I was watching TV last night and I watched a commercial that I had seen come on a hundred times before. But for some reason I never noticed this, probably because I don’t pay too much attention to commercials. It is the commercial for a Suzuki (I think) of some type. It’s the one where the guy kisses his wife goodbye and then goes and parachutes down to his car. Of course, the sheer stupidity of this advertisment is obvious. But the thing that I found strange is that this guy kisses his wife, walks to the end of the sidewalk and to steady himself he holds onto the fence post as he steps down one step, and then jumps off the cliff.
Has anyone noticed odd things like this in commercials they have watched and if so, which ones?
This isn’t really of the same character, but I’m really bugged by the Tivo advertisement in which a kid snuggles up to his dad and asks him to read a bedtime story.
The dad basically responds, “Let’s watch a football game on Tivo instead.”
Way to go, dad.
(please note that I think Tivo is a fantastic invention. It just bugs me that an ad is sending a message that TV is an acceptable alternative to reading to kids. I don’t usually get this worked up over stupid ads.)
The weird thing that I keep seeing in commercials is that people in commercials, particularly middle-aged white guys, are a bunch of freaking morons who need whatever product is being advertised because they’re too dumb to take care of themselves. “Powder the kids? I said How are the kids!”
Uhhhhh… I don’t watch much TV, but that’s not how the Tivo commercial that I’ve seen goes.
Mine goes…
Little Boy: Read me a story! (Looks at football game on TV) Oh… football…
Father: That’s okay! I can freeze time! (snaps finger, football stops)
They go on snapping their fingers several times, but the impression I got was that the father would “freeze time” in the football game, read his son the story, then resume watching the game from where he left off.
While I cannot rule out the possibility that I am smoking crack and completely misunderstood the ad, I don’t recall the dad actually reading to his kid at any point in the ad. All I get from it is that the dad distracts the kid with the wizardry of the Tivo machine, and gets the kid involved with snapping his fingers.
And since when can such a small kid snap his fingers so well?
Well this isn’t a commercial but it’s along the same line. Anyone who has ever flown Aer Lingus should be able to attest to this.
Their safety video is a cheesy computer animation, which shows a crudely animated passenger demonstrating what you should and should not do during the flight.
To illustrate that you cannot smoke, it shows the man smoking, which is promptly stamped out by a big red X or something to that effect.
What bugs me though, is that the man is drawn without a mouth! He just puts the cigarette up to a blank bit of face where his mouth should be.
Every time I see him smoking I just want to shout out, "BUT HE HAS NO MOUTH!"
I don’t understand the Capital One (I think) pillagers. Are they trying to say that every card that isn’t Capital One is a pillager, or what? How would a credit card pillage? Rob, maybe, but pillage?
I think the idea is that Capitol One has some sort of anti-thievery tracking built into their accounting system, so if your card gets used a lot all of a sudden (which is what could happen if somebody gets your number and makes a bunch of online purchases), they’ll be aware of it. Your account is the one that gets pillaged, if you don’t have Capital One.
There’s a Jeep commercial that shows the family driving underwater looking at all the cool fish through the moon roof and side windows. Kinda like walking through an aquarium exhibit, but they’re in their Jeep. It ends with the car driving up out of the surf onto the beach.
Then there’s the standard disclaimer at the bottom: “Dramatization. Do not drive your car into the ocean.”
Well, duh. Why even bother showing the car in that way? Of course you can’t drive under the water. The whole thing is just stupid beyond belief.
There’s one for some medication for rheumatoid arthritis. It begins with a woman, who appears to be speaking directly to me, saying something like, “I know you. You’re sitting there wondering what to do about your rheumatoid arthritis”. Huh? Does she know something I don’t? I understand quite a few people suffer from RA, but I don’t happen to be one of them, so you don’t know me, lady.
I imagine that’s a legal prophylactic, because you know some dumbass is going to try it, and then who gets sued?
It’s years old now, but the one that gets me is the one where the woman goes to the lav on the airplane to wash her hair. While doing so, she starts making orgasmic noises. She then accidently hits the intercom switch and the entire cabin can hear her seemingly coital goings on.
Now forget the fact that she could find no time in her life to shampoo on the ground. Forget the fact that airplane bathrooms are not big enough to pee, let alone wash your hair. Forget the fact that this woman apparently has her clit on her cranium. This is all set up. The real punchline is that she hit the intercom switch in the lav, so we can hear her.
What in the name of holy Jeebus on a jumprope is an intercom switch doing in the lav? What sort of announcements does the airline expect passengers to make from in there? “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard flight 196, nonstop to Phoenix. We will be flying at an altitude of 30,000 feet, and boy, did I ever just give birth to one huge monster of a poo!”
There are going to be lots of difficult ads on Super Sunday again.
The kind where someone is running and sweating and somebody else enters the scene and it goes on for a full minute as you try to guess "Are they selling gatoraid? Shoes? deodorant? " and then it turns out to be another startup dotcom who still think one ad does it all.
The latest McDonald’s coffee commercial kind of makes me wonder what they were thinking: this guy draws the short straw goes the McD’s and tries the coffee. “It’s good!” he says to triumphant cheers. Then the voice over: “Finally, McDonald’s has good coffee.”
So, is McDonald’s admitting they’ve been serving swill all these years?
McDonald’s really needs another ad agency: a few years ago, they were growing concerned that they were being perceived as a kid’s place. They wanted something to appeal to adults, so they came up with a hamburger (the Big Extra, IIRC) that fit the bill.
So when they went to advertise it, they showed kids eating it.
I don’t think so. I think the Capital One ad campaign started with people discussing credit cards, and the awful things Other Bad Cards can do to you (like hidden fees, high interest). Those Other Bad Cards were represented by various forms of attackers – pirates, medieval pillagers, even ghosts (for a Halloween themed spot). The good guys would then say that all their purchses were made using Capital One, and the attackers would back off, in disgust.
The pillagers took on a life of their own, out of context.
My new contribution to the thread: Why does every ad for Royal Caribbean cruise lines mention “the rock wall”? As in…“in between dining, dancing, and the rock wall”…or “what with the scuba diving, shopping, and the rock wall…”
