How (not) to talk about the recession in your advertising
Published January 7th, 2010 | 3 Comments
There are commercials that are just stupid and then there are commercials that are just fucking insulting. Oh look, here’s one now from esurance…
(Tech note: I get my radio spots by recording them using the voice recorder app on my iPhone and sometimes I don’t get all of them. I usually wait to post until I get a nice, clean copy, but this one got me so pissed off that I just want to do it right away. The missing part in the beginning is some idiot woman talking about how she can’t afford a new pair of stilettos.)
You know, if this were say, 2011 or 2012, when we were a little further away from the Recession, this ad might be a little funnier. You see, the joke is that, things are really that bad and if you just got cheaper car insurance from esurance, then you could go back to your decadent lifestyle. But you know what, esurance, that’s a really stupid fucking thing to talk about in 2010, which is when this piece of shit first hit the air.
I know, you probably looked around your offices and said, “hey, I’ve still got a job, and so do most of my friends… things aren’t so bad, right?” Well you know what? They are, dipshit. I don’t care how hot that cartoon chick is in your TV commercials, that was just a damn insensitive thing to make fun of in your ads. People are still losing their jobs and their homes on a daily basis and you’re making jokes about people not being able to eat out as much.
Classy, stuff, esurance.
Here’s a better way to handle things from another insurance company with some class, Allstate.
By the way, that guy in the Allstate commercial is an actor by the name of Dennis Haysbert, who lately has worked on shows like “The Unit” (ask your mom, I don’t watch crap like that), but I’ll always remember him as Cerrano in “Major League”, back in the late 80s. Man, that guy’s voice could talk me into going gay for a night, and that’s saying a lot. Why, if he and Daniel Craig teamed up to turn me, I would just be… you know what, I’m off point… this is about commercials.
Anyway, Allstate actually has a new commercial for 2010 that is amazing, but not available on YouTube just yet, but it’s in the same style as the “Back To Basics” ad above. In the new one, you see people making adjustments to their lives because of the bad economy, like bringing their lunch instead of eating out (the imagery is great, too, they show a doctor and a construction worker eating lunch on the same bench), and so forth. The commercial really drives home the point that, sure, things suck right now, but they’re getting better and we’ll come out stronger on the other side.
I’m already an Allstate customer, but damn if I wasn’t, after seeing that commercial I would be running for the phone like a teenage girl to change my policy for everything from my car to my my own kidneys. Are you paying attention, esurance? That’s the result you want when you’re talking about insurance, not a light chuckle at the expense of the downtrodden.
Dicks.
J.
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