I hate that as well. Tide is running a commercial now with a normal stay-at-home dad that is coping well and running the house (well, the laundry anyway). Made me happy.