I just saw a RE/MAX commercial that claimed (paraphrased) “not too long ago, many people were priced out of an overheated real estate market.”
Um, as I understand it, the problem was that not enough people were priced out of the real estate market: too many people were being given mortgages they couldn’t afford.
Sheesh, I hate the McD’s one with the coffee guy as well.
So what, this burnout loser who can’t manage to wire two brain cells together to process a reply when somebody addresses him is dictating orders to the general public that the entire world must meet his conditions? And somebody gave this guy a job?
Now he has to resort to the actions of a drug addict and let his primary motivating factor for existence be to find a “dealer” who can supply him a fix of his drug.
BTW: I don’t drink coffee. I think it is stinky.
I just heard this one on the radio:
*Earnest and husky female voice: "You don’t go down dark alleyways. You cross the street if you see someone approaching. You lock the doors to your car, and when you get home you lock yourself in with three locks.
You thought you were doing everything to protect yourself.
But if you don’t take more action, you could be one of the 2 out of 3 women who die from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, kidney disease, or stroke!"*
Well, you pretty much named off just about all the ways to die if you lock yourself in a room; what’s left to kill you? Emphysema? Infectious disease? Getting shot in a well-lit alleyway?
So, it’s snowing. Two kids, brothers, go apeshit declaring “no school!” But Dad craps on the festivities by telling them that they are leaving in five minutes. See, he got such a great car that he can drive through the storm…which does in no way change the fact that school was probably cancelled due to the weather! How can they not realize that school isn’t cancelled based on whether or not you personal car can get there, but if the buses can?
I hate technology ads that plays up how the product or service being advertised will revolutionize the world/shift the paradigm/bring world peace. Lately it’s the Cisco ads with Ellen Page. In one ad, for some reason, she’s visiting a classroom of children who tell her they’re going to China. And she just can’t believe it! The class points to a video screen in the front of the class, technology that no fucking elementary school would have any reason to have, that is showing a classroom in China, and all the kids go crazy and wave to each other. The part that bugs me is the end, when a female narrator says “Cisco…the human network!” in this really cloying tone, as if she wants to hug all the world’s children and give them puppies and candy. It makes me want to find some random kid and tell him Santa doesn’t exist.
I don’t recall the company, but someone has ads involving various iterations of the dramatic chipmunk (or prairie dog or whatever it is) using different animals. Really guys? An internet meme that was old 2 years ago? What’s next, Gary Brolsma?
I’m still pissed off about all the holiday jewelry ads. Fuck you Kay Jewelers.
I hate the Restasis ad. First of all, the actress playing the doctor looks absolutely nothing like any doctor I’d ever go to, she looks like she’s been on a lithium drip for about a month. Plus she has really spooky looking eyes, which isn’t a great thing if you’re trying to sell eye drops. Then to top it off, she fills in the Rx slip by writing down “Restasis” and then underlining it (NEVER have I seen a real doctor do it) and then omitting such key items as the patient name, date, and dosage frequency.
I like the way Subway has added a chorus to the Five Dollar Footlong commercials, “Any, any, any…” and in the small print at the bottom of the screen it says, “Excludes premium subs”.
A couple months ago there was a commercial for an electric razor. It begins with the jarring sound of an alarm clock blaring (strike one in Ponch’s reasons to hate ads). Then the narrator says, “Hello Monday. Goodbye weekend” as the guy shaves off the scruffy beard he neglected all weekend.
Brilliant marketing strategy, getting people to associate your product with Monday mornings.
I want to gut that goddamn filet-o-fish. That’s all I have to say about that.
Is that commercial running again this year? That commercial is awesome!
Presumably the gutting was already done.
I have never seen this commercial, but the weird thing I find with this description is that they are talking about “happy internet China”. Home of the most draconian web censorship and where hackers (who may or may not have been government sanctioned) were hacking Google accounts of human right activists. This is their happy “human network”? Get one American kids to yell “Free Tibet!” and see what happens next.
I saw a commercial for a mop last night that advertised that it could soak up a spilled soft drink so that you could squeeze it back into a glass so you won’t have to waste it during money troubles. Seriously.
I just remembered an infomercial line that cracked me up - they were advertising some sort of super-sponge with extreme absorbency, and the guy was wiping up all sorts of bright-colored spills to show us how well it worked. Then he told us that the particles in this product:
“Attract water like a magnet!”
The ads for 1-877-kars-4-kids should be outlawed. Even if I had a car to donate, I’d find someone else to donate it to. Even if I liked other people’s kids!
(This may be a Northeast radio only ad)
Nope, the Chicago area isn’t spared from this plague either.
There’s also another charity (I think the childhood leukaemia foundation or something) that constantly begs for donated cars. Every frigging day in the Chicago Tribune, they have the same stupid ad with a picture of the face of this butt-ugly baby. (I think all babies are ugly, so take it with a grain of salt.) Every day, the ad bounces around from page to page, section to section, so it’s not like I can just avoid looking at a designated page. It almost makes me wish that the baby does indeed have leukaemia.
I used to want to reach through the TV and strangle the Canadian Tire Guy. HATED how he and his “wife” always had every new machine/gadget on the market, and he’d lord it over his neighbours too. “Well, all you need is the MasterCraft Super Duper Power Blaster blah blah blah. I’ve got one.”
Unfortunately, YouTube is coming up empty.
I hate commercials that encourage crappy behaviour. Like the Cheetos commercial where the cheetah tells the woman at the laundromat to put the cheetos in the drier of the woman that was rude to her. Or the booze commercial with tips on how to be a dick for your own advantage. The example: when putting business cards in the jar to determine who buys the next round, the “protagonist” puts in a whole bunch of another guys cards.
Oh! or the Mentos commercial where the two teenagers are chasing each other around the library!
Never saw this myself, but a friend of mine says she once saw a print ad for music hi-fi that said, ‘If it’s not Bose, it could be better’.
Read it it one way, and you can kind of almost see the point the genius ad agency was trying to make. Read it another (and to my mind, simpler) way, and they are effectively saying ‘Anything not made by us could well be a better product’.