I've been gone for a while. I've been uh...busy. Anyway I figured I'd get this thing re-started by talking about a commercial I like. I decided that I would go with this one in particular because its a rather good commercial for what seems like, in many ways, a resoundingly stupid product. Here is the commercial in question.
EDIT: Video was removed, ah well. I'll try to find a new one.
Now the first strength I wish to highlight is that the man in the commercial is Dani Pudi who plays Abed the autistic, film-loving wunderkind from "Community". When you see someone from a tv show you like in something else (even if its just a commercial) you want to cheer them on and have them succeed like when you go see your friends play. Even if the play sucks you try and find ways to defend your friend ("Sally was great she just suffered from a poor script...") and when they do legitimately well you're convinced that zombie Orson Welles is going to consume their brains just becaues he's jealous ("OMG YOU'RE SO AMAZING! YOU SHOULD MOVE TO NEW YORK! YOU'D TOTALLY MAKE IT AND YOU'RE LIFE COULD BE LIKE 'MY FAIR LADY' BUT WITHOUT THE COCKNEY ACCENT!"). So yeah the feeling is kind of like that.
Wow, so yeah I like the show community. Anyway I picked this commercial because in many respects it does the opposite of everything else I've written about. It's a great commercial that advertises something rather stupid. I understand its annoying when you get a call and its an accident but I think we should recognize some fundamental things. The first is that if you keep your phone in your back pocket, then stop. Put your phone in a front pocket, you know, the part of the pants you don't sit on. The second is to think about the type of phone your buying. Apparently so many people didn't do this that blackberry went and designed a slightly more idiot-proof blackberry for people who don't realize that their problem with accidental dialing lies with them and not their phone. Buttons like to be pressed and when you press your bum against something else then those buttons get to do their jobs while you fail at your job to protect those buttons from being accidentally pressed. Please think of the buttons.
Regardless, this is a funny commercial that gets it point across clearly. It's a conversation between a husband and annoyed wife that is dealt with smartly and in a humorous way. The acting is just absurd enough to match smartly with the absurdity of the product itself. You go, blackberry flip phone.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Yellow book wants to help you...in the future
Sometime in the future...
I've been meaning to write about this (and this type) of commercial for a while now. Its a clever trick to have a commercial set in the future. It creates the perfect opportunity to showcase what you want people to believe your product can do without actually having to show it to prove it. At least with something like the Sham-wow you can at least blame the commercial when it doesn't pick up spills like promised. ("But on the commercial everything was dry!") The funny thing is, we are immediately skeptical of the commercial that shows a particular product doing what it's supposed to do (infomercial really, there is an aesthetic to it that just seems to scream "I'M LYING AND THIS IS ONLY A TRICK OF THE CAMERA!, you know what I'm talking about. RIP Billy Mays) but if we watch a commercial that clearly shows what a product cannot do, because the technology they're showing (like instant video-conferencing with a doctor on fancy see through touch screen) doesn't yet exist most of us won't blink an eye.
Of course it is rather boring to show someone typing something into a computer and then writing down the result. I guess when its that or being able to watch a doctor stare at the lower back of a hot girl with poor decision making skills, I guess it's the bright bright future after all.
I've been meaning to write about this (and this type) of commercial for a while now. Its a clever trick to have a commercial set in the future. It creates the perfect opportunity to showcase what you want people to believe your product can do without actually having to show it to prove it. At least with something like the Sham-wow you can at least blame the commercial when it doesn't pick up spills like promised. ("But on the commercial everything was dry!") The funny thing is, we are immediately skeptical of the commercial that shows a particular product doing what it's supposed to do (infomercial really, there is an aesthetic to it that just seems to scream "I'M LYING AND THIS IS ONLY A TRICK OF THE CAMERA!, you know what I'm talking about. RIP Billy Mays) but if we watch a commercial that clearly shows what a product cannot do, because the technology they're showing (like instant video-conferencing with a doctor on fancy see through touch screen) doesn't yet exist most of us won't blink an eye.
Of course it is rather boring to show someone typing something into a computer and then writing down the result. I guess when its that or being able to watch a doctor stare at the lower back of a hot girl with poor decision making skills, I guess it's the bright bright future after all.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Diet Dr. Pepper needs a support group
They do exist!
While I wonder at the necessity for a support group for beings whom people don't believe exist (seems to me all you'd have to do is something highly embarrassing and/or illegal and make sure someone is filming it) I figured there just wasn't enough to write about without me having to resort to just removing my suspension of disbelief and that gets old after a while. What I don't like is how Santa is such a jerk. You mean to tell me that a guy who gets to have a huge beard, an army of little people making toys and only has to travel for work 1 day a year and most importantly, was put on trial in a New York City courtroom because the burden of proof of his existence was on him and a little girl is going to be a jerk to a Dr. Pepper salesman? He of all people (fairies? unique sentient beings?) I'd expect that type of behavior from the leprechaun or bigfoot (I'd rather expect bigfoot to just eat the Dr. Pepper salesman but you get the idea) rather than Santa whose job it is hand out the crap he makes for free to children who do actually deserve it. That's what his list is for. Plus, as an old man he probably has to worry about diabetes and should probably be supporting diet soft drinks to keep his insulin levels normal. Think of the tragedy if he went into a coma while driving the sleigh. Imagine nine reindeer, a sleigh, a big fat guy, and a huge bag of toys crashing into anything. I'm surprised Santa hasn't had a heart attack yet from the scares.
Second, that is overall the crappiest support group I've ever seen, even worse than the one Dave Chappelle's character goes to in Half Baked Even after the Easter Bunny tries it and his sugar addled brain likes it the group continues to make fun of him. It's fairy tale characters like them that make other fairy tale characters go crazy and shoot up a fairy tale day care or fairy tale senior center.
While I wonder at the necessity for a support group for beings whom people don't believe exist (seems to me all you'd have to do is something highly embarrassing and/or illegal and make sure someone is filming it) I figured there just wasn't enough to write about without me having to resort to just removing my suspension of disbelief and that gets old after a while. What I don't like is how Santa is such a jerk. You mean to tell me that a guy who gets to have a huge beard, an army of little people making toys and only has to travel for work 1 day a year and most importantly, was put on trial in a New York City courtroom because the burden of proof of his existence was on him and a little girl is going to be a jerk to a Dr. Pepper salesman? He of all people (fairies? unique sentient beings?) I'd expect that type of behavior from the leprechaun or bigfoot (I'd rather expect bigfoot to just eat the Dr. Pepper salesman but you get the idea) rather than Santa whose job it is hand out the crap he makes for free to children who do actually deserve it. That's what his list is for. Plus, as an old man he probably has to worry about diabetes and should probably be supporting diet soft drinks to keep his insulin levels normal. Think of the tragedy if he went into a coma while driving the sleigh. Imagine nine reindeer, a sleigh, a big fat guy, and a huge bag of toys crashing into anything. I'm surprised Santa hasn't had a heart attack yet from the scares.
Second, that is overall the crappiest support group I've ever seen, even worse than the one Dave Chappelle's character goes to in Half Baked Even after the Easter Bunny tries it and his sugar addled brain likes it the group continues to make fun of him. It's fairy tale characters like them that make other fairy tale characters go crazy and shoot up a fairy tale day care or fairy tale senior center.
BAKUGAN!
Ah kid's commercials -
Bakugan - which is apparently a game of some kind.
This commercial's basic message is that it doesn't matter if the game you're playing makes any sense, especially when you take out the cool animation of your pieces coming to life and battling before your eyes but rather that if you buy the game the local dojo will let you rent out their space you can use your game to basically have a kid's version of fight club (don't talk about it). Ah youth, to have your parents buy you a game with a million convoluted rules and then hope that all your friends parents did the same. And also that this time you get on the cool toy train before it leaves the station and you don't look like an idiot for still being into pogs in fifth grade. Sorry, I might be projecting a little bit into that last sentence.
Bakugan - which is apparently a game of some kind.
This commercial's basic message is that it doesn't matter if the game you're playing makes any sense, especially when you take out the cool animation of your pieces coming to life and battling before your eyes but rather that if you buy the game the local dojo will let you rent out their space you can use your game to basically have a kid's version of fight club (don't talk about it). Ah youth, to have your parents buy you a game with a million convoluted rules and then hope that all your friends parents did the same. And also that this time you get on the cool toy train before it leaves the station and you don't look like an idiot for still being into pogs in fifth grade. Sorry, I might be projecting a little bit into that last sentence.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Hershey's factory of evil
"It's just like Willie Wonka, but no Oompa Loompas!"
Ah! The life of a Hershey Kiss, flowing wistfully along the factory being wrapped up in foil and even given a little ribbon to fly like a flag as if to say "Behold! I am a Hershey Kiss! I am more special than all others" then paraded in front of one's peers and sent out to that big world where dreams are...wait. Why is that small child picking the kiss up and just throwing it casually to his mother where...OH MY GOD! SHE'S EATING HIM! WHY DIDN'T THEY TELL HIM! THE BASTARDS SET THIS UP SO HE WOULD DIE! IT'S A HERSHEY KISS HOLOCAUST AND THEY'RE BEING LED LIKE LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER!
...
Now that I've had some time to calm down I would like to point out that this is a type of food marketing whereby the food being eaten is more than happy to be consumed by the customer. Normally this only slightly bothers me when it's animals that are doing the advertisting (for an example look up any barbecue restaurant, about half of the have a pig as a mascot. Look here, here, and here, the last one coming from me typing "barbecue restaurant" into a google image search and picking about the fourth or fifth result) because while we should be thankful for the animals that give us meat I don't necessarily want them to be smiling or taunting me while I'm eating their kin. I guess I'm a moral coward. Anyway the point of this commercial is that its fun to be a Hershey Kiss and thats why we have this fantasy of what it would be like to be a kiss and go through the most awesome factory in the world. Unfortunately we have people in the world like George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Sylvester Stallone's John Spartan in "Demolition Man" to prove that when society lives in a utopia such as this it usually means that everything actually sucks. It seems a fitting expose of a company whose advertising would lead us to believe that their chocolate product can make music and ice skate.
I think this should serve as a lesson to all food manufacturers. Don't make it look like your food is happy to be eaten. It just creeps out your customers who in their personal lives don't want to be eaten.
Ah! The life of a Hershey Kiss, flowing wistfully along the factory being wrapped up in foil and even given a little ribbon to fly like a flag as if to say "Behold! I am a Hershey Kiss! I am more special than all others" then paraded in front of one's peers and sent out to that big world where dreams are...wait. Why is that small child picking the kiss up and just throwing it casually to his mother where...OH MY GOD! SHE'S EATING HIM! WHY DIDN'T THEY TELL HIM! THE BASTARDS SET THIS UP SO HE WOULD DIE! IT'S A HERSHEY KISS HOLOCAUST AND THEY'RE BEING LED LIKE LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER!
...
Now that I've had some time to calm down I would like to point out that this is a type of food marketing whereby the food being eaten is more than happy to be consumed by the customer. Normally this only slightly bothers me when it's animals that are doing the advertisting (for an example look up any barbecue restaurant, about half of the have a pig as a mascot. Look here, here, and here, the last one coming from me typing "barbecue restaurant" into a google image search and picking about the fourth or fifth result) because while we should be thankful for the animals that give us meat I don't necessarily want them to be smiling or taunting me while I'm eating their kin. I guess I'm a moral coward. Anyway the point of this commercial is that its fun to be a Hershey Kiss and thats why we have this fantasy of what it would be like to be a kiss and go through the most awesome factory in the world. Unfortunately we have people in the world like George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Sylvester Stallone's John Spartan in "Demolition Man" to prove that when society lives in a utopia such as this it usually means that everything actually sucks. It seems a fitting expose of a company whose advertising would lead us to believe that their chocolate product can make music and ice skate.
I think this should serve as a lesson to all food manufacturers. Don't make it look like your food is happy to be eaten. It just creeps out your customers who in their personal lives don't want to be eaten.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Best Buy's own version of "The Shining"
wait until about the 0:26 mark.
http://bestbuytruestories.comSeriously, the shot with Charles poking out from behind the tree and smiling makes me think that he has an axe in
his hand and he's gearing up to say "Heeeeeeeeeere's Charles!". I only saw this commercial actually on tv about one and a
half times but as you can tell it has so haunted my dreams (nightmares really) that I was forced to look it up dredging the internet and
reliving horror after horror of watching vaguely 30-something year old men laugh about their salesmanship conquests. I wasn't really paying attention until the dude pops out of the christmas tree and into my mind for months to come.
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