Category Ad Nausea

Ad Nausea: Look What They’ve Done To My Song!

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One of my favorite rock songs is “Beth” by Kiss. If you haven’t heard it, give it a listen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHkojuUSDO8

 

The lyrics are sentimental. The melody and the strings are beautiful and the story of the song gets me right in the feels. So much so that I don’t have the song on my mp3 player because I don’t want to get choked up while driving.

So you can imagine my surprise when I’m watching TV a couple of nights ago and I hear the song being played on this commercial by Volkswagen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVMyNLdBbwQ

OK, Volkswagen. I’ve got to ask: What the literal what?

Let’s break this down: First, Mr. Dad with his hip, happening beard is going to all kinds of places, doing all kinds of different things with his kids for the entirety of the day, and Mom can’t go with them because…reasons? If Beth had to work or had some important errand to run or something, I would understand it, but this woman spends the whole commercial just puttering around the house doing literally nothing. This commercial offers no explanation why Mom Beth can’t join her husband and kids on their day of play. Does she have any friends? Any hobbies? A job? Is she an agoraphobiac? Maybe this is one of those deals like in the Lego Father and Son Road Trip commercial where women apparently don’t like to have fun and anything with two ‘x’ chromosomes would just contaminate the car with her cooties.

Second, Beth is going to give Dr. Beardo grief about not getting milk? Lady, your husband has had the kids for the entire day (it’s dark when they’re about to return) and you’ve been inside the house that entire time doing absolutely nothing! Get up off your lazy ass and get your own dang milk!

There’s something darkly ironic about the songs that you once rocked out to are now being played over the PA system of your local Target or being used for cornball commercials like this one. I haven’t been this annoyed since Good Humor used Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow” to sell it’s brand of ice cream bar the Conello. Now I know how France felt when we Americans took one of that countries national treasures the croissant, and turned it into a Crois’sandwich!

Cros'sandwich

Sacre bleu!

 

All right, Volkswagen. You took one of the most beautiful rock and roll love ballads of all time and you farted in it’s face! This calls for retribution. Stand up and take your medicine.

Ah, that was therapeutic.

 

Ad Nausea: Discover Card – Twins

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By now, I’m sure most of you have seen this ad from Discover Card’s “We Treat You Like You’d Treat You” campaign, titled appropriately, “Twins”.

 

Now far be it for me to nitpick about a quirky spot featuring cute twins, but….

UmmNo

Sorry, but this would never happen. Why? Allow me to enumerate:

  1. I used to work in customer service (worst job I ever had, but I digress…) and when you work in customer service, the very first thing you’re supposed to do is get the caller’s name so you can bring up their account information, so there’s no way the twin working for Discover would be speaking to her sister for that long without knowing who she was.
  2. You know how when you call a company, the voice on the phone will often say, “Calls may be monitored for quality assurance”? Well, they usually are. Most companies don’t permit their employees to wait on their relatives, as they’re concerned that the employees will give them special treatment. And…
  3. They should have recognized each other’s voices right away. You don’t grow up alongside of someone for your entire life and not be able to instantly recognize their voice over the phone. I’m a twin and every time my twin has called me or vice-versa, we recognize each other’s voices in a nanosecond:

Me: Hello, Mr. Goldstar. My name is Ackbar Mackbar, and I have a wonderful opportunity for you. All I require is $50.

Goldstar: Silverstar, I know it’s you. I already told you, I’m not giving you $50 for that statuette of Big Barda!

So yeah, this ad’s totally busted, but I can still give it a marginal pass since Lisa and Julie are total cutie-pies.

Ad Nausea/Talkin’Nerdy: Lego Star Wars Road Trip Commercial

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All of the hype surrounding the imminent premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens caused me to remember this ad from a year or two ago. This is the 2nd (I believe) spot from LEGO’s “Build Together” campaign with the father/son road trip (because apparently, mothers and daughters don’t bond, play with Legos or go on road trips. So LEGO is strictly a guy thing now? Wuuuuut?). Anyways, this particular spot focuses on the Star Wars franchise. Check it out:

 

Yes, that’s George Lowe as the announcer there, and that’s awesome. Despite this, however, I have a couple of nitpicks about this ad. Yeah, I know that I shouldn’t be over thinking a toy commercial, but the fact that Darth Vader is there and not being the bad guy is nothing short of bizarro. Darth Vader is the dark lord of the Sith and Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca and the droids (but not Princess Leia, because girls are icky and they’d contaminate the RV with their cooties) are part of the rebel alliance determined to bring down the empire. They wouldn’t be hanging out as such. Again, yeah, I know this is just a toy commercial and as such, nothing that happens in it is in any way canon to the movie universe, but Darth Vader hanging out with the rest of the Star Wars crew like he’s just one of the gang is just weird. It’d be like seeing the Shredder chillaxing with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or He-Man and Skeletor hanging out and acting like bros; it’s just plain odd.

As for the commercial’s punchline where the kid asks his father if they can keep Chewbacca as a pet…

Gyro Robo

“I won’t even dignify that joke with my analysis!”

 

 

 

 

2 Funny/Ad Nausea: Nike Presto!

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Back in 2000, Nike first unveiled their Presto! collection, a unique line of sneaks which boasted wonderfully garish colors and comically unusual names, such as Shady Milkman and Orange Monk. There were also some pretty cool, funny animated spots made for this product line. Here are the ads for 6 of them.

For the record, the other 7 were:

  • Catfight Shiner
  • Rogue Kielbasa
  • The Hungry Fisherman
  • Chips and Dip
  • Angry Chicken
  • Migraine Fly
  • Stephen Murphy

I wish they had gotten commercials too. (There was alive-action spot made for Angry Chicken, featuring a guy doing parkour to escape a chicken, but it wasn’t nearly as interesting.) I would have LOVED to have seen what kind of cool animations this crew could have come up with for Stephen Murphy and Rogue Kielbasa. The mind boggles.