Governments and corporations will choose Friday as the day to release news that makes them uncomfortable. The logic is that people don’t pay attention to the news on Friday because they’re getting ready for the weekend.
Even if people do notice an uncomfortable news item, the hope is the weekend erases it from the 24-hour news cycle. Given our increasingly short memories these days, the logic works.
So I’ve decided to join in with my own info dump!
After watching more cable news than is actually mentally healthy, I’ve come to a number of conclusions, the most important of which is this.
If I ran for president (and why not, everyone else is), I would run on a single platform that ignores all other issues (such as ISIS, economic disparity, failing infrastructure, racial conflict, immigration, global warming, or even Zika).
My platform: No More TV Prescription Drug Ads!
If you live in the USA and watch TV, you’ve probably seen the “Messin’ with Sasquatch” commercials advertising Jack Links Beef Jerky.
But have you ever really thought about the message behind these commercials?
“Far Less” what?
Yesterday I wrote about a TV commercial with a bit of a design flaw (and, yet, without that flaw the commercial wouldn’t work). I generally go to great lengths to avoid having to see television commercials, but sadly one cannot avoid all of them. Still, as a former TV and film student, they fascinate me as much as they annoy me.
Advertisers have under a minute to tell you a story that pushes their product. Some are straight-forward about it, others are more oblique. (Generally, the more real substance a product offers, the greater the chance the commercial is straight-forward.) Some commercials can be real works of art. One of these days I’ll write about some that I find very striking.
Today I want to talk about Toyota Jan. And Bacon.
Not this Perkins!
A local chain of (what used to be called) coffee shops was running a commercial touting their inventive use of fresh strawberries in their various breakfast combos. I say “used to be called” because now a “coffee shop” is one of those specialized places that sells a mind-numbing variety of coffee concoctions. The places I’m talking about now call themselves “family restaurants,” which means they serve families, and you can parse that any way you like (“It’s a cook book!”).
I have absolutely nothing against the commercial, fresh strawberries (love them, especially in champagne) or pancakes (although I prefer waffles). I’m not sure I buy into the idea there are new ways to use strawberries in breakfast dishes, but such is the commercial’s claim. (Hmmm (and Mmmm), perhaps an evidence-gathering field trip is required!)
What does amuse me about the commercial, though, is the misfired mother.
When I wrote the first rant about television commercials over a year ago, I promised I would return to the subject repeatedly. Better late than never, here’s another entry towards keeping that promise.
As I mentioned last time, I’m not a big fan of marketing and advertising. Of course companies need to market and advertise their products. It’s the way they go about it that I sometimes (in all honesty, make that frequently) find repulsive. Back in the early days of the interweb, I had an idea for a website devoted to debunking and fact-checking commercials. I never got around to that, but the thoughts and ideas I gathered may find expression here.
Ironically, I’ve spent a fair part of my career in IT departments supporting the sales and marketing sectors of The Company. It sometimes makes me feel as if I’m working on a bomb factory. On the other hand, it’s given me more insight to the twists and tricks.
Now, without further ado: More television commercials that push me postal…
Our first entry is this commercial from Klondike that drives me up a wall. I have mixed feelings about posting the actual video, but here it is:
Apparently the makers of Klondike bars have decided that their target is strictly men. How incredibly insulting is it that listening to your wife for five seconds is deemed an onerous and challenging task.
There is another pair of commercials that are just as insulting, but I will give them credit for coming at it from a (stupid) female point of view as well as the (stupid) male point of view. The first stars Greg who is apparently such a child that he needs to be rewarded with ice cream for seeing a “chick flick” with his lady, Pam.
And guess what, the other stars Pam who is equally challenged seeing an action movie with Greg. One can’t help but wonder what kind of future those two could possibly have. (And word to Pam: in the movie theater put the cell phone away! Any sympathy I might have had for you just flew out the window.)
So maybe it isn’t so much that Klondike imagines its customers are men so much as morons. This is a tone I find in many commercials that puzzles me. They seem to suggest that those that buy their products are morons. Beer commercials seem especially prone to this (I’ll get to them another time). I’m not sure that’s a great advertising tactic.
The pity of it is that those bars look pretty good, and they have a variety of tasty flavors. What would I do for a Klondike bar? Well, I’d just buy one. Of course, that’s not going to happen now.
This one makes me sad, because—if I did go to a fast food restaurant joint—Arby’s is more likely to be my choice that the other well-known giants (unless there’s a Carl’s Jr. available; love the Western Bacon Cheeseburger).
I’ve been eating at Arby’s ever since they became the other fast food place in the 70s—a nice alternative to the Big Two. (I will confess that it took me a while to catch on that “Arby” is meant to be “RB,” which stands for “roast beef.” Sometimes I’m a little slow.)
In fact, I’m quite partial to their Chicken Cordon Bleu sandwich. If I recall correctly, I’ve been in a fast food joint only once in the last decade; Arby’s was where I went, and a Bleu is what I had. I didn’t realize at the time it might the last one I ever ate (in point of fact, I went slightly after the lunch rush, they made it fresh, and it was one of the worst ones I’d ever had).
I’m not ragging on the “Good mood food!” slogan. The ‘oo-oo-oo‘ assonance is a good advertising trick; it sticks in the mind. Even that it seems to bother a number of people enough to blog about it isn’t necessarily a bad thing (the old “no such thing as bad advertising” idea).
And again I’m very conflicted about posting the video, but here it is:
So here’s a commercial where, in the name of selling fast food, this asshole casually invades the space of two people eating lunch, steals an umbrella and smashes two mirrors. (What do you think would happen to you if you walked into Target and smashed two mirrors?)
The good news is that a piano falls on him; the bad news is he’s fine.
What’s even sadder is the YouTube site this comes from where people express surprise that anyone could be offended. Let’s see, the guy is guilty of malicious mischief, theft and vandalism. “But it’s just a commercial,” you feebly protest! Then why the little “Do not attempt” disclaimer? Could it be because people do take the television machine seriously (which, after all, is somewhat the point)?
Oh, human race, you have sunk so low.
These guys made the last rant about commercials, and here they are again. I have to say that I’ve been consistently underwhelmed by the AT&T cell phone commercials. They all seem (at least to me) to me missing a point. (That’s hard on me, since it was a company I once held in high esteem. They are responsible for the transistor, for one thing, and their technical research and development was peerless.)
The ones that bug me in particular lately are the “so 30 seconds ago” commercials that suggest you’re a loser if you’re not getting the most instantaneous updates possible. Last time I mentioned the flash mob commercial, which expresses the same idea. Apparently AT&T can’t find anything that actually makes their service better (and friends tell me it isn’t; that the coverage is not good). Here’s the offender in question:
On the topic of cell phones and men who don’t deserve their ladies, AT&T has another entry on my list. This is the one where a guy having dinner out with his lady can’t resist using his cell phone to watch a football game. Here again, the value system is seriously messed up. Per the commercial, it seems things are tense between them already. So the choice is one nice evening in a nice restaurant with a nice lady versus one football game. Here it is:
If you are such a pathetic piece of shit you can’t give up one football game in real-time, you don’t deserve love or a relationship of any kind. More to the point, why would I identify with such a lying creep? If this is an AT&T customer, then count me out.
I do kind of like the speed-dating one; it’s cute, and she’s clever (and he’s a complete idiot). Props.
And speaking of commercials I also like, the McDonald’s one featuring a guy and a gal on a park bench where she’s asking if she can have a fry. (Can’t find an image or a video of that, which seems… odd.) He pretends he can’t hear in that ear, so she moves to the other side and asks again. This time he says, “No.” I love the look on her face.
That commercial always makes me smile, and I have to admit, Micky D’s french fries are awfully tasty. Being offensive or stupid just isn’t necessary to sell products.
I am not a big fan of advertising and marketing. To the extent they provide information that allows people to reasonable decisions about purchasing useful products, I have no problem. Quite the opposite; of course a company should let you know what it offers. But when they try to force unnecessary products on us, that’s a problem. When they use carefully concealed misdirection–sometimes outright lies–to trick us, that’s a problem.
TV Commercials are among the worst form of advertising. Some of them are fun (at least the first 10,000 times you see them), and some of them are bland but fairly harmless. But some of them ought to make intelligent people’s heads explode.
For example, there was a commercial for Qwest that began with a guy saying to the camera, “It’s a fact: there’s a trillion people on the internet these days!”
No. It’s the exact opposite of a fact; it’s complete bullshit. There aren’t anywhere close to a trillion people on the planet and aren’t likely to be in the foreseeable future. Some feel population will level out shy of ten-billion (American billion, that is: 10,000,000,000), and that’s two orders of magnitude less than a trillion. Every time that commercial came on, I had to quickly switch channels (or at least mute) to prevent cranial detonation.
Fortunately Qwest “is becoming Century Link” (whatever that means), so perhaps that offense against intelligence has seen its last airing. As an ironic aside, it’s amusing that the Xfinity (what is it with these non-word company names?), which used to be Comcast, has ads suggesting you can’t trust what you’ll get when a company changes hands or names. Do tell.
And here’s a thing… Number of times my phone service has gone out in my lifetime: zero. Number of times my Qwest internet service has gone out or been a problem: zero. Number of times Comcast service has gone out or just generally completely sucked: constantly. In fact, number of times I’ve been a happy, satisfied Comcast customer in all the years I’ve had cable: once.
But while I’m ranting: Qwest. A non-word my mind refuses to learn and forces me to misspell every time I use it. Possibly one of the dumbest company names in the history of company names. Is it “kwest” or is it “Q-west“? What marketing moron came up with that offense to sense?
In any event, Qwest was once a part of AT&T, the folks who brought you a pretty damn good phone system (and the transistor, among other things). And it’s some recent AT&T commercials that are chapping my ass lately. In the wireless market, AT&T has been an also-ran, and the word has been that their coverage can be a real issue. Verizon has been pounding them in commercials by showing comparative coverage maps that sure make it seem that AT&T’s coverage is pathetic.
AT&T has tried to counter with ads suggesting that coverage maps don’t tell the whole story, and those commercials have seemed pretty weak since they don’t suggest what the whole story actually is. And let’s face it, coverage is pretty important all other things being relatively equal.
Lately, and these are the ones that irritate me, they’ve been selling on how they are in the process of expanding. (Translation: our coverage still sucks, but we’re working on it.) The one I just saw starts with a bug crawling up a blade of grass. (Note to marketers: bugs and hardware might not be the ideal juxtaposition.) Presumably this is a lightning bug, since the primary subject of the commercial is kids running around a field with jars presumably catching lightning bugs. We have to presume, because we never see them catch one or see a jar containing any. For that matter, I don’t believe we even see one flying around lit up (which in these CGI days seems surprisingly lame).
But here’s the thing. The main kid featured is head down on his AT&T smartphone. The phone is shown displaying… what? Where his friends are? Surely not where the bugs are! But the thing is, kids running in a field chasing lightning bugs with high-tech gear. Can we not enjoy nature without a goddamn smart phone? Does this age-old childhood activity really need smart phones?
AT&T couldn’t come up with anything better than this? Doesn’t make me want to buy their stuff.
The tag lines for the commercial speak about the possibilities inside the AT&T network. “What’s in here is almost impossible to say.” Yeah, because there’s really nothing new or different or even interesting about their service. Phone service is phone service; it’s the devices and their apps that are interesting.
The other one that I’m really sick of is that flash mob commercial. You know the one. The dummy in the train station waiting for 12:00 so he can strip off his jacket and begin his dance bit. Except that the flash mob has been postponed until 12:30. There’s basically nothing right about this commercial. It reveals the makers know nothing about flash mobs, because every aspect of that part is wrong.
There’s also the fact that the main character is dumb beyond belief. I realize that’s part of the commercial; he is a dummy for not having the AT&T phone, but he’s so dumb he doesn’t deserve free air. He makes no eye contact with others who are apparently in the same flash mob. He doesn’t notice that no one is around him is participating once he starts.
And all that aside, the main selling point here seems to be that a text message is delayed so much as to trip this guy up. But the smart ones with the AT&T phones got it in time? What network delays text messages that much? At its core the commercial proposes a fix for a problem that doesn’t exist.
Bottom line for me: if I ever considered AT&T a player in the wireless market, I sure as hell don’t now.
I’ll return to the subject of commercials repeatedly. They are one of my favorite things to hate. And the hate isn’t virulent. People talking on cell phones while driving; that puts murder and mayhem in my heart. The whole subject of people and their cell phones will no doubt be an article here in the near future. I don’t have anything against the idea of the devices; it’s how people use them that offends me. Deeply. Virulently.
In closing, one more rant and a cute ending: the DirecTV commercials featuring some very unappealing people. There’s one with a boxer, one with a Russian mobster, one with an insider-trading guy, and another with an apparent Asian drug lord. What is their audience? Rich assholes and criminals? Seems like a good reason not to buy DirecTV if that’s the typical customer. It’s almost like they don’t want you to subscribe. Or maybe they’re going after a user market so ignorant they don’t know that satellite TV lost the war. Even cable TV is losing ground to the internet; satellite is a definite has-been.
DirecTV seems to be really floundering. In the baseball game I was watching, they gave us a DirecTV game break… some blurry video of another game. This is supposed to make me want DirecTV? It just confirms what I’ve always thought: satellite TV is dead and gone! (Satellite radio, on the other hand, is pretty cool. I am getting a bit tired of the “NO SIGNAL” drop-outs, though.)
To end this on an upbeat cute note: the commercials for Charmin toilet paper. The ones that feature those pastel-colored bears. You get the joke right? Bears selling toilet paper?
Remember the old line about what bears do in the woods?
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