The Cream Rises To The Top...And Then Some

Apparently McDonald's really opened up the checkbook on this commercial in landing these talented "hand dancers" for this commercial. Prior to this commercial I was not familiar with the hand dances but they actually have some cool videos on youtube. In this commercial, however, it just seems dumb.

But all of that is besides the point. Take a look at what goes on from 0:09 to 0:11...McDonald's proprietary antigravity whip cream! That stuff doesn't move no matter how far you tip the cup! I'm sure booking the hand dancers was a small drop in the bucket compared to the NASA level research it took for them to develop that exquisite nimbus cream hovering over the coffee.

Fast food advertising has really gotten out of hand and it seems like McDonald's is now just taunting us at this point. I've tolerated seeing the absolutely perfect burgers in the commercials that bear little resemblance to the ones you'll find in restaurants, but this whip cream nonsense is over the top. I bet there are more people who notice the ridiculous whip cream in this commercial than there are people who would actually care if the whip cream wasn't absolutely PERFECT.

Sorry McDonald's, but no amount of fancy hand dancing is going to draw my attention away from your magically mesmerizing whip cream.

(Thanks to Evan for the tip on this one)

Kids: Write to Best Buy Instead of Santa

This commercial just comes off a little too arrogant. I expect companies to compare themselves to their competition but taking on Santa? What will the children think Best Buy?! You really shouldn't present them with a Santa that is so inept that he has to rely on an ordinary (albeit very short) Best Buy employee to save Christmas.

Just look at how terrible they make Santa look:
1. He apparently has crashed his sleigh into a snowman and then just abandoned the wreckage.
2. He obviously procrastinated on getting his employee elves to work on toys for the coming Christmas.
3. For being someone known to be jolly, he is awfully pessimistic and quick to cancel Christmas.

So go ahead Best Buy, completely rewrite the mythology and tell the world you're way better than every child's favorite person in the month of December and that without you he would be nothing.

Oh, and that joke at the end about lower gastrointestinal bleeding was in bad taste too.

Merry Christmas From Your Favorite Beer......But Not Really

Ah, the commercial that wasn't good when it debuted in 1990 is back for year #20! Thanks for being here, Corona. Really though, who decided this commercial was clever enough to become such a fixture? Maybe there has been a standing challenge at Corona to anyone who can make another Christmas commercial with a beach theme that doesn't involve a palm tree with Christmas lights...somebody save us from this already. In the meantime, that palm tree has enjoyed more screen time than most Hollywood actors and the whistling guy is probably pissed that he volunteered his whistling for Corona when he was an intern there 20 years ago and isn't collecting any royalties....well, that and that his internship prepared him to do marketing for the extremely small "beach marketing" niche. I'm sure all of his co workers at Coppertone now know why they've been hearing him whistle for all these years.

So you thought a 20 year run was bad? How about this TWENTY THREE YEAR OLD commercial that is as much a commercial for beer as it is recycling:



Copyright 2006?! Who are you fooling? I bet whoever at Budweiser came up with the "hey when we reformat this commercial for HD we can change the copyright date so people will forget that it's from 1987" is (still) patting himself on the back right now. As with the Corona commercial can someone tell me why this commercial is good enough to have been on for so long? OMG! It's those horses! In the snow! With a Christmas tree! Do you think when this commercial was screened for the higher ups at Bud that they gave the commercial a standing ovation with tears in their eyes and exclaimed "It's beautiful! Let's show this commercial until the end of time!" I guess I'm just shocked that we never saw an equally pedestrian commercial with those stupid frogs in Christmas hats or something.

It really looks like I'm going to be seeing these commercials for the rest of my life...but why? I've seen great commercials (and really, just about any commercial) before that last no more than 6 months on the air. Maybe you disagree with me about not liking these commercials, but do you really like seeing these commercials year after year? Are Bud and Corona just hoping that at this point people just expect these commercials to be on and that they're associated with Christmas enough that they can be lazy and never make another Christmas commercial again? I guess if any two companies were to pull something like this, it would be companies that use the same gimmicks for their commercials over and over again--Bud with the horses and Corona with the beaches.

Do you think the employees of Corona and Bud send out the same exact Christmas card to their friends and family every year?

Everybody Knows You Never Want To Go Full Gray

God, I hate this commercial so much. Are we talking about his prowess in the office or in bed? Both? Ok, fine...but really, why? I don't think our horny and unemployed friend should be worried about his hair. You're in your early 50's, presumably unwed since you're after that secretary, and unemployed. What were you blaming this all on before your hair went gray?

Back to the sexual prowess thing. I am obviously not going gray and won't be for a quite a while so I can't say for sure, but I'm totally not buying this experience/youth combo that Just For Men is selling here. Somehow I don't think that women are out there checking out guys with grayish hair and thinking "I bet he's got TONS of experience in bed and is amazing at sex! And he looks like he doesn't even need to use Viagra yet either!"

On to the office prowess thing. Your gray hair means "experience?" Wonderful. It also means you're old and you don't have a job. You probably should have brought a resume or something instead of just relying on the hue of your hair.

Since I doubt the slutty secretary (Sidenote: Why are women in commercials exponentially more slutty in commercials than real life? No one ever talks about how misogynistic commercials are. More on this another time.) is the one deciding whether to hire you or not, good luck with your interview buddy. At least you can just blame the economy if the new hair doesn't pan out.

KAYAK Supports Saving Time, Infidelity

Mandy and her boyfriend Dave love to travel. But they have different approaches to finding deals...and life. Mandy uses KAYAK to compare hundreds of travel sites at once--an indication of her instant gratification, short-cutting lifestyle. Dave doesn't use KAYAK...he stays up SO late searching SO many sites that sometimes he sleeps in and misses flights because he believes in doing things the old-fashioned way and values things like hard work and the sanctity of love but has a bitch of a girlfriend who doesn't and doesn't even have a shred of loyalty to call him on the phone or go to his apartment to make sure he wakes up so he doesn't miss their flight and ohbytheway obviously doesn't live with him despite the fact that they apparently travel together frequently, most likely because she wants her own place so she can cheat on him on the reg all while poor Dave oversleeps....like he did today. Luckily Mandy has Dante here for company. They met this morning and will probably engage in consensual sex in the next hour or so because Mandy has no morals and only cares about her own satisfaction and will step on whoever stands in her path to pleasure...a lifestyle that KAYAK not only condones, but supports and glorifies.

And I bet Dante uses craigslist to compare hundreds of desperate and wanton women at once.

One more thing: would this commercial ever make it through management at KAYAK and onto TV if Dave and Mandy's roles were reversed? I think not.

Mini Forgets Where They Parked

Mini/BMW has always used their European image as a marketing ploy and in this commercial the trend continues to be the same. It wouldn't have been as cool if these cars had US license plates when we could instead see these cars in their true European form with the bland looking Euro plates that people in the US think are cool because they're different. (For the record, Euro plates are definitely lame...the variation in between countries' plates in the EU is so minimal it's hard to tell what country the plate is from! How are you supposed to play the license plate game?! Clearly whoever designed these plates has never been on a road trip...do they go on road trips in Europe? Maybe they don't.)

So obviously we're witnessing this trio driving around in this cool Euro garage (I'm sure European parking garages are 'cooler' than US ones for some dumb reason too) looking for a 'cool' Euro parking space to a park in....so let's check the sign to see where there's parking available. WAIT........METROPLEX PARKING?! Is that what the sign says?! Where the hell are we?! All the other signs are in another language! (I couldn't decipher what language the signs are in, but let's agree it isn't English.)

I don't understand why the parking sign couldn't have been in the other language as well. Given the context of the commercial, showing the board lit up with the numbers on it is enough to imply the purpose of the sign, right? And anyone who is sophisticated enough to pursue the Euro image in buying a Mini surely is someone hip who frequents a metroplex with a parking garage that has a similar parking kiosk that tells you where the empty spots are....right?

While we're at it, one my biggest pet peeves in car commercials is the omnipresent disclaimer that always mentions the commercial was shot on a "closed course." Why do we have to call it a course? I'd say at best 2% of car commercials are shot on an actual course. Since when is a parking garage a course? Throw some cones in there for a slalom and we can call it course and I won't object. Until then, can we say 'controlled environment' or just omit the part about it being a closed course and just say they're professional drivers?

Oh yeah, and the part at the end with the old lady parking her powerchair in the parking spot is stupid and unrealistic. Are you telling me she drove that chair up 5 stories to park it in a parking garage? Please.

Failure: It's What's For Breakfast

First off, I'm just going to ignore the fact that the mailman sings about rottweilers and pitbulls despite the fact that the dogs in the commercial are definitely not rottweilers or pitbulls because that's the kind of stupidity reserved for a Snickers commercial or something.

I actually didn't even notice that at first. What really annoyed me was the whole premise of the the commercial. I imagine the brain trust over the BK headquarters (castle?) sat down to discuss ideas for their new breakfast commercials and decided on this whole negligent public servant thing as they have another spot featuring ambulance drivers. Here's my best guess at a reenactment of the marketing department's meeting after they decided on their angle:

Guy A: So the ambulance idea is good, what else can we do?
Guy B: How about a fireman who is chowing down on BK breakfast while a house burns down in the background and the family watches on in horror as the dad runs out of the house on fire and has to roll around to put himself out?
Guy A: I think we can do better than that....
Guy B: How about a cop watching a bank get robbed while he eats breakfast and watches the robber get away......wait for it.....and then we cut to the robber at the drive through ordering breakfast with his loot?!
Guy A: Now that is an awesome idea! Let's think of some others though.
Guy B: How about a mailman that is kind of a jerk and he apparently delivers mail in the morning at breakfast time even though I don't personally know anyone who gets their mail delivered in the morning?!
Guy A: Perfect!

Duracell And The Plight of Adulterers, Drug Dealers

Behold the Duracell myGrid. Charge all your devices at once! How cool! As an aside, all these products that can wirelessly charge your phones are dumb because you have put a huge case on your phone that connects to your battery to allow your phone to charge. But anyways.

In the second version of the commercial in this video the commercial asks us if we think we can only charge one device at once (my response was "actually no, I have this super high tech thing called a 'power strip' that lets you plug a lot of things in at once" but that's besides the point). They proceed to show the myGrid charging 4 devices at once...but wait, they're all phones! Off the top of my head, I can only think of 2 types of people who might have 4 cell phones:

1. Adulterers (the careful, not Tiger Woods kind)
2. Drug dealers

So what's going on here Duracell? Whose phones are those in the ad? It looks like some guy who has 3 cell phones charging and one of his mistresses is charging her phone with the pink case.

I just don't understand....won't you explain Duracell? I highly doubt you see this product being a communal charger for the family, because what family is gonna park all their phones in the same place to charge them? Surely this is what you must envision though, because you wouldn't market your product to the immoral.

But then at the end of your commercial you say "trusted everywhere." If you have all your cell phones with their separate numbers always charged up so you can answer calls from your wife or one of your mistresses and lie through your teeth, you won't lose anyone's trust. I see what you did there Duracell. Sneaky.

What You Didn't Know About Satellite Dishes

I really don't have an issue with this commercial in its concept. He's a satellite dish! He fell over! He..........walked away? You had me going there for a second, Allstate.

Satellite dishes can't walk.

I don't know if I can trust you now.

Bank of America Will Figure It Out....One Day

So I just saw a commercial for Bank of America and some fraud protection program they have or something else that I didn't care about. And as I had seen in previous Bank of America commercials, they had a gaffe that is perennially annoying. I went in search of the video for it online and could not find it but instead happened upon this commercial instead. Lo and behold, B of A has been making this mistake since at least 2008 as they made it here too!

Bank of America loves to show people in their commercials using their debit/credit cards....and EVERY single time they do so, the person swiping it swipes the part of the card without the magnetic strip! Yes, I understand that this is done so that the card is legible and not upside down when you see it used in the commercial, but I don't care.

I think Bank of America's fraud protection program is designed to make non-Bank of America customers think you swipe your card upside down....therefore credit card thieves will be baffled when they try to swipe it to no avail.

Sorry Bank of America, the secret is out.

Sofia Coppola Pees on My Leg, Tells Me It's Raining

First of all, I'm just going to ignore the fact that this is one of those movie trailers that tells you absolutely NOTHING about the film despite my burning desire to rant about that.

I saw the trailer for this movie over the weekend at a theater during the previews. One of my favorite pastimes is being an elitist at the movie theater during the previews and passing judgment on almost all of them in douche-like fashion. I watched this preview and thought 'I hate this style of trailer, but they're scoring big points with me by setting it to this great song by The Strokes.' Then I got to the end of the preview and saw that even though they didn't want you to know very much about the movie, they thought there were two important things to know about the film:

1. It was directed by Sofia Coppola
2. It features music by Phoenix

Wait........what? Music by Phoenix? Then why on earth are you featuring a Strokes song for the majority of the preview?! How does that make sense?! To be fair, the first 40 seconds or so of the preview is Phoenix's "Love Like a Sunset Part II," but that becomes an afterthought by the end of the preview.

Watching this preview and hearing the music will garner about three reactions, all of which are dumb:

1. You have no idea who Phoenix are but you liked the song featured in the preview so you look for it online only to realize it's not a song by Phoenix and you're wondering why you were deceived.
2. You are familiar with Phoenix (which almost certainly means you are familiar with the Strokes) and you're expressing how annoying the preview is out loud in the movie theater to the point where your girlfriend tells you to be quiet (that's what happened in my case at least).
3. You don't care and the fact that the movie features music by Phoenix means nothing to you.

So why this nonsense? Well, Sofia Coppola is dating the lead singer of Phoenix so she probably thought it would be nice to plug her boyfriend's band in the preview....but then she turns around and uses another band prominently in her preview! Isn't this kind of like cheating? I think so.

I guess ruining The Godfather Part III wasn't enough for you Ms. Coppola. You got out of my doghouse with Lost in Translation (As an aforementioned movie elitist/douche, I liked that movie even though probably the 3 people that read this blog are thinking 'omg that movie was so boring!') but now you're back in it. And you're probably in the doghouse with your boyfriend too.

Dish Network Suggests Its Customers To Stop Complaining

So I just saw this commercial air on FOX. As you may know, Dish Network and FOX are at odds over a contract and FOX is slated to go off the air for Dish customers at the end of the month. On top of that, several of the Fox Sports channels have been off the air for a couple weeks now and Dish customers are predictably outraged. I really have no clue who is more at fault for not getting the deal done and robbing people of programming they're paying for, but why on earth is Dish airing this commercial still?!

The commercial was uploaded to Youtube in July of this year so I know at least it wasn't made specifically in response to the FOX fiasco....but now it's gone from simply a bad commercial to a complete slap in the face.

After the numerous and pointless cliches thrown out by the CEO, he ends with the fact that Dish isn't perfect, but they're #1 in customer satisfaction! Hooray!

So let's first ignore the FOX disputes and look at what the CEO had to say. Given the cliches he had already thrown out, wouldn't you have thought that he was going to say "we're not perfect, but we strive to get there every day" or some nonsense like that? It would have been a generic promise, but it's better than saying "we're not perfect, but we have the most satisfied customers." To me that implies that Dish and the CEO are ok with the fact that they have shortcomings. But this is all besides the point.

The real problem is Dish continues to air this commercial while it is apparent that Dish customers are not satisfied! At the moment, the commercial reads like this "Yeah, we know you can't watch your favorite teams on Fox Sports Net right now and you might lose Fox in a couple weeks, but hey, we're not sweating it because we're already ranked the best in customer service so you shouldn't be complaining." Seems to me like Dish wanted to address the current situation and felt too lazy to put together another commercial so they said "what the hell, this is the most relevant commercial we have."

It will be even funnier if Dish loses Fox and the commercial continues to air on Fox. They're not that irresponsible....are they?

Gillette Is Too Sharp For Their Own Good...Kind Of

So in walks the guy who is having problems with his razor....who looks like he just shaved about 30 seconds ago. Wouldn't it have made more sense for him to at least have the 5 o clock shadow?? Then again, why would you want a guy in a commercial for razors to be a visible victim of a shoddy blade?

Herein lies the problem for Gillette: they have a product that's too good. I've been using the Gillette Fusion cartridges for a while now and they literally take forever to become dull and unusable. Granted I'm not anywhere close to "Teen Wolf" status in the facial hair department, but I still shave almost daily and can't see why anyone would go through more than a cartridge a month.

So what is Gillette to do when they realize no one is buying replacement cartridges? They run an ad campaign essentially stating that their product isn't as good as you think it may be! I can't think of another instance of a company doing this. It would be like Penzoil not just saying "change your oil every 3000 miles" but instead having commercials with a car running poorly because the oil hadn't been replaced.

I'd love to know if Gillette has actually sold more cartridges since urging people to replace them. If I were them, I would have definitely considered pointing out instead that the five pack of replacement cartridges will last you over 6 months, because I'm sure plenty of people balk at the 12 or so dollar price tag and reach for the $5 pack of disposals that will last a lot less time. I would give Gillette the benefit of the doubt on this one, but they just showed me a guy who magically shaved despite the fact that his razor was in the shop.

A Bad Day for Goodyear

Unfortunately I couldn't find the long version of this commercial on Youtube. The expanded version of the commercial goes a little more in depth about how great it is to save gas and that "it's a beautiful thing." That's a great message...but it's kind of hard to believe when it's coming from a guy joyriding around in the Goodyear blimp and burning up fuel for no apparent reason. I don't see any fuelmax tires on that thing saving a ton of gas either.

It almost seems like they're making up for fuel they're saving by making special tires by hemorrhaging fuel with the blimp for sightseeing purposes and to creepily watch people at tourist destinations. Is there some kind of alliance between 'big oil' and Goodyear? Stay tuned.

This Guy Must Take Really Small Bites While Eating

You can barely finish it? Um................YOU DIDN'T EVEN START EATING IT YET! YOU HAVE A FEW MORE BITES LEFT?! WELL I WOULD CERTAINLY HOPE SO! If he started eating that thing already, then he must have taken an awfully small bite or two that left that chalupa looking untouched. I see no evidence of any taco wrappers and it doesn't look like he had any cinnamon twists that he couldn't resist waiting for dessert to eat. He must have had gastric bypass surgery and could only manage a small nibble before he was stuffed. Marketing to formerly obese people who think it would be a waste to order an XL Chalupa....well played, Taco Bell.

You Almost Fooled Me, AT&T

So I just saw this commercial for the first time and was amazed at the existence of life size paper dolls that traveled and had cell phones and paper doll families. I wanted to go to the airport and see one for myself and I got all excited about it....and then they drop the "screen images simulated" disclaimer on the bottom of the screen 10 seconds in. Don't play with my heart like that AT&T. Either tell me at the beginning or let me live in blissful ignorance.

........wait, what do you mean you meant screen images on the cell phone's screen?!

Liberty Mutual Defies Time, Space

Awwww well isn't this a cute commercial you've seen about 1700 times. I have, and around viewing number 6 I realized I was witnessing some type of good deed wormhole situation.

So the "pay it forward" concept of the commercial is pretty basic--someone does a good deed and someone else is inspired by it and does the same in turn, setting off a chain reaction. So how does the commercial go back to the woman at the very beginning, only this time we see her inspiration came from a guy who wouldn't have put money in that meter in the first place if not for the woman and the pizza guy?! We're trapped in an infinite loop. You've blown my mind, Liberty Mutual.

On a quick side note, is it really considered an out of the ordinary good deed to grab a guy to prevent him from walking into a freaking car?! Who sees that and says "oh wow that lady saved that guy's life, I should probably help this lady get her stroller off the bus." Liberty Mutual clearly has a skewed sense of time and of human nature.

Snickers, you aren't yourself.

Turn the AC on? Why don't you just take off your sweater?! On top of that, it's clear they're driving through a hot place so I know they put some thought into that aspect of the commercial. Do they even think about wardrobe for commercials? Clearly whoever produced this commercial should have grabbed a snickers before they finished shooting.

And don't try to tell me that the message that the guy is being a 'diva' is further enhanced because he's complaining about being hot whilst wearing a sweater because all of them look like they're ready for a brisk autumn day and it's not just the main guy. So there.