While you’re all awaiting my review of the myriad of horrible, horrible ads that came on around the Saints handing the Colts their own asses in a little pink box, here’s a great parody of the Google Super Bowl ad:

Just in case you don’t get the joke, here’s the one that Google actually ran during the big game, which was actually released late last year online, but worked so well they decided to use it on Sunday:

Reviews are coming soon, but just know, I hated the damn Denny’s ads…

J.

Wow, just wow…

Look, I’m not going to talk politics here… I’ve done that a bunch with the whole Focus On The Family Super Bowl thing and I’m kind of done with it for awhile. However, this is a site that makes fun of advertising and wow… this one is just awesomely bad.

First, love the super sheep on the pedestal getting hit by lightning.  It’s stock footage magic and whoever pulled this together should be proud for doing so much with so little.

Second, love, love, love the guy doing the voice over.  He sounds a little like Orson Wells, and given the conservative target market, that crowd is probably slurping down his dulcet tones in big gulps.  Wow, so judgmental! I feel like I’m the one he’s getting pissed at instead of this Campbell guy.  I personally love it when attack ads make it sound like they are talking directly to the other candidate so all the viewer has to do is respond with, “Yeah! What about that?!”

Sweet, sweet horrible ad.  There’s blood in the water… I almost want full-blown election season to kick in again so I can make fun of more gems like this… but no, that’s just too much, too soon.

J.

I’m so friggin’ busy today that all I’m doing it re-posting other people’s shit… why, I just feel so legitimately like a real blogger now! Whoo!

Anyway, this list of The 15 Worst Movie Taglines Ever Written is one of those “top” or “best” or “worst” lists where I just have to call bullshit from the get go.  Most of the time, the lists are really there to spur a discussion, like a magazine does the best albums of all time, or best movies of all time, or whatever.  People are bound to disagree and talk about it on the radio or whatever and the site or magazine gets a lot of action from the effort.  Good for them, job well done.

Then you’ve got this list where, I think the guy just gave up after the first couple of “worsts” he found and just started listing shit that was outside of his window.

For instance, The Day of The Dolphin, which is this absolutely tragedy of a movie that actually starred George C. Scott (he was in Patton… go ask your dad) led with, “Unwittingly, he trained a dolphin to kill the President of the United States.”  I’m sorry, but that’s just gold!  What else were they supposed to say about this turd?

So, maybe that one’s just so epic bad that it’s good, but some of these are actually just good.  For instance, they give some shit to the sequel to “Crank”, which was just called “Crank: High Voltage”, for using the line, “He was dead… but he got better.” That’s actually not bad, it’s totally accurate… the main character died at the end of the first one, then they brought him back in the second.  Anybody who saw the first knows he died at the end, and the folks at the ad company knew they had to explain what he was doing walking around pretty early, so there you go.

Anyway, you’ll see my point… it’s just a dumbass, lazy list and I hate myself a little for even linking to the shit, but what can I say, I’m a whore for to the CPM.

J.

I’ve got the presentation of my career in about an hour, but that doesn’t mean I can’t completely ignore my paying job to support a site that pays me less than a penny a visitor to write my ass off…

Anyway, Adweek put together this real of Super Bowl sneak previews… most of them are either teasers or behind the scenes stuff, but I think some of these are the actual ads, so, I guess… *SPOILER ALERT* for you folks that are way too into this shit…

I’m actually collecting a lot of my official sneaks I’ve received and plan on doling them out during the game between keeping my guests from stealing and making sure no one is having sex on the lawn (again).

J.

I’m actually taking a day off from both the day job and Dead Tree Media so I can participate in my annual birthday tradition of getting really drunk and then seeing how long it takes me to get thrown out of Disneyland. That said, I wanted to point out something I noticed last night while watching The Grammys.

Toyota is in some hot water right now because of a massive recall of almost an entire model year of cars thanks to a busted accelerator that they buy from someone else (BTW, just to be fair, Ford has one model it has to sweat as well, but I doubt it will cause as much damage).  Toyota pretty much wasn’t advertising right now… at least I can’t remember seeing much of anything out of them lately.

Then last night, not long after Pink completely blew me away with her aerial acrobatics while actually singing (btw, anyone that tries to lip sync a performance after seeing that is just a hack), but before Taylor Swift did almost an entire performance out of pitch, I caught what is actually one of my favorite commercials… dusted off and in the public’s face:

Again, I love this ad… it is everything that is right with the world of advertising right now.  However, it was put away for awhile because it had run its course.  The new model of the Prius hit the streets and most of the residents of West LA ran out and bought one… mission accomplished.

But then the shit happened with the accelerators and Toyota must have just freaked the hell out.  All it took was a call to the ad agency and a budget that could choke a horse and Toyota is back on the air again with a set of ads that no doubt made people all warm and fuzzy.

Well, I guess if you can’t fix the cars, you can at least try and fix the perception of the cars.

J.

So, this was bound to happen sooner or later and, wow, am I happy it did because it just proves that CBS is really just a big bag of hypocritical a-holes.

I’ve already mentioned on this site that CBS is allowing the very anit-Gay, anti-choice, and anti-family group, Focus on the Family to put up a Super Bowl ad this year.  That ad is going take an anti-abortion stance because it features God’s quarterback, Tim Tebow and his mother. Sure, it’s cool, CBS changed the policy this year because times are tight and as Mark Twain once said, “Morals are for the well fed.”

But then, a little gay dating site (it’s actually a site for gay people, I’m not calling it gay like a 14 year old would call you out for wearing a sweater to a Green Day concert) called ManCrunch.com just got its ad shot down by CBS this morning.

Here’s the ad in all its glory (via the New York Post):

First, before I give CBS more shit for being two-faced on the issue, let me just point out that the two guys in the commercial are wearing Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings jerseys.  I don’t care how hard it is to find a date, gay or straight, two people that follow those teams would never hook up. Period.

Now, according to Man Crunch spokesman Dominic Friesen, CBS told the site that all ad space was already sold out, but the various advertising industry sources are still saying that a few spots still are still available. CBS claims its still reviewing the ad for content and quality, but I’m pretty sure what they’re really doing is assessing how much of a shit storm they would take by running an ad for a gay dating site during the big game.

Frankly, if CBS doesn’t take the ad, they are just stupid on a couple of levels.  One, $2.8 million is $2.8 million no matter where it comes from and things just aren’t that good right now.  Second, running at least one gay ad would finally bring in one of the last demographics that the Super Bowl is weak on, homosexuals!  Does CBS not know how much money gay men spend on shit?  I’m being funny, but I’m serious… look up the statistics on that one and you’ll see I’m right.

CBS already its annual rejection of the Super Bowl ad from GoDaddy.com, but who didn’t see that one coming? GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons is completely shocked by this fact, but his ad is making fun of gay people, which actually is offensive, which ManCrunch.com is helping them hook up.  Bob Parsons is actually my kind of CEO, believe it or not, but every year he’s shocked that they don’t take his ad, even though it’s a pure T&A fest.  Dude, I love your style, but come on…

Honestly, if I didn’t have people coming to my house to actually watch the Super Bowl, I think I would pass on this year’s event because of this cavalcade of stupidity.   But, since I doubt my guests would want to watch me act out the game with puppets and then put on a couple of old albums by The Who, I guess you win this one, CBS…

J.

I was actually wondering when I was going to see the press release announcing that Go Daddy’s 2010 Super Bowl commercial got banned.

A few notes here, guys… one Danica is hot, for a race car driver, but otherwise, she’s just OK, so maybe rethink that one a little. She actually seems to be getting better at doing pitches, but for what you pay her, she should be able to belt this out like an actual hot actress.

Also, I have to admit, this ad is actually a little funny this time. Most of your past Super Bowl commercials have just been horrible. I know CBS tossed you from the broadcast for quality standards and you pimp it up like it’s because the video is too racy for TV, but it’s really because they’re just horrible. I watched last year’s ad with the cop pulling over Danica and even with the full striptease, it’s just plain goofy.

Finally, I think this joke of getting banned from the Super Bowl broadcast is officially effed out. Seriously, it’s like you’re just fucking with CBS at this point and the rest of the world just thinks you’re just making the whole thing up.

You guys sell cheap domain names, why do you even need to be on during the Super Bowl. I know a recent report came out saying that you had a good chance of a positive ROI, but come now, just let it go.

J.

Oftentimes within the deep dark bowels of advertising agencies, when new campaigns are being developed, different creative teams will be assigned to different parts of the campaign.  For instance, one team for TV, another for print, another for radio, and then they usually get some kid in the mail room to do the internet part because they blew their budget on TV, print, and radio creative. Sometimes, in fact, the various creative executions are even done by separate agencies all together.

Frankly, I have no friggin’ idea if that was the case with this next set of ads.  I’m not a big, old school magazine pretending to be young and hip by having a blog under a different name; I’m just a dude who uses his spare time to escape from the hell his home life has become.  So, I don’t have the access to the information other ad review sites have, so I can’t even tell which agencies pull this shit together and frankly, I don’t have the energy to look it up.  Basically what I’m saying is, I’m talking out of my ass.

Anyway, my point here is that with the two campaigns I discuss after the jump, I noticed a real difference in the quality of the creative between the radio and TV executions.  Now, you may say, well of course, radio got the shaft, but it’s actually not that simple.  As you’ll see, for one brand, the radio execution is actually much better than the TV version, but not so much for the other.

Continue reading →

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets are fairly new to Southern California… at least I think they are. I really only know they exist at all because of their goofy ads. They could be really nice, but how smart could they be trying to start a new grocery store in this market that is flooded not only with the big chains, but also some well-established smaller chains that people love more than their own kids, like Trader Joe’s.

Anyway, their whole thing with their ads is about how they use real customers instead of “high paid actors” to save money and pass that savings on to you. Why, here’s one of their real customers now…

Fresh and Easy Radio Spot – Jill

For starters, they lost me at the get go because they say they use “real customers” INSTEAD of “high paid actors.” Unless that golden throated announcer is a box boy or something, they paid an actor to do this ad. Plus, they paid all kinds of people to record the ad, place the media, the media itself, and so on. At this point, an actor doing the bulk of the copy is probably lost in the shuffle.

Second, I’m sorry, but this customer is having way too hard a time reading her line. Oh sure, she sounds like she’s freestylin’, but she definitely has some talking points in front of her and she’s not even getting those out clearly.

Top all that off with the fact that “Fresh & Easy” sounds like something you would find in the feminine hygiene aisle and you’ve got one heck of a crappy little ad.

J.

Ad jingles are a cornerstone of the advertising business and probably one of the oldest tools in the ad man’s tool box (right next to the Gin).  Radio spots really love them because it makes the commercial as memorable as the pop trash that bookends their airtime, but I’m here to tell ya, it ain’t always right to use them…

1-800-Get Slim Radio Spot – New Year

Remember the movie Demolition Man with Stallone and Sandra Bullock when she still looked cute in skin tight uniforms?  I like that movie… oh wait, I had a point there.  Right, because in that movie they had this shtick where they had a whole station full of jingles from old radio spots.  They rode around in their little car singing the Oscar Myer Wiener song and we all had a good laugh.

Do you think if that movie came out today they would use this little ditty from 1-800-Get-Slim?  Of course not, because IT’S A FRICKIN’ STUPID IDEA TO HAVE A JINGLE IN AN AD ABOUT WEIGHT LOSS SURGERY!

Look, I know a few people who have had this procedure (hell, I’ve had a few people tell me I need to get this procedure) and they’re all very happy now that they can see their genitals when they shower.  However, this ad isn’t to these people, it’s to the people who need to see their genitals in the shower and let me tell you, those people are not jolly, no matter what the songs say about them.

Ads like this are born from purely bad ideas that somehow aren’t killed before they see the light of day.  Just imagine that someone wrote the tag line, “Let your new life begin, call 1-800-Get-Slim” and noticed it rhymed and they jokingly sang it to get a giggle out of the cute chick in accounting.  That’s where the idea should have died.  Unfortunately, it got passed around until upper management heard it and thought it was a great idea and before the copywriter could say, “but sir” it was on the air, ruining my morning.

Remind me to send them something nice… like a basket of muffins.

J.