Ford F-150–A whole slew of ads featuring REALLY BIG WORDS.

Now, admittedly, this commercial by itself isn’t quite enough to send me into a fit of apoplectic rage. However, it helps to think of these Ford F-150 ads as gnats–if there were just one, it would be a minor nuisance. But when there’s a whole. bunch. of. them. everywhere. you. look, well…it can drive a person mad.

No matter how hard I try to avoid them, these stupid F-150 commercials just swarm up around me and assault my senses. I walk into Buffalo Wild Wings, BAM FORD F-150 COMMERCIAL. I try and listen to music on YouTube, BAM FORD F-150 COMMERCIAL. I’m in a waiting room with a television in it and BAM FORD F-150 COMMERCIAL. There’s just no end to it–it’s like the commercial equivalent of having the hiccups for several hours. Except in this instance, it’s been going on for several years.

With their gigantic, blow-up words and cutting to a new shot every 1.5 seconds, Ford is very obviously trying to market to the lowest common denominator in terms of intelligence (or at the very least, in terms of attention span). While I understand that a large sector of their consumer base works in fields that require manual labor, that doesn’t automatically make them stupid. In fact, what’s to stop a doctor, engineer, teacher, or any person from driving a Ford pickup? The answer is that Ford themselves would be responsible for stopping them from buying their product.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing to appeal to a specific target market, but you should never do so at the risk of alienating other potential consumers. The message that my subconscious picks up from these ads is that I would probably be only be interested in buying a Ford F-150 if I were a Neanderthal or some kind of ape-man. It’s insulting to my intelligence–I’m paying attention to your commercial, you don’t have to inundate me with gigantic words for every single line of dialogue. In fact, it’s insulting to my masculinity as well–it perpetuates the stereotype that men are unthinking automatons who respond best to grunting and pointing. Men can be eloquent too, darn it.

Besides which, some of the lines in these spots hover somewhere between dumb-sounding and utter nonsense. “A bunch of doughnut-eaters”? What does that even mean? And seriously, why would the kid have been thinking about pizza (of all things!) during science class? Unless maybe it was before lunch, but even still, why wouldn’t they have gone with “video games” or “the cute girl on the left” or “the weekend”? Don’t even get me started on their thought process behind a boat becoming unhinged from behind a truck, speeding up to it, and then actually surpassing it. I guess the advertising executives at Ford weren’t lying when they said they didn’t pay attention in science class.

In a year (or possibly two), I’ll be shopping for a new car. I wouldn’t have been diametrically opposed to purchasing a Ford F-150, but I sure am now.

Frustration Index Meter: 7/10

Pete Hoekstra–What If Congress Got Medals?

Relax. I’m not going to express my political views one way or the other on this blog. I would never deign to suggest that my worldview makes more sense than somebody else’s, so that isn’t what this is going to be about. That said, Pete Hoekstra has now come out with two truly terrible commercials bashing current Michigan U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow, and I will no longer stand for such inept advertising.

The first misstep, obviously, came way back in February during Super Bowl XLVI–the much-maligned “Debbie Spend-It-Now” ad. In case you (mercifully) did not have to endure it the first time:

Hoekstra took a lot of heat for playing a clearly racist advertisement during the Super Bowl, not to mention taking criticism for being misleading (no comment), flat-out lying (still no comment), and for intentionally mongering fear (which is absolutely true). They say all publicity is good publicity, but “they” don’t know what they’re talking about. Hoekstra alienated an entire demographic of voters with this ad, which is the same as a company alienating an entire demographic of consumers. It’s idiotic on every level, and frankly, even more idiotic when we’re talking about  voters–unlike McDonald’s or whoever, Hoekstra only has this one shot to appeal to as many people as possible, and this was just about the worst way he could have done so.

My point is, I assumed that Hoekstra would learn from this and go back to only airing safe, factual (well…allegedly factual), and frank advertisements about why he should be Senator. You know, as though he would want people to view him as a sensible, serious-minded guy, and not some cartoon-y farce.

I was so, so wrong in that assumption.

The Olympics-themed commercial at the top of this article is utterly sloppy. Right away, the idea of Congress getting medals is absurd–nearly everybody tends to view Congress as a bunch of inefficient buffoons who wouldn’t even deserve a Certificate of Participation. Also, the torch-runner’s hair looks like it’s growing from out of her face, which is odd. Secondly, it’s not as though Congress is an individual event–it’s a team sport, right? And then he starts talking about her voting on some act to study “the division of labor among ants”…who cares? The worst part about the entire ad is the bad animation of a still-life of Stabenow’s head on some other person’s body. It looks like something you would see on JibJab.

Overall, the entire commercial just looks hokey and unprofessional. After such a serious lapse in judgment back in February, I couldn’t believe that Hoekstra was spamming YouTube with another ill-conceived commercial. This is not the way to win voters, and I would have to believe that he’s lost more than a handful of them with this latest pitiful effort.

Frustration Index Meter: 7/10

Samsung S III–Everyone’s Olympics

Samsung thought they would be all cutesy and make people feel good about themselves and their place in the world. Generally, it’s a good thing to try and associate your product with positive feelings. However, it’s always a bad thing to associate your product with stupidity and confusion.

The premise of this commercial is just flat-out wrong. The Olympics aren’t for everybody–they’re for everybody’s entertainment, sure, but the Olympics are really just for a select group of highly-trained athletes with incredibly specific skill sets. Most Olympic athletes really don’t contribute that much more to society than you or me–being extremely good at badminton is not the same as being extremely good at designing propulsion systems or being extremely good at city planning. Olympians have a very specific skill, and the Olympics are simply the best way to showcase that skill–in general, sports serve no greater purpose than to provide a diversion for the masses. A sewage engineer is more important in our lives on a day-to-day basis. So, for one thing, the slogan is what I like to call “the opposite of good”.

For another thing, half of these 2-3 second clips aren’t even Olympic sports. Surfing isn’t, and it’s shown at least three times here. Call me inattentive, but I sure haven’t seen breakdancing happen in the Olympics yet, either. And then there’s a random shot of a bunch of people at a rave or something…I don’t know, it just seems like they were throwing in a bunch of random crap to appeal to as many people as possible, without bothering to try to stay true to the commercial’s overall theme. Oh, wait, that is what they were doing? Oh.

Finally, even for the things that are real Olympic events, it’s not like they’re shown in proper context. I’ve only bothered to watch it thrice (I’m not made of time, after all), but I’m pretty sure they’re playing table tennis on a table full of bricks. And all those BMX shots seem odd to me. It would be exceedingly difficult to slide, in unison, down those handrails on the stairs. And then they all have their Samsungs strapped to their bikes, which I can assure you has happened exactly zero times in real life. Also, the kid right at the beginning is just standing there holding a tangerine. What?

At least they were putting some effort forward, but this commercial ends up being mostly ineffective and entirely clunky-looking. If David Beckham weren’t in it, nobody would care at all.

Frustration Index Meter: 4/10

“Guys With Kids”–Gymnastics

Besides synchronized diving (which is incredible!), gymnastics has been the most interesting event in the Olympics for me thus far. The fluidity, focus, and dedication to excellence are all things that this commercial lacks–as will this entire show, no doubt.

For the first 4-5 seconds, I was all right with it. I just assumed it was going to be some mediocre commercial about diapers or baby formula or whatever. But then I see that other people are watching him, and that he’s flipping his baby around and around like a prop/toy. It looks like it’s in more danger of being dropped on its head than if Michael Jackson were holding it over a ledge. Then the kid starts bawling, and the doofus father attributes this to it being able to read and comprehend the numbers in front of it, and to feel shame that they are so low. Finally, one of the “judges” disdainfully suggests that the baby (it’s a “he”) may grow up to be “good at music or something”, as though that would be equivalent to growing up to be good at Minesweeper.

None of this makes me interested in watching this show. Heck, I don’t think it would make anybody interested in watching it, with the possible exception of fathers who despise their infant children. Seriously, putting a baby in imminent danger of being dropped can’t be considered funny in any capacity. What’s more, as a guy, I absolutely hate it when TV shows (I’m looking at you, “Two and a Half Men”) resort to stereotyping all men as base, dim-witted Neanderthals in order to get a cheap laugh. I’m completely irate about this show’s soon-to-be existence, and I cannot fathom who thought it would be a funny premise.

But then again, this is Jimmy Fallon’s project. So there you go.

Frustration Index Meter: 6/10 (but admittedly, at least 2 points of that are directed at the show even being made).

Dow–“Hopeful” Olympics commercial

You may have heard the Olympics started this weekend. In fact, you may have been hearing that ad nauseum for the past several months. With that in mind, I’m hopping on the bandwagon–until the Olympics are over, every commercial I dissect will mention them in some capacity. But don’t worry–these will not be gold-medal ads. In fact, they’ll probably have a success rate to rival Iceland’s.

For the opening round of my self-imposed marathon:

Now, if you aren’t technologically deficient, I’m going to assume you just wasted an entire minute of your life watching that ad. So, permit me a rhetorical question–what kind of company is Dow, and what do they sell? In other words, why does this commercial exist? Go ahead and re-watch it if you need to. I’ll wait.

…

Time’s up! The answer is that you have no idea who Dow is or what they do, unless you happened to have that information before seeing this commercial. That sort of information is deliberately glossed over, so that the only message you’re left with is “Oh, good for Dow, they’re big proponents of sustainability!”

This could conceivably be true, were it not for the fact that Dow is, primarily, a chemicals manufacturing company. You know, like alkyldiphenyloxide disulfonate and fish poison. Admittedly, they seem to be legitimately interested in keeping their operation as sustainable as possible, but the point I’m trying to make is that you were just force-fed propaganda–blatantly–without even batting an eye.

Besides which, the usage of this Tree-Man is bizarre. It just doesn’t work well. He shows up on what appears to be a city bus, and is shoved into a hotel room that’s smaller than my former dorm room at college. What, can whichever nation he’s representing not spring for single rooms? Then he gets impaled with an epee (or a sabre, or whatever), does a sustainable thing or two, but mostly just looks wildly out-of-place amongst all these Olympians.

Look, I get it–Dow was trying to get across the message that they’re trying to be sustainable, and it (sort of) works. But this is just such a dumb–not to mention forgettable–commercial, it makes one think that they could have sank those millions of dollars into actually furthering their sustainability goals, am I right?

Frustration Index Meter: 2/10.

Ashford University–Technology Changes Everything

Hoo boy. This is a multi-faceted commercial, except for the unfortunate fact that all the facets are bad.

Let’s just get the most obvious problem out of the way first–child actors are annoying. Always. Don’t try to question me on this–I’m right, darn it. From Jake Lloyd to Dakota Fanning (until recently, I suppose), little kids have often played a role in ruining things that could have had the potential to be good. This commerical is no different, and it isn’t just because these kids are grating to listen to or because the girl at the 20-second mark looks like she wants to eat my soul. No, it’s because as the title of this article implies, this is a commercial for a university. If you’re attempting to sell a product marketed towards adults, you should probably start by marketing the product towards adults. This isn’t an ad for LeapFrog. This is an ad for a product that will cost tens of thousands of dollars of real adult money. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why using kids is an inherently bad idea.

Problem number two is the false perception of technology. According to these twirps, technology exists for the sole purpose of making things “smart” and “bright”. Smart. Bright. Smart. Bright. But technology does more than that, doesn’t it? Call me crazy, but I’ve always carried the notion that technology exists both to make our day-to-day lives easier and to enhance our understanding of reality. But I don’t know. Maybe all technology does is create bright rectangles.

Third, although this is an admittedly minor point, it bothers me how they change the way they’re using “smart” and “bright”. They have different meanings when referring to a tablet, but they’re just synonyms when you’re talking about a person! It doesn’t work in this ad as much as Ashford thinks it does.

Finally, the most fatal flaw of this ad is the message.  People go to college and take online classes to better themselves and improve their chances for success and fulfillment in life. A college degree is a serious undertaking, and achieving one only comes through hard work and perseverance–attributes that come in handy with dealing with all other aspects of the adult world. But according to Ashford, as long as you have internet access, you don’t need physical schools, because those places are dumb. And once you get a degree from Ashford, you won’t have to work hard and will be able to do whatever you want.

Technology may, in fact, change everything. But if it actually changed people like Ashford suggests, I would have little hope left for humanity.

Frustration Index Meter: 5/10

Progressive–Flobot

 

Give up? Well, the problem here isn’t necessarily the premise itself–although it’s very below-par–but the fact that they could have selected literally any name for the robot, yet chose Flobot. This will, I predict, become problematic for Progressive (if it hasn’t already), because in the prehistoric era of 2008, The Flobots were a semi-famous band for a couple months, largely due to their initially-catchy-yet-inevitably-obnoxious hit “Handlebars”, which aired on the radio all summer.

Maybe you’ve never heard of this band. I personally don’t care for them, so I wouldn’t blame you if you hadn’t. However, the music video for “Handlebars” has nearly 9 million hits on Youtube by itself, so it’s safe to say that millions upon millions of people know of them. I find it hard to believe that during the entire process of making this commercial, nobody stopped and said “Hey, wait a minute…do you think the band called Flobots might try and sue us?”

I’ve previously held up the Flo-related Progressive commercials as fairly effective, and that’s still generally true. However, this particular ad featured some sloppy decision-making on their part, and it may end up costing them. In fact, 5 minutes of research on this matter tells me that the Flobots may do a benefit concert for something-or-other, and publicly challenge Progressive to match whatever money gets raised.

Of course, since they fell off the map approximately 4 years ago, I guess it might not cost Progressive all that much.

Frustration Index Meter: 4/10

Directv–Don’t Make Commercials That Don’t Make Sense

Though this blog would lead you to believe otherwise, I really don’t actively attempt to watch television all that often. I only catch, maybe between 6-7 hours per week intentionally. Certainly no more than the average person my age (and possibly less). That said, I do have access to cable through DIRECTV, so I’m subjected to a fair amount of propaganda both for DIRECTV and against Dish Network, and occasionally a mixture of both. Which doesn’t bother me inherently.

What does bother me, on a very profound level, are dumb commercials. Exhibit A:

For those of you who (mercifully) don’t have to watch this crap several times a week, DIRECTV has been spewing out different versions of the exact same commercial for at least a year now. The basic formula is thus:

When *something bad involving cable* happens, you *something*.

When you *something*, you *something else*. (Repeat x5)

Don’t *something else*. Switch to DIRECTV.

They’ve been churning out this If You Give A Mouse A Cookie nonsense for too long now, and they’re inevitably guilty of two heinous commercial crimes: they rarely make sense, and they always associate the product with something negative instead of something positive.

I’m not going to get into the illogical nature of each and every one of these ads (there are at least 5 versions that I can think of), but to make my point, let’s attempt to follow the train of thought that DIRECTV puts forth in this commercial:

1. “When you pay too much for cable, you throw things.” Well, maybe. I can follow along so far. Although it seems odd that this guy didn’t catch on that he was paying too much until right this second.
2. “When you throw things, people think you have anger issues.” This is true, but only if this is your first impression on somebody. Isn’t that his wife/girlfriend? Or at least a good friend? She’s in his house, after all. She either knows about his alleged anger issues already, or would ask what caused the abnormal behavior. Not avoid him for forever.
3. “When people think you have anger issues, your schedule clears up.” Now, that’s arguable. Does this man hold a job? Does he volunteer? Does he clean and maintain his own house? Does he visit any doctors? I guess having popcorn with the Uma Thurman look-alike was the extent of his engagements for the month.
4. “When your schedule clears up, you grow a scraggly beard.” What, did his schedule clear up for 8 months? He looks worse than when we pulled Saddam Hussein out of a hole in the  ground.
5. “When you grow a scraggly beard, you start taking in stray animals.” Ok, I’ve tried to defend this commercial, but no longer–these are two unrelated circumstances. Taking in (or at least rescuing) stray animals is just the right thing to do, and being cut off from society for having a gross, scraggly beard doesn’t affect that one way or another.
6. “When you start taking in stray animals, you can’t stop taking in stray animals.” How is he feeding all those things? I would say “with his job” but it was previously established that his schedule was 100% clear. Why doesn’t he turn them over to the proper authorities at his local Humane Society or something?

I can nitpick about stupid little details of commericals all day long. However, the real shame here is that they’ve taken their product and associated it with having anger issues, being cut off from society, poor hygiene, and the plight of animals in need. Worse still, they insist that you ignore said plight. I would (almost) let it slide if this were a first offense, but DIRECTV has also subconsciously correlated their product with complete hair loss, faking one’s own death, having one’s child be a disappointment, and getting thrashed to within an inch of one’s life and left in a ditch to die.

These are just the ads that I can think of, I’m sure there are more–or if there aren’t, there will be soon. This is because somebody (or more likely, several somebodies) at DIRECTV doesn’t understand basic principles of marketing, even though an average person like myself understands them perfectly. So, DIRECTV execs, when you hire a marketing team that doesn’t understand their field, you misunderstand your product. When you misunderstand your product, you send out flawed messages. When you send out flawed messages, prospective consumers’ subconscious minds notice. When their minds notice, you lose out on potential revenue.

Don’t lose out on potential revenue. Hire people who aren’t complete dum-dums today.

Frustration Index Meter: 9/10

McDonald’s–“Bring the Heat” and “He Loves Me Not”

I logged onto WordPress today with the intention of reviewing that inane McDonald’s commercial where the girl in the fedora is destroying two men at pool, while constructing some lame, 1970s-comic-book-y metaphor about how she’s beating them while she does so. Something about planning out her moves and then “bringing the heat”.

My main beef with that ad, and nearly every McDonald’s advert like it, is that it portrays such delicacies as Chicken McNuggets or french fries as the type of food you should be eating while you’re doing something really hip or edgy. It’s their lame attempt at appealing to the 20-somethings demographic, but it completely overlooks the fact that I would not want to be eating food from McDonald’s 2 hours after it had been ordered. Not now, and not ever. You have to eat McNuggets in like 5 minutes, or else they just taste like cold hunks of stuffing.

Unfortunately, McDonald’s didn’t make that particular commercial available to me on Youtube. They’d rather only force me to see it twice a day on TV, yet block me from seeking it out of my own volition. Oh well.

Instead, today I’d like to lambaste THIS McD’s ad:

For the technologically impaired–two girls are sitting in a McD’s, and see some doofus boy one of them likes. So, naturally, they play the “He loves me/he loves me not” game with the most romantic object I can think of–wedges of frozen potatoes that were shipped hundreds of miles before being dunked in a vat of boiling grease and dumped and directly mixed with salt. Fries which are probably cold by now. The girl eats her last fry, regretfully muttering that he loves her not. But don’t worry, reader–the doofus boy walks over and shoves one solitary leftover fry in her face before strolling out the door like he’s Jim Stark.

Now, I’m not omniscient. Sometimes I’ll miss out on social cues. But are you really expecting me to believe that it’s normal human behavior to walk up to a person you only halfway know at a McDonald’s, wave ONE fry in front of their face, and expect that to be some sort of pick-up line? If I tried that in real life, I would be socially ostracized. This is McDonald’s trying to be all cutesy, but it just ends up being lame-sy.

Frustration Index Meter: 4/10

(Ed. Note: Tomorrow I’m going to tackling a series of commercials that I absolutely cannot stand, so be sure to tune in! And as always, shoot me a line if there’s one ad in particular you want to see me make fun of.)

Wendy’s–“Ever Wonder?”

Allow me to preface this–I’m generally a private person. I make polite small talk when making a financial transaction, and I grit my teeth as I try to get my neighbors to stop talking to me as quickly as possible, but I certainly would never consider talking to a complete stranger from across a restaurant to pose an open-ended hypothetical. The latest Wendy’s spokeswoman, however, has a habit of doing just that.

From what I’ve regrettably seen thus far, she’s not the least bit shy about striding up to make chit-chat with a stranger at a grocery store, a 24-hour gas station, or even stowing away in the back of two strangers’ car to tell them that an item on the menu at said person’s local Wendy’s is superior to whatever they were planning to eat (read: garbage). Besides her voice, these actions could be considered annoying (and, in the case of the car, probably illegal), but this commercial just takes it to another level.

I know Wendy’s is attempting to be–ahem–“funny” with this advertisement, but they fail on every level. First of all, didn’t Ms. Redhead’s (MR) mother ever teach her that it’s very rude to talk across strangers? Also, that not talking to strangers is not only good advice as a child, but as an adult? Furthermore, it’s odd enough that Ms. Generic Businesswoman (MGB) agrees with her query, but just accepts that she was able to deduce all this simply by staring at MGB’s (rather healthy-looking) lunch. Finally, I guess MGB’s relationship with “him” was on the rocks, because all it took was two sentences from a complete stranger to make her resolve to dump him. Huh?

Note to Wendy’s: “funny” and “strange” can occasionally mean the same thing, but not in this context.

Frustration Index meter: 3/10