Another review of a first half ad. This one wasn't quite as good as the Doritos ad:
The guy finishes with a date, gets in his car, and the first thing he wants to do is check Facebook.
I can understand this. In this age of smart phones, people can't seem to go more than a couple seconds without updating their statuses or checking in on Foursquare. So I get that for some people, the ability to check Facebook via voice interface in their car could be appealing.
But are people really going to buy cars just because it can read Facebook updates to them? I mean, while it might be an attractive option, I can't believe they're using this as the main selling point.
I am also a bit skeptical about how accurately the car is going to be able to read things from Facebook. My mother-in-law has caller ID on her phone that reads off the names of the person who is calling. But the names get so garbled to the point that they're almost unintelligible.
Yet, we're supposed to expect the car to read people's names correctly? Not to mention some of the things that people post as their statuses.
I might consider this feature just for the amusement factor of listening to my car try to read Facebook statuses, but that seems like an expensive way just to amuse myself.
As for the commercial itself, the premise is a bit ridiculous. This was their first date, and they're already Facebook friends? Did they add each other before they even went on their first date? Wouldn't that be a bit awkward if it didn't work out?
Or maybe the date was going so swimmingly that they felt that they had to add each other as Facebook friends while still on the date.
Is this what dating has come to in 2011? You take time out from the date to get on your smart phones and add each other as friends? Maybe it's just a sign of the times that even on "best first dates ever" people can't turn off their phones.
Anyway, Facebook reveals that the girl enjoyed the date as well. I wonder if he doesn't feel a little bit of regret as he drives off. If she enjoyed the date so much, maybe he could have gotten more than a quick kiss at the end.
You've got to think that on their next date, he's going to be more aggressive. Rating: 2 TVs - I would have liked this commercial better if her status was something like "Worst date ever. The guy is such a loser." At least that would have been funny.
While the Black Eyed Peas are performing, I decided to do a quick review of a commercial from the first half.
Overall, I'd say the commercials in the first half have been solid. Much better than the fare from recent years.
I'd say the best ads have come from Doritos. So, here's a review of one of their ads:
I'll move past the fact that I personally hate Doritos, and say that at first watch, I thought this guy was someone who I could relate to. Much like him, I'm the type of person who insists on getting every last bit of food out of the bag.
In my younger days, whenever people didn't finish their meals, I would be quick to eat whatever they left over. Heck, sometimes I didn't even have to order my own food. I'd just eat a little bit of everyone else's scraps.
Would I have ever gone to the point of licking someone else's fingers? No, that is clearly over the line, and the finger licker is obviously a bit crazy.
Really, if there's anyone I relate to, it is the guy with the bag. This guy knows what he's doing. He finished off the chips and now he's dumping the crumbs into his mouth. I'd say there's a good chance that his next move is to lick his own fingers. Because that's what I would do.
That's why the finger licker's actions are so egregious. He didn't even give the guy a chance to lick his own fingers.
This appears to be taking place in an office somewhere, and I have to wonder, in this era of political correctness, is there any way that this guy would remain employed at this company?
This guy is clearly obsessed with Doritos, so I would be surprised if this was his first time doing something like this. Wouldn't someone have complained about him by now? Unless he works for Dunder Mifflin, I'd think something like this would be a fireable offense.
At the very least, wouldn't word have spread around the office not to eat Doritos because crazy finger licker guy might practically molest you to get the crumbs? By this point, I'd think that people would know not to get Doritos from the vending machine. So maybe the guy who got his fingers licked had it coming a little.
And the guy at the end of the commercial kind of deserved what he got too. First, he wipes the crumbs on his pants. The slob couldn't find a napkin anywhere?
And the guy did wipe a lot of crumbs on his pants. If he's going to waste that much food, then should he get upset when others want to have some?
Not to mention that he should probably invest in some higher quality pants. It didn't look like the pants were pulled on that strongly, and yet they ripped quite easily. Maybe this is what he deserves for wearing such cheap pants.
Rating: 3.5 TVs - It was a funny ad, but I couldn't rate it any higher, because I'm not sure if the message we're getting is clear. Are they saying that Doritos are so good that it might lead to crazy, obsessive behavior? Or are they saying the Doritos are the snack food of choice for the mentally unstable?
Throughout the years, one of the more prominent Super Bowl advertisers has been Budweiser. They can usually be counted on for at least one clever ad each year.
One of their most memorable ads came in 1995. The commercial featured three frogs who said "Bud," "Weis," and "Er."
Naturally, the frogs became a big hit. It was a simple but brilliant commercial. It featured animals (which are always popular in commercials) and a catchphrase that everyone in America would be repeating for months.
The frogs went on to appear in more commercials over the next few years. But Bud knew that as great as those frogs were, they wouldn't remain popular forever. Even the cutest of animal mascots can grow tiresome (anyone seen Spuds McKenzie lately?) and people can only watch frogs say three syllables so many times before the appeal is lost.
So in 1998, they gave the frogs a nemesis: Louie the Lizard.
Unlike the frogs, Louie - who hung around with his pragmatic friend Frank - had a lot to say. Most of it was regarding his jealousy over the frogs being chosen for the original ad instead of him.
This was a definite game changer, as we're no longer supposed to think that we're watching a commercial. Instead, we're supposed to be watching a behind the scenes look at the original series of frog commercials. It's very meta.
As the commercials progressed, Louie's bitterness grew to the point where he sought to violently eliminate the frogs. During the 1998 Super Bowl, he hired a ferret hitman to electrocute them.
Louie's plan seemed to fail as the frogs somehow survived the ordeal.
But as it turned out, he was actually successful. After the attempted hit, the "Weis" frog began to suffer post traumatic stress and couldn't fulfill his role in the commercial anymore.
Much to Louie's delight, he was chosen to be the replacement:
Like all good things, eventually these ads had to end. In the commercial world, (remember that according to the logic of the commercial, these aren't actual commercials, but a behind the scenes look) Budweiser grew tired of the frogs - mostly due to Louie's unscripted improv attempts - and fired them.
The frogs were not happy. Finally, after years of only saying one syllable, they revealed that they could indeed speak, and got some revenge on Louie.
This probably prompted a bunch of kids to whip each other with towels and scream, "Squirt some tears, punk!"
If the frogs were truly actors, you've got to give them a lot of credit. Even when they're about to be electrocuted, they don't deviate from the script. No, they continue to say only "Bud," "Weis," and "Er" even though their lives are in danger.
I believe Louie and Frank might have continued to appear in some commercials after this one, but I'm pretty sure that the saga of the frogs was complete.
Rating - 4.5 TVs - These were some of the best ads that Bud has ever done. They managed to turn a simple concept - Frogs reading the Budweiser sign - and turn it into a multi-year epic.
In addition to successfully advertising their product, Bud got the added bonus of being able to merchandise the characters. They sold hats, shirts, and posters featuring the frogs and Louie. I believe there were also stuffed animals made of all the characters.
There is probably a whole generation of Americans who feel loyalty to Budweiser because they had a ferret doll. Now that's marketing!
No look at retro Super Bowl ads would be complete without taking a look back at the dot com era of the late 90s/early 2000s.
From 1999 to 2001, the Super Bowl was loaded with commercials from start-up internet businesses. One of the problems these companies had was that they spent a ton on advertising, instead of worrying about such things like a sustainable business model.
Here is one such example:
I'm not sure any of us remember the company Netpliance, but apparently they had an commercial during the 2000 Super Bowl:
Apparently, back in 2000, people who used the internet were perceived a little differently than they are today. According to this commercial, back then the internet was still the domain of nerds and geeks (who are easily identifyable by their large rimmed, taped glasses.)
Maybe I'm misremembering things, but weren't most people in America using the internet by 2000? I mean, "You've got mail" had become a common enough phrase that they used it as the title of a movie two years earlier. It might have been a bad movie, but it starred Tom Hanks, so I'm sure that a decent amount of people saw it.
Yet this commercial seems to assume that up until this point, the only people using the internet were nerds. Mostly because the internet required the use of a computer. And only nerds used computers!
I guess Netpliance didn't realize that there was a booming personal computer market. Or that the reason all these dot coms were starting up was because a lot of people were indeed using the internet.
But reacting to the perceived problem of non-nerds not being able to use the internet, Netpliance came up with a solution: The i-Opener! It allows you to access the internet without the use of a computer.
Am I missing something, or doesn't the i-Opener look an awful lot like a computer?
I decided to do some research on the i-Opener, and found that the company sold it at a loss in order to sell online access subscriptions. Back in the day, there was speculation that this would be a common business model.
The business plan failed because of the very people they were advertising against: Nerds.
Technically saavy users discovered that the i-Opener could be configured into a fully operational PC. So they bought the i-Opener, reconfigured it, cancelled their subscriptions, and essentially had purchased a really cheap computer. Rating: 1 TV - This commercial wasn't especially funny, nor did it seem to have a grasp on the market it was trying to reach. It's no wonder that the company failed.
For the second Super Bowl retro ad, I decided to look at an ad from the last time that the Eagles played in the Super Bowl. Here is Lays' Fence from 2005:
The commercial starts out with a familiar concept of American youth: Kids are playing baseball, the ball goes into the neighbor's yard, and they can't get it back. Apparently, Old Man Higgins is quite the grouch, and doesn't return things that go into his yard.
You'd think that the kids would have learned to hit the ball in a different direction. If they had merely batted facing away from Higgins' yard, they could have avoided this entire mess.
Fortunately, the little girl has an idea: Give the neighbor some Lays chips and maybe he'll give the ball back. This girl really seems to enjoy her Lays chips. She has at least two bags of them with her, and she gets this weird look of delight on her face every time she eats one.
Considering how much she seems to love Lays, I'm surprised that she is so willing to give up the bag for the boys. I mean, it doesn't appear as if she was actually a part of their game since she seems to be just standing to the side eating potato chips. So either this is just a really nice gesture on her part, or maybe she thinks that if she helps get the ball back, the boys will finally let her play with them?
As it turns out, the girl's plan works. I'd say it was a very lucky break since the plan had some major flaws: They were counting on Old Man Higgins being out in his yard when this all happened. And isn't it more likely that Higgins would have just gotten annoyed by the kids throwing more stuff into his yard?
Anyway, as hoped, after receiving the gift of Lays, Higgins does return the ball, as well as some other things that he had been holding on to.
The commercial takes a bit of a dark turn when we realize that this old man has been holding the child's dog hostage for some time. Did the kids realize that Higgins was a dognapper? Based on their surprise on the dog's reappearance, I'm guessing that they didn't know Higgins had him. Either way, I would have expected more of an emotional reaction at the dog's return.
At the very least, shouldn't they have been angry at Higgins for holding their dog hostage? If it was my dog, I probably would have gone over there and yelled at the guy.
What happens next might explain why they didn't pursue this course of action. Higgins had also been holding onto a car as well. And apparently, he is strong enough to throw the car over the fence.
If my neighbor was a cranky old man with super strength, then maybe I wouldn't want to confront him either. I might just say "I got the dog back. Let's count that as a victory and be done with it."
Finally, MC Hammer is thrown over the fence. The kids are surprised by his appearance, but I wonder if they would even know who MC Hammer is. These kids look to be about 10 years old. Since this commercial was made in 2005, that means that Hammer would have long since faded into obscurity by the time they were born.
Finally freed from his super strong captor, does Hammer look to run away to safety? No, he begins to sing and dance for them. This leads me to believe that Hammer had been a prisoner for years and undergone some sort of emotional torment.
Did Higgins keep Hammer on hand as his musical slave? Was Hammer forced to perform for him at a moments notice?
This would explain why Hammer simply starts to perform without prompting. The years of torture had conditioned him that way.
The kids are unsympahtetic to Hammer's plight, so they throw him back over the fence. But look at how powerfully they throw him. That certainly seems beyond the capabilities of mere children.
Perhaps it isn't just Higgins, but rather everyone in this commercial who has enhanced strength. After all, looking back at the beginning of the commercial, the kid hits the ball a pretty good distance. Is this commercial supposed to take place on Krypton or something? Rating: 2 TVs - If there is one thing that America loves, it is seeing washed up celebrities in embarassing situations. This commercial certainly delivers in that department. And I'm sure that this commercial made an impact with the super strong, kidnapping old man population of the country. But for the rest of us...I don't know if I'd want any part of Lays chips after seeing this.
This week brings us the event that many consider to be the Super Bowl of advertising: The Super Bowl!
In preparation for the big game (and the commercials that will come with it), this week will be Super Bowl Retro Week at The Ad Pundit. All week, I will take a look back at some classic Super Bowl commercials from years past.
The first Super Bowl retro ad is Nike's Hare Jordan commercial from 1992:
In 1992, Michael Jordan was the most popular athlete in America. He was unquestionably the best basketball player in the world, his Chicago Bulls had just won their first title, and he was already well known thanks to previous commercials.
But Nike thought of a way to make him even more popular: Team him up with Bugs Bunny. It made a lot of sense. If Jordan teamed up with a beloved cartoon character, the kids would love him even more, and as a result, buy more of his sneakers.
Let's see how the commercial turned out.
When the commercial begins, we find that Bugs Bunny has chosen to shack up in a rabbit hole directly underneath a basketball court, and he is annoyed by the noise and vibrations from above.
I can sympathize with Bugs. I have had several problems with upstairs neighbors stomping around when I am trying to sleep. It is incredibly frustrating, and makes one want to inflict violence on the people above.
But why did Bugs choose to build his rabbit hole directly beneath a gymnasium? Didn't he realize that people would be playing basketball directly above him? I have to think there were better possible locations for him.
He goes up to investigate, and the guys playing basketball get pissed off. I think they overreacted a bit. It wasn't like Bugs provoked them. All he did was ask "What's the racket?" and they physically abuse him. I'd say there's a very good chance that these guys were on steroids.
So Bugs decides to play them in basketball. I'm not sure if this is going to help him with his original problem of not being able to sleep, but it seems that Bugs has pushed those concerns aside in favor of getting some revenge.
At first, we might wonder how Bugs will stand a chance against these four roided up meatheads, but then we see that he has a teammate: Michael Jordan.
Honestly, Bugs probably could have taken them on by himself. After all, he did once beat an entire baseball team by himself. How much harder could this be?
I do wonder why Jordan decided to team up with Bugs. Wouldn't it really have made more sense for him to have been on the team with the other humans? Since Bugs did not premeditate this situation, I have to assume that Jordan was already at the gym in order to play basketball. So why is he going to team up with someone who wanted to stop people from playing?
Maybe we can assume that Jordan and Bugs were friends, and when Jordan saw that Bugs was in trouble, he simply decided to help out his friend. But there may be another explanation.
In his later years, it was revealed that Michael Jordan may be the most competitive person on the planet. He was already dominating the NBA at the time, so maybe he felt that he needed a new challenge. Maybe he thought that teaming up with a rabbit to go two-on-four was exactly the sort of thing to stoke his competitive fire.
As it turns out, even a two-on-four game isn't a challenge for the team of Jordan and Bugs. Although it should be noted they do cheat considerably. You'd think at some point those guys would have started to complain, or even fight back. But it seems that they were so intimidated by Jordan's presence that they just passively took the abuse.
The opponents also get distracted when Bugs dresses up like a woman. In Bugs Bunny cartoons, I never understood why men got so worked up over Bugs in drag. I mean, it's not like he's an especially attractive woman. He just looks like a rabbit in a wig.
And yet, these guys rush over to stare, whistle, and drool at him. Is this how they react when they see a woman? I don't know many women who would be charmed by that behavior. This definitely makes me think that they were taking some sort of performance enhancing drugs.
In the end, Jordan and Bugs win the game, and leave their opponents a dazed mess.
But did anything really get accomplished? Sure, Bugs got revenge on the guys who abused him, but there's a good chance that the next day, someone is going to be back on the court playing basketball, and Bugs won't be able to sleep again.
And next time, will Bugs have Jordan around to bail him out? I doubt that Michael Jordan has nothing better to do than hang around a local gym in case his rabbit friend needed assistance.
Anyway, they made a follow up commercial the next year in which Bugs and Jordan play basketball against Martians. That commercial was so popular that they made an entire movie out of it: Space Jam.
Rating: 4 TVs - While Bugs' victory in the commercial may be shortlived, there's no denying that this was a victory for Nike. Michael Jordan became even more popular, and I don't know if there was a child in America who didn't want a pair of Air Jordans after seeing it.
In this post, I'll examine a series of related commercials: Miller Lite's Man Up ads.
The basic premise of these spots is that real men care about their beer, so they'll pick a high quality beer like Miller Lite. Those who don't care about their beer quality are obviously horrible people, and this is fully demonstrated in other ways.
In the first example, we see a guy who has applied bronzer to himself in an effort to look tan:
I think most of us can agree that using bronzer is indeed a douchey thing to do, and the people who do it deserve some ridicule. I just don't think that the guy in the commercial is a good example of your typical bronzer user.
I'm thinking that the type of people who use bronzer would make sure that their entire body is covered. There's no way that they would be left with faux tan lines like this guy.
Nothing else about this guy indicates that he is the type to wear bronzer. A guy who wears bronzer probably wouldn't wear just a plain polo shirt. Maybe he'd wear a Lacoste shirt, but he'd make special effort to make sure that the logo was visible.
Really, I picture the typical bronzer user wearing Ed Hardy or something along those lines. At the very least, the guy would have popped the collar.
Not to mention the guy's hairstyle. It looks like he has put no effort whatsoever into styling his hair. Where's the pound of gel?
So I guess this guy isn't really supposed to be a douchebag, but more like a clueless idiot. And I suppose that the point still gets across: Only morons like this wouldn't care what kind of light beer they drink.
In the next commercial, we see the type of douchey outfit that I would have expected from the guy in the first commercial:
This guy has gone the full mile with his outfit. His jeans and shirt coordinate, and he even has a matching jacket.
OK, I truly believe that some people actually dress like this. Where the commercial loses me is when the guy gets shaken up so easily.
Guys who dress like this wouldn't be offended when a bartender made fun of his outfit. He would just assume that the bartender was "into him," and her comments were just a way of flirting.
I can't imagine that this is the first time he's gone out in public dressed like this. He's probably heard the comments before. So why does he seem so bothered to the point that he denies that being his jacket? In real life, this guy wouldn't worry about what people were saying about him. He'd just call them all haters.
And in real life, this guy would probably be surrounded by a pack of similarly dressed guys. Remember, douchebags tend to travel in packs.
In the final commercial, I think Miller Lite unfortunately loses track of the message they're trying to get across.
In the other Man Up commercials, the guys they show may be exaggerations, but they are scenarios that could potentially happen in real life. Guys do go out wearing bronzer. Guys do go out wearing dragon clothing. And in some of their other commercials, we see guys in skinny jeans and thong bathing suits. Also situations which do (unfortunately) sometimes happen.
In this commercial, the guy is wearing a skirt. It's not like he's wearing baggy pants that look like a skirt. He isn't wearing a kilt or something that might be mistaken for a skirt. No, he is just wearing a skirt.
Why would he be wearing a skirt to a bar? And why doesn't he seem to think that there's anything wrong with it?
Is he a cross dresser? If so, he has clearly half assed his effort. Merely wearing a skirt doesn't make someone a cross dresser. It just makes them kind of weird.
Maybe he's just wearing the skirt to gain attention. There are lots of people who wear funky outfits just to get noticed. But if that was his motivation, why does he look so offended when the bartender calls him out on it? Shouldn't he be happy that she noticed?
Also, at the end of the commercial, doesn't it seem like his friends stare an awkwardly long time at his open fly? Maybe they don't want to say anything to him about it because he's insane. But wouldn't they be more likely to just avert their gaze instead of staring directly at his crotch?
I think this guy has some serious issues, and they go way beyond not caring how his light beer tastes.
After watching all of the commercials, I am left with a few questions:
1. Isn't Miller Lite in danger of alienating the douchebag population, and won't that severely cut into their business?
Have you been to a bar lately? There are douchebags everywhere! And now that we've got a generation of young men who think that the guys on Jersey Shore are good role models, the problem is only going to get worse.
If these guys become offended by these ads and won't buy Miller Lite out of protest, I think the company could be in serious trouble.
2. Where exactly does Miller Lite find these bars that have hot, friendly women bartenders?
You might say: These girls aren't that friendly. They make fun of their customers. But they only do that after the guys have clearly shown that they don't have taste and are worthy of scorn.
First off, you rarely see hot women working the bar during a daytime shift, and if you do, they're probably in a pissy mood.
In real life, most hot female bartenders usually won't even look you in the eye unless you're dropping some serious money. They almost definitely won't give you the time of day if you're only ordering one light beer. And they certainly won't spend the time to ask if you care about how the beer tastes.
3. Is the bar's poor beer selection the real problem?
They seem to only carry two types of beer: Miller Lite and the generic "Light Beer." Maybe the reason these guys don't care about how their beer tastes is because they only have two choices, and they're both kind of lousy.
I mean, Miller Lite is OK, but is it so much better than any other light beer that I would care enough to specifically order it?
Upon further review, the guys don't specifically ask for the generic beer. They just say that it doesn't matter. Maybe they're trying to make the bartenders' job easier? Or maybe they figure it will lead to further conversation.
But that doesn't happen. Apparently, unless you specifically say that you care how the beer tastes or ask for a Miller Lite, these girls are going to give you the generic choice and then mock you.
So I take back what I said earlier. These girls are bitches. Rating: 2.5 TVs - While douchebags do deserve to be mocked, I don't know if they should glorify bitchy women like this.
Rating: 2 TVs - I would have liked this commercial better if her status was something like "Worst date ever. The guy is such a loser." At least that would have been funny.
