Singing in commercials can be a fun, lighthearted way to communicate a message. The more clever the lyrics and the more catchy the song, the more an audience is going to respond to it. Unfortunately, most people leave out the first part (I'm struggling to think of a good example of it) and instead just focus on the second part.
You've probably seen a lot of local commercials that make this mistake (perhaps they even drop some phresh beats and lay down a rap!) but national commercials are also guilty of this. Companies, here's the thing. Just because your song is catchy doesn't mean that it's likeable.
The people who made the NAPA Know-How commercial don't understand this.
Okay, so, to start with, we've got this:
When the very first words of your commercial are the protagonist talking about how he doesn't care about other human beings (evidenced by his careless disposal of the very organ he is lacking), you should know that your character is going to come across as broken at best and insane at worst. We'll see which it turns out to be.
So I want you to think of at least one problem with this advertisement. After you watch the two videos, click "read more" to see if you and I are on the same wavelength. If you thought of a different problem with it, or couldn't find very much wrong with it at all, that will be interesting because it's entirely possible that I am the only one who hates this commercial concept.
Here is a pretty picture to make up for some of the things that are about to happen:
Okay, I had some stuff going on that prevented me from doing a thing, and that are still preventing me from doing a thing, so for now I'll keep this short and elaborate on it later.
This is, quite possibly, the worst commercial. I don't know if it's the worst commercial ever, but when I think of the phrase "worst commercial," this is one of two commercials that comes to mind. It's so bad that I'm going to link it instead of showing it to you outright. I'm working on a post analyzing it, but in the meantime, here is a sneak preview.
Just to warn you, I showed this video to someone and his response was, and I quote, "AAAAAAAAHHHHH WHY WOULD YOU SHOW THAT TO ME I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS". So yes, that... it is pretty bad.
So, my piece about the terrible talking babies is not the post with the most views but it did garner an actual comment from a kind, mysterious, and no doubt sexy person, so I figured maybe I would talk about commercials more, because boy there are a lot that need fixing. I figure it's a good thing for blogs to have a couple things they do regularly as sort of reasons to stay involved (Chris Sims had his "Week In Ink," "Dollar-Bin Reviews," etc., for instance) and analyzing bad commercials is going to join my pursuit of scientific, rational state stereotypes.
The only problem is that I actually don't watch much TV. So post about some really bad commercials below.
My only request is that you please not tell me how to fix them. Otherwise what are you telling me to look at them for? You solved the problem yourself.
or: Why I Should Be In Charge of Advertising for Everything Ever, Part One
Talking babies (and talking animals) are used when the commercial has no actual joke. It is literally the laziest thing you can do. I talked earlier about the terrible trend of faux-nostalgia in car commercials, but this is way worse because those car commercials, while stupid and counter-productive like a video game boss with his weak spot on his front, at least had some effort put into them and some pretty neat (but wasted) concepts. This is just pablum.
This picture is in case you didn't get the joke because I want you to know how clever I am
And there are people who think this is a brilliant ad campaign to run with, apparently. I'd hate to see the ones they rejected. The current title holder for "Most Popular Series of Talking Baby Commercials" is the series of ETRADE talking baby commercials, which are just terribly unfunny. Let me take you through a tour of them.
The First Commercial
Did you get the joke? No? That's because there isn't one!
That commercial aired during the Superbowl, which, I mean, is essentially the Cannes Film Festival of commercials. They thought it was worth paying however many millions of dollars for the thirty-second time slot. And then at the end the baby spits up! Get it? That's the only thing in there they could think of as a joke! Isn't that funny! Because it makes me want to die a little bit!
How to fix it:
You can't.
Anyway, you'll notice that these commercials have a secondary gimmick: the baby is on a (poor simulation of a) webcam for some reason. Now, in the first commercial it's because he clicks a mouse (which you can't see on the camera, so, uh, great work with the visual storytelling, guys) to show you how easy it is to invest in some financially stable group like Enron or Bear Stearns, but it makes less and less sense as time goes on, like in our next entry:
The Golf Commercial
The only thing this is doing is making me hate babies and keyboards
This, by the way, is another Superbowl commercial. For a different year.
So here, they're in a golf locker room, except they really just stand there like they're in front of a greenscreen, even if they aren't (but they totally are) It looks like they also totally added in that keyboard later, which is just lazy. Anyway, you'll notice that for this to make sense they've also added desks of computers, like you'd see at a library.
Except, well, I don't think that many golf locker rooms have those (even the fancy ones I've been in just have TVs and billiards; computers are too unrefined to be allowed in, I'll bet)
America's country clubs needed something new to discriminate against, and it was just a matter of changing a couple letters
and even if golf places do have computers, the computer in the commercial doesn't have a webcam. So, the baby, see, I guess he just... uh... brought a... connect... I don't get exactly what the logic is here. It's like they took a joke from the cutting room floor that was meant for a completely different product and then clumsily reshot it, like a drunk farrier.
The worst thing about the commercial, though, is the alleged punchline: "shankopotamus." I don't know if you noticed through all of the hysterical laughter, but that's not actually one of those pun-insult-type-things. It sounds nothing like "hippopotamus." They lamely try trick you into thinking it makes sense by naming the guy Frank. Which, as you will notice, already could work as the pun-insult-thing setup. So... why not just be satisfied with that? Why go out of your way to randomly slander an incredibly dangerous water creature?
Hippos don't hire lawyers.
Learn how to fix this commercial right after the jump.
So I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but a new trend in car commercials seems to be "calling back to the days we made cars that looked distinctive and cool without actually bothering to do any of that ever." It's really annoying because I've been saying cars need to look more distinct for a while now (I especially don't understand BMW's strategy there) and now they come out with these commercials that are just plain misleading. More after the jump:
