I don’t think they did. I think what andymurph64 was saying was that they ran a commercial with a woman saying, “Ayds helped me lose weight!” during a scheduled program about AIDS. It was just an unfortunate commercial-scheduling coincidence.
[redneck] Damn! You fuckers sure talk funny! [/redneck] 
Put me down for McDonald’s as well. I guess they aren’t targeting anyone that’s passed the 10th grade.
Another I’ll add, though I think it’s just an industry ad, is the one touting parental locks for cable service.
It shows some spineless pussified fat wimp trying to tune to a channel. His young daughter gives him a snotty attidtude and tells him he has to ask his wife for the code since she locked the channel.
Him: “Honneeyyy. Can I watch this?”
Her: “No.”
Him: Look at the camera and give a ‘I have no balls’ look and a shrug.
WTF? His daughter is standing there, so he’s not going for porn. (Based on the setting, no he wasn’t) How fucking whipped do you have to be as an adult man to let your wife dictate what you watch? I just keep imagining the shitstorm this would cause if it was the husband denying channels to his wife. :rolleyes:
They just added to this ad…it cracks me up! It shows the two English guys…absolutely fascinated by the rear hatch! It’s like watching Homer Simpson…“hatch goes up,hatch goes down!”
Man I never thought a car ad could be so stupid!
I don’t get this - what’s controversial about women in underwear? They’re all over the place over here, and that’s the way I likes it.
Yep.Bring it on.Even our ASA has got itself together and ruled pictures of woman in underwear aren’t offensive
Now as for that Bud Waaaazzzuuup advert, that killed any desire I had for Bud. Every time it came on I turned the telly over.As I cheerfully told their marketing bod who stopped me in the street to ask my opinion. Which I gave. Dreckly.
There used to be a radio commercial for Parks’ Sausages that featured a couple of annoying, whiny, kids rudely demanding, “More Parks’ Sausages, Mom!” I think eventually they added an equally obnoxious “Please?” to the end, but every time I saw that brand I thought of those irritating voices and bought something else.
The recent string of JC Penney’s ads had the tired stereotype of the incompetant father taking care of the kids (who were running around being absolute hooligans), with Dad asking, “Where is your mother?”
Mom, of course, was out shopping at Penney’s. You know how those crazy women are, just can’t pass up a sale. :rolleyes:
Anna Nicole for TrimSpa, baby
There are three such ads. The first, Anna arriving at a premiere, is okayish, although pretty much the last celeb I want to look like or be like is Anna Nicole.
The other two ads are actually nauseating. There’s.Anna rolling around on a beach. Why, is that male model younger and buffer than her? I believe he is - and visibly, markedly so. And then there’s Anna all by herself in a bucket chair. She’s stretching and making with the claws, meowing/howling like a cat in heat.
What were they thinking?!
I absolutely refused to buy a product I once saw advertised that promised to “restore your short term memory loss”. I don’t care to have my short term memory loss restored, thank you very much!
And no, I don’t recall the name of the product.
The two that sprung to mind were:
Quiznos and from long ago - The “Where’s The Beef?” add by Wendy’s. I hated it and wouldn’t go to Wendy’s for a long long time.
The last six months or so of VW commercials have been driving me up the wall. The jist of it is people are retarded and don’t know how to drive a car. Dealer: “See how the road is curving up ahead? Notice what happens when you move this giant round handle in front of you!” Customer: “WHAAAAAA! IT’S MAGICAL!!!”
Then there was the one for their summer sales event where the customer says “tomato red?” and the dealer corrects her: “TORNADO red” and spins his hand around in a “tornado” motion. WHAT?! Is anyone else baffled by that?
Every Wal-Mart commercial I’ve ever seen. I’m pretty sure that they don’t intend for me to think “I want to stay away from those people. Far, far away. Apparently, they’re at Wal-Mart, so I’d better not go there.”
Well, you must just not be their target audience any more. Clearly, they’ve switched to selling clothes to the Frustrated Housewives/Divorcees Market.
True, associating food products with creatures that resemble dead rats isn’t exactly the brightest advertising campaign on the face of the Earth.
But Togo’s (or maybe it was Subway) had an even worse commercial:
A woman is walking around downtown talking to a man, when the two of them pass a public trash can. The woman glimpses something in the trash can, turns around, pulls a partially eaten Togo’s/Subway sandwich out of the trash can, and proceeds to eat it.
The implication was supposed to be that their sandwiches were so good you’ll still want to eat them even after they’ve been thrown away. The reaction this image induced, however, was “EWWWWWW!”
I have made a solemn vow never, ever to purchase auto insurance from “Safe Auto”. I absolutely abhor that “1-800-SAFE-AUTO” jingle, and everyone in the commercial keeps rocking out to it-requesting it from bands, etc. Ugh ugh ugh!!! It’s enough to make me want to take a phillips head to my eardrums!
There was a campaign Nissan ran for one of its Z models (can’t remember which number) featuring a Barbie doll dumping the Ken for a GI-Joe type, with music by Van Halen. Brilliantly conceived, hilarious and memorable.
Sales dropped like a rock.
In desperation, Nissan fired the ad agency and replaced the ads with some slapped-together “Save big during Nissan sales days” campaign that a group of local dealers had produced. Sales immediately increased.
Sales people have argued for decades that humorous, thoughtful or intelligent ad campaigns don’t work nearly as well as hitting people over the head and screaming “BUY NOW!” Advertising people agree, but secretly believe that they can create the humorous/thoughtful/intelligent ad that proves the sales people wrong.
Southwest Airlines runs a commercial local to the Boston area that advertises regular flights from Manchester, NH to Philly. The ad features a number of “regular folks” touting the virtues of Philadelphia. The best they can come up with is cheese steaks, pretzels (wtf?) and the liberty bell.
What got me is that one guy says something like “Philly is like a baby New York”. I may well be sensitized by my years living in the Boston area, but if someone aired a commercial comparing Boston to “a baby New York” they would be run out of town. Does this bother Philadelphians as much as it would Bostonians?
It probably had something to do with the implication that a woman will abandon her man on the spot in favor of the first guy who pulls up in a nice car. Basically, Nissan insulted the women, and made the guys feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. Not a good way to give people a positive impression of your products.
Besides the Taco Bell ad I mentioned in the IMHO boycotting thread, there was an ad for Hardees about three years ago:
Guy A: “Man, I’m so depressed, my girlfriend left me, I’m out of a job, etc…”
Guy B: [Takes a bite from a Hardees burger] “So how’s that girlfriend of yours doing?”
So what’s the point of this commercial? Is it that only total assholes eat Hardees? That eating Hardees will turn you into a total asshole?
In general any ad implying that the product is aimed at men who are sloppy and unkempt, don’t shower regularly, and are generally rude or ill-behaved will put me off. Remeber those Captain Morgan Spiced Rum ads from a few years back?
Lest I forget, let me nominate the Mazda ad that pitches its car with “there was this car . . . and it had all this stuff”. They then follow up that brilliant premise by reminding you that they sell other cars with other stuff. Just how fucking stupid do they think I am?