Of course the answer is no, no it didn’t steal it… simply because DearPhotograph didn’t come up with the concept in the first place.  The whiny founder and operator of the site,  Taylor Jones, was quoted in a Mashable article claiming as much, but also adding in the shifty, “I did popularize it by creating a unique site that brings together the physical technique with deeply emotional reflections that are expressed as captions.”

What the fuck is that?  Are you fucking kidding me with this “deeply emotional reflections” crap?

Let’s start with the first line of bullshit – sites like this one and this one are doing the exact same thing as you have, plus, I can remember, but not find, a whole line of pictures where people were doing this with album covers for awhile.  So, you’re already full of shit on just the idea front, which you try and dodge by saying you didn’t invent it, but you certainly don’t mind that Mashable wrote a whole article about Chevy stealing your idea (Mashable also already wrote a nice puff piece about the blog before the Chevy thing went down).

Second, DearPhotograh didn’t add any deep reflecting anything… it used an idea that was around already and then encouraged other people (yes, other people) to join in on an idea that was around already to create a website where you can put ads and make a little scratch on the side from the traffic.

Oh wait, I see what you mean… are you talking about the sappy captions people add when they submit their own picture in picture shots?  So that’s the difference?  Are you sure?  Then you’re truly full of crap because the Chevy ad doesn’t do that part at all, it just ads a Ray Charles song.

Good grief, get over yourself.  You created a derivative work and you knew you created a derivative work; you don’t get to run around bitching when someone else, big car company or not, creates another derivative work.

Here’s the reprehensible thing… not only did Chevy not steal it, but you’re going to actually try and steal some thunder from their ad campaign, and some additional ad revenue generating traffic to your blog, all in the name of intellectual property rights you don’t actually have in the first place.

Say what you will about Chevrolet and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, but they actually created a great ad for their product that utilized a popular and existing photography technique and no matter how much you bitch, you’re not going to get any credit.

- JF

Related articles

• Chevy Turns to Pictures to Celebrate a Centennial (mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Did Chevy Steal This Commercial Idea From a Popular Blog? (mashable.com)
• Did Chevy Steal Creative Concept from Popular Blog? (laist.com)
• Dear creatives, nick Dear Photograph faster next time. (adland.tv)

Related posts:

1. Six IDEA STARTERS, not things to do, get it?
2. From the vault: Flinstones Winston Cigarette commercial with bonus sexism!
3. New Droid Incredible Commercial is [not] Incredible [at all] AND Vague [VIDEO]

The biggest assholes of them all are the assholes who think everybody except them is an asshole.  I really hate those assholes because most of the time those assholes are a special kind of asshole, the racist asshole.

You’ve seen this asshole around for sure.  The minor ones just talk shit when things aren’t going their way and usually blame some sort of special treatment on a program to hold their race back while other flourish.  The major ones actually do some damage by blowing shit up or hurting people.

Then there are the kind of racists that are trying to sell you stuff… wait a minute, that kind of asshole doesn’t actually exist. Sorry for the confusion.

Are the folks at DirecTV racists assholes?

You see, if you’re in the business of selling shit, whether is is via an advertisement or the creation of a product, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re not a racist because it’s not in your best interest to piss off the people that are making you money.  Do you see the logic here?

For instance, DirecTV just pulled down one of its ads from YouTube because they were getting a bunch of comments saying that it was racist.  This is pretty amazing because, the whole series of ads are based on the same premise, some overly rich asshole that sees DirecTV as the ultimate luxury entertainment. The difference in each ad is who the asshole is and where he comes from.  There’s a rich Russian asshole, there’s a rich Asian asshole, there’s a rich white banker asshole, and finally, the one that got the complaints, the rich black boxer asshole.

Here it is if you haven’t seen it:

I actually love this whole series of ads and the one with the Russian and his little pet giraffe cracks me up every time.  The white banker one is kind of funny, but not their best work.  The Asian “Whale” one is pretty well done, too.  The boxer one is good, but not as good as the Russian guy…

By the way, that Russian guy is played by an Irish guy faking an accent.  Apparently, recently he got into a brawl in a bar and the news freaked a little because he was “connected” to DirecTV.  DirecTV actually handled it pretty well reminding everybody that he was just an actor in their commercials and their VP of advertising and communication said, Jon Gieselman, ”I’m pretty sure Tim is not the first Irishman to be in a bar when a fight breaks out.”

You catch that last part? That’s actually a little racist, but the cool part is, Irishmen aren’t pissed off by stuff like that anymore.  We (yes we, I’m Scotch-Irish; My last name is Ferguson, did you think I was Dutch?) embraced it a long time ago and got on with our lives.

The thing that kind of pisses me off about the assholes that made all these comments is that they’re the kind of assholes that would probably make the same sort of jokes at their own expense, but get really pissed off when other people do.  Notice I didn’t just say black people, because these kind of assholes know no race or creed.  These are the kind of assholes that can’t take a joke, they can just sling them.  What a bunch of assholes.

Are the folks at Summers Eve racist assholes?

There were a series of ads that came and went so quickly that a lot of people didn’t even get to see them.  In fact, you may never get to see them because when they got pulled, they got pulled hard, which is why I can’t embed one of them here.  All I can show you is a screen shot from the one featuring a black hand impersonating a vagina.

Yep, you read that right… it’s a talking hand that represents a talking vagina.  They had a black one, a Latina one, and a white one.  All three of the ads were horrible, poorly written, and just plain goofy.  However, none of them were racist.

Again, if we follow the line of logic that states it’s not a good idea to be racist if you’re trying to sell something to someone, then Summers Eve was in fact just ignorant and bad at its job, but I seriously doubt they are racist in the slightest.  Sure, Jezebel and a bunch of other blogs can say they are racists to get the headline grab and start a fire in their comment areas, but in reality, there was nothing racist about these ads… they were just stupid.

Sure, you could just say that I’m just a blogger as well, and that’s true, but I’m also one that can’t stand the current state of hyperbolic, yellow writing that passes for journalism these days.  I may cuss a bunch in my posts, but that’s mostly because I don’t get to write like this anywhere else and I think it’s funny as hell.

We need to get out of this racist habit

This isn’t the first time this has come up; people claim all kinds of ads are racist all the time.  I’ve pointed a few of them out here on this blog (“Australia KFC ad not racist, just goofy. Get the hell over it.”) and I can remember this lame ass controversy around HPs facial recognition software where in both cases it was a knee jerk reaction to label it “racist.”

Just like with a lot of other words out there today, like “literally” or “inconceivable,” it’s like we’ve forgotten the real meaning of the term and use it for anything that is close. Lately, I’ve been trying to break my six year old of using the term “literally” for the word “actually,” but that’s about the age you’re supposed to be doing that because he’s still getting the full grasp of the language.  The rest of the grown ups of the world shouldn’t have that problem and so they shouldn’t use the word “literally” when they mean “actually” and they shouldn’t use the word “racist” when things really aren’t racist.

Take it from a guy that grew up in Paramount, CA – when you do and say things that are racist, it doesn’t result in a blog comment; you get your ass handed to you.

- J

Related posts:

1. DTM Commentary: Jay Leno Says He’ll Quit Too
2. DTM Commentary: On sizzle, steak, and car parts (Martin Scorsese sex tape edition)
3. Ford Fiesta commercials are just reaching for anything now

That said, this site is about bad commercials and brother, let me tell you, beezid.com just upped the ante. Clearly all the money for the ad went to the “talent” because the thing looks like someone shot it on their iPhone.

Word has it that Lohan passed on the offer to do this commercial for $25,000, so the fact that she’s in it now means that they either gave her more money or she needed to pay her dealer taxes rent liquor store bill agent.

It’s not that they paid over $25,000 for a commercial; commercials are fucking expensive to start with, so it’s no shock that they would have laid down some coin for all of this. Hell, while I was working at Kimberly-Clark, they actually flew a whole crew of people to Italy to shoot a paper towel commercial that involved a guy getting splattered with mud as a car drove by him on a country road. Sure, they could could have shot that in Burbank, CA for about half as much even with union dues, but the director wanted Italian mud.

Anyway, it’s not that they paid money for that, it’s that they gave money to Lohan as a reward for being nothing else besides a fuck up. I know that’s a thing now, but this shit has really got to stop. It was hard enough convincing kids to go to college when guys like Gates and Zuckerberg become billionaire drop outs, but now we’re just giving people money for not being able to hold their liquor.

- JF

Related posts:

1. Accenture: Nothing says tech consulting like a surfing elephant [VIDEO]
2. Ad Awesomeness: Lindsey Lohan sues E-TRADE for “milkaholic” crack
3. [REVEALED] Evan Longoria’s spectacular, barehanded catch is a viral video for Gillette

But even I remain hopeful that summer will last longer than one week which is apparently what the folks at Taco Bell are expecting.

Pay close attention to the end of this spot:

Kudos to Aasif Mandvi for being able to get through a line of copy that says both, “spend less this summer” and “this week only” without laughing or screaming.

It’s gonna be a short summer, better get a tan while you can.

Related posts:

1. Taco Bell suggests you eat healthier, people freak the f%@k out
2. Taco Bell, Preferred Tacos of Retards
3. A tale of two teams: TV and radio spots for Taco Bell and Dr Pepper.

Below is the train wreck that is the commercial for Taco Bell’s new “Cheesy Double Decker Taco,” the latest attack on America’s colons.

There are so many things wrong with this add that I feel like I’m going insane.

First, why are they all dressed up? Is this a fancy party that is serving Taco Bell tacos as a dining selection? One of the two key girls is wearing friggin’ pearls and one woman walking by is in a silk mini skirt. Either I’m going to the wrong parties or some part of the country is just phoning it in on the catering these days.

Second, and most obvious, what the fuck is wrong with this guy? Is he on E? Is he retarded? Or could he be the one human that really loves tacos that much. Trust me, I loves me some tacos. I even loves me some Taco Bell tacos. But, until tacos cure HIV, I’m just never going to have that much passion for junk food.

Third, where is Taco Bell getting its ingredients that it can still sell anything for less than $1 in the US? I can’t make tacos at home for that little, even if I get all the stuff from Costco, so what’s in those things? I mean, I’ll still set them after a heavy night of drinking, but when I sober up, I better not stink of Soylent Green.

– J

PS – Yes, I used the word retard in the title. Save your comments, they’ll be rightly ignored. The day people started using “mentally challenged” is the day that retard became nothing more than an insult that meant stupid.

Related posts:

1. Taco Bell/Aasif Mandvi Predict a Short Summer
2. Taco Bell suggests you eat healthier, people freak the f%@k out
3. A tale of two teams: TV and radio spots for Taco Bell and Dr Pepper.

Sure, there’s the occasional Geico-Helzberg tie-in that seems out of place but for the most part these are some pretty good spots.

Then there’s this idiot:

Someone at Nationwide’s agency decided they were falling behind in the quirky spokesperson race and voila, this pathetic dork and his blue toy phone appeared. Frankly if this guy showed up on my lawn talking into a plastic phone I’d be  thinking escaped mental patient and running into the house and locking the door,  not listening to how he could help lower my insurance costs.

Please, I am begging you, make it stop!

No related posts.

That’s Eli Manning, Shaq, Venus Williams and Apolo Ohno; if you didn’t recognize them, they are all major sports stars, well three of them are (nothing against speed skating, but clearly they were running out of budget for the talent if they had to pull from that sport).  You can just imagine how much cash they had to dole out just to get these guys to show up to a pitch meeting, much less star in these goofy commercials.  Plus, they ran this shit during the Golden Globes last night; sure, it’s not the Super Bowl or the Oscars, but that’s some pretty damn pricey media spots.

OREO apparently blew their wad on the talent too because the writing and creative talent on this ad is awful.  I showed this to my girlfriend’s kids and even they thought it was stupid, and they are actually their target market.  Besides the fact that they felt they needed to come up with a mock-sport called competitive licking, I’m pretty sure you could find some folks in Porn Valley that would be better at it than Shaq.  Then, if it wasn’t goofy enough, they decided they needed to have them all compete against… well, it just looks like Emperor Palpatine, doesn’t it?  Sure, they call him the Hooded Menace, but they didn’t even bother to change up his outfit or voice.

Plus, let’s not forget… THEY’RE FUCKING COOKIES!  Christ in a sidecar, they don’t cure AIDS, they just taste decent in milk… that’s if they even make it that far.  Why the fuck are they spending so much money promoting these things… were they losing market share to those Hydrox pieces of shit?  They’re OREOs, they would have to pretty much be deemed toxic for people to stop eating them and even then, you’d still get a shitload of sales from chicks with their monthly visitor.

And finally, the tagline is “Lick or be licked.”  Oh seriously, what the hell is happening to the ad agencies these days?  Do they not even bother anymore?  Is it the clients that think they can’t do any better?  It sounds like the tagline for a skin flick.

I just can’t take it… I’m going to go look for some cookie porn and go to bed.

J

Related posts:

1. New Diesel campaign is stupid (but not as stupid as the folks @adfreak)
2. Hey Fresh & Easy, you’re not saving money by using real customers if the ad sucks

- – -

That said, let’s talk about one of the more annoying commercials in what is a completely annoying category of commercials, State Farm’s auto insurance TV spots.  Auto insurance ads are pretty bad in general; there’s only so much you can say about auto insurance in the first place, so most of the time, the insurance companies (or insurance brokers) have to just do a bunch of weird shit with a talking lizard or a pasty faced woman named what most women used to call their period.  Plus, because the market is so competitive, they have to run their ads at a really high repeat cycle, so the lucky TV viewer just gets to see them over and over and over again.

There are some exceptions, like All State, who used to use a handsome piece of dark chocolate in their ads for a few years until they moved him to just VO work.  Then they introduced a series of ads called “Mayhem,” which are creative as hell, but I can’t see them lasting too long, as they are a little high concept.

Meanwhile, State Farm is trying to split the difference between the goofy ads of their competitors and still talking about the product they are selling with two different campaigns.  The first series we’ll look at is called Discount Double Check and features what is perhaps the least threatening looking Hispanic man I’ve ever seen…

Now that you’ve seen that one, you’ll probably realize there is a whole series that features that same dude and use the same set of annoying camera work and humor.  Pay attention, once I point them out, you’ll never be able to look at these the same way again…

• The ads like to do what is called, “breaking the fourth wall,” which is usually used in a lot in comedy, but the writers of this ad forgot that part because these things just aren’t funny.  In this case, the spokesman is talking to us, yet the rest of the scene all thinks he’s insane because it looks like he’s talking to nobody in particular.  The longer version of this ad has the newsstand owner ask aloud, “who’s he talking to?” at the end, just to drive that point home.

• Even though the ad has a star (the non-threatening Hispanic man), the camera wanders all over the damn set.  Sometimes he lands on something that is actually part of the storyline of the spot (like in this case the newsstand guy giving the lady back her change), but most of the time, it’s just some random extra wandering through the shot (like the guy walking the dogs, etc.). I know they are doing it just to be creative, but to me, it just looks like the camera man has ADHD and can’t focus on one thing for more than a couple of seconds.

• The USP (unique selling point) of the series is basically that you should use State Farm because they have more customers than anybody else.  Man am I tired of that being a mark of quality for anything.  That’s like saying the Backstreet Boys made quality music because they sell a lot of concert tickets; that doesn’t prove that the music was good, it just proves what a herd of sheep people really are these days.

Don’t believe me? Here’s another one…

You can actually hear the director thinking in this, “OK, start with the four d-bags, now cut to the hero, now go to the guy on the bike to emphasize how people are trying to save money, now back on the d-bags…”  Fucker, hold still!  You’re giving people seizures…

- – -

The other series State Farm is using is called “Magic Jingle” because it features the State Farm jingle that has been is use for… hell, I don’t know; I can remember them using it when I was a kid, it’s got to be a long time now.

The basic line with all of these is that singing the Magic Jingle will get the agent to appear, which I imagine is supposed to show how State Farm is always there to help, etc. etc.  The problem is, that concept can’t really carry a whole ad, so they worked it so that the other people in the ad always use this newfound power for evil or just plain stupidity.

I actually thought these were kind of funny when they first came out, but then I realized that the wishes were a little too easy… a sandwich, a hot tub, a giant stuffed panda.  The other ads just make men and women look like shallow horn dogs by asking for either  a hot guy or a hot girl or for their significant other to turn into one or the other.  The only really creative one is in the one above where he asked for Bob Barker, which is a pretty funny reference, but unfortunately, we have to look at Bob Barker who now is apparently just a collection of plastic surgery scars with a fake tan.

If there was ever an argument for government run insurance of any kind, it’s these friggin’ commercials…

- JF

No related posts.

It’s actually a cute little concept. The surfing elephant gets an easy smile and ties in with their question about “who says you can’t be big and nimble?”

Two things… for one, they used the Kinks song, “Well-Respected Man,” which is one of those deceptive little songs that sounds like it’s being nice, but is really a swipe at conservative businessmen in the UK (and their parents). The first verse is OK, but the second is where you can start to see some of Ray Davis’ classic wit:

And his mother goes to meetings,
While his father pulls the maid,
And she stirs the tea with councilors,
While discussing foreign trade,
And she passes looks, as well as bills
To every suave young man

I guess it could be worse… I once saw a trailer for “A Very Tigger Movie” that used Semi-Charmed Kind of Life and one of the cruise lines used to play Lust For Life by Iggy and the Stooges, both are about drug use. But hey, at least they’re catchy, right?

The other thing I’ve kind of got a problem with is the line, “Who says you can’t be big and nimble?” Well, everybody says that because it’s pretty much true. Sure, there are a few companies that pull it off, but for the most part, any time you’ve got more than 50 people working for a company, you’re more wrecking ball than mongoose.

At least they’re not using the Tiger Woods ads anymore…

- Jeff Ferguson

Related posts:

1. [VIDEO] Lindsay Lohan got paid how much to do what with a beezid?
2. Guest Post: Accenture proves that the best jokes are accidental…
3. 2011 Review: Top 5 Tech Controversies That Weren’t

If you’ve read over this site before, you might have seen my rant on some of the goofy things they do in car commercials.  Coming up with a creative ad concept for  car commercial has got to be a pain, so most of the time I just give them a pass because there is only so much you can do.  However, neither one of these spots (or webisodes, I guess) actually pass the “hey, this is really friggin stupid” test.

The first is entitles Ford Fiesta vs. Lamborghini…

Between you and me, I friggin hate Lamborghinis.  They are mother expensive and frankly I just don’t like the way they look, but they sell a bunch of them and they go really fast in a straight line.  The goofy comparison tests show how the Lamborghini can’t turn like the Fiesta, but then again, it’s not supposed to either.  This would be like comparing how a hammer and a banana compare at driving nails; the latter just isn’t made for the task and to try and do the comparison just makes you look like a dipshit.

The second spot just hurts my damn head… it’s literally showing how the Fiesta comes in handy when zombies are present.

This spot breaks all kinds of rules in my book.

For starters, zombies are big right now, so you can actually hear someone asking during a pitch meeting, “Hey, what’s big right now with the kids? Zombies! Let’s put one in an ad!” That’s just friggin lazy and embarrassing.

Second, the ad is just dumb. That one chick clearly got away from the zombie, but somehow he is suddenly in her back seat? And how would being able to start the car faster help in that situation? He’s already friggin there!

Look, the Fiesta, the Yaris, and whatever else that thing in the ad is are those cheap, throwaway kind of cars you drive when you’re young and broke. Just letting people know that your car is more feature rich than the other pieces of crap will get people in the door. Trying to be clever like this in your ads and failing miserably will do nothing but gain the ire of your target audience, who friggin hate everything about you already because they’re young and know everything.

You want to sell cars to kids, go where the kids are and put your cars out. Don’t try to be hip or funny or clever… you just look like a ‘tard.

- Jeff Ferguson

Related posts:

1. [COMMENTARY] On TV Commercials and Selective Racial Outrage