These days, almost every commercial is engaging in irony, with most of them either opting for cheap absurdism (the skittles commercials) or parodic approaches to “real commercials,” (like the Orbitz gum or Old Navy ones).
What was the first ironic commercial, though? At what point did commercials change from earnestly trying to sell their products to ironically trying to?
I’m more interested in when the last one will be.
I have a theory on this, which I’ve based on exactly nothing. Some instructor (or professor) at some marketing school told his or her students to do something funny in their ads. No matter what it is, even if it’s irrelevant, at all costs do something funny. It will make people remember you. This was so successful that other instructors (or professors) caught on and started teaching their students the same thing, and people within the industry started teaching each other.
It was ok at first, and it led to some really funny commercials in the late 90s, but it’s gotten out of hand at this point. The problem is that everyone feels obligated to make a funny commercial, but not everyone is funny. My least favorite is when a couple is arguing for no reason at all - usually the woman is telling the man how stupid he is - and it’s not even funny, it’s just uncomfortable. I saw a commercial for some local company - it was something like a real estate firm maybe - and a man and a woman are sitting on their couch talking about how great these real estate agents are, how they helped them sell their house so quickly, etc. The whole time the woman is holding an ice cream cone. At the end of the commercial, for NO REASON AT ALL, she turns the ice cream cone upside down on her husband’s head. I think that was the moment when my hate for these commercials turned passionate.
Probably Stan Freberg’s satirical commercials back in the '60s. “Today the pits, tomorrow the wrinkles!”
Damn! Great Minds think alike. You beat me to it.
Didn’t Volkswagen have a series of self-mocking ads in the '60s?
I believe (correct me if this is wrong) Volkswagen started as print (ads) and moved on to broadcast (commercials) later in the '60’s.
Freberg would have beaten them.
I recall the VW print would involve a black & white photo that took up 75% of the page with some very well-written copy underneith. Didn’t the National Lampoon get into trouble with a parody of that ad? The NatLamp photo showed a VW up to its hubcaps in water and the little headline read something like “If Ted Kennedy drove a Volkswagen he’d be president now.”
The Beetle actually was nearly watertight. A friend of mine floated one through the flood-prone Main Street tunnel during a thunderstorm. All four wheels had left the ground.
VW ads, in print, as early as 1961 stated that they had heard that their vehicles were airtight. And they incorporated this into their ads. But the ads weren’t really quite the parody that Freeberg produced in 1967 with Sunsweet prunes.
You are thinking about the classic “Lemon” ad:
http://www.powerwriting.com/vw-lemon-ad.html
Lemon
The Volkswagen missed the boat.
The chrome strip on the glove compartment is blemished and must be replaced. Chances are you wouldn’t have noticed it; Inspector Kurt Kroner did.
…
This preoccupation with detail means the VW lasts longer and requires less maintenance, by and large, than other cars. (It also means a used VW depreciates less than any other car.)
We pluck the lemons; you get the plums.
Damn! That was 1960 in print. It might just qualify.
Before Sunsweet Prunes was Jeno’s Pizza Rolls…using the Wm. Tell Overture and Clayton Moore.
Jeno’s was either 1967 or 1968.
It probably goes all the way back to 1932, when Jack Benny started a trend in radio of poking fun at the sponsor, and incorporating advertising into the show’s storyline instead of reading straight commercials.
In modern times, I remember Sprite doing a few parody adverts in the mid-late nineties. I thought they were really funny at the time.
Here’s one from the series, but it isn’t the one I was thinking of:
