Woooooo! Football! OK, fine. You caught me. I watch maybe three football games a year. But even though I'm not a superfan, there's often fun to be wrung out of the Football Experience. Normally, I'd watch the Super Bowl with friends, but this year, I headed over to my dad's house. Snacks were distributed and we two macho dudes settled down for some real man bonding time. And...my dad started crying at the National Anthem. I've told you, he emotional! But I'm sure the anthem will be the only downer part of the evening. After all, we're here for some FOOTBALL! GRRRR! Get ready for the joyous expulsion of testosterone, and...
I mean, it's nice that the NFL doesn't want women to be abused, but they could stand to check out some of the cracks in their glass house before throwing that stone. Oh well, no big deal. Back to the FOOTBALL! The refs aren't calling enough penalties (according to my dad - I was focused on the M&M's at this point), the points are finally starting to accumulate, and...
Um. What, exactly, was the point of this ad? Absentee Father Shows Up Once: Is Hero. I was honestly baffled by this commercial. I have no idea what message it was trying to get across, or if they just thought sad music plus family scenes was enough to tug at the heartstrings. Oh, and maybe don't play "Cat's In the Cradle" when showing a racecar driver getting into crashes? Just a thought.
Anyhow...FOOTBALL! Get your blood pumped, you guys! Get excited! Get...
Er... This one is almost as baffling. I mean, sure. Don't do heroin. Good message! But there doesn't really seem to be any there there. Jaunty music as a kid ODs. BOOM. Your mind is blown now. This was actually a local commercial that wasn't seen nationwide, so I guess St. Louisans have just been having too good of a year and needed an extra dose of bummer.
Seriously, though, what is up with the commercials this year? There are some cute ones here and there. Some of the celebrity cameo ones are clever. I'll never need to buy maxipads, but the Always #LikeAGirl campaign has a great message. If you'd have told me the funniest commercial was going to be for avocados, I would never have believed it! But as a group, these ads were so maudlin and morose.
And of course, it wouldn't be Super Bowl without some controversy. This year, it's over something way more important than spousal abuse, drug addiction, and neglected kids. That's right. The big fight this year is over...beer.
I come not to bury this ad, but to (sort-of) praise it. My Facebook wall is full of comments both for and against it. It's already started taking a beating online. And frankly, I can't argue with a lot of the points that article makes. I will say that there is a place in this world for both meticulous craft beer and cheap swill, just like there's room in my heart for both coq au vin and chicken strips. It all depends on the occasion. So, I won't argue that Budweiser is actually a superior product or that they're the good guys when it comes to business practices. What I will argue is that the trope this ad makes fun of does exist, I have definitely run across beer hipsters who sneer at other people's drinks, and thus, the commercial made me laugh. I'll leave it at that.
But here's Katy Perry to cheer us up! I liked the halftime show this year. The dancing sharks were a bit...odd, but the light and effects work was fantastic, and I was really happy to see Missy Elliott looking and sounding so good. Plus, the game is getting more competitive, so let's all take a deep breath and get back on track with some FOOTBALL! We're all happy! We're all...
WHAT?!? Jesus fucking Christ, 2015! Apart from this being just a tonal disaster (starts off light-hearted, ends on DEAD KID), what is this supposed to imply? Become more of a helicopter parent so your kids can take a dog to the open ocean? Buy insurance so you can get a replacement child once your accident-prone one has been buried? This has been, bar none, the weirdest and most off-putting year of commercials I've ever seen. In a way, the game ending with a blown play, a fistfight, and the most insufferable team in the league walking away with another win was fitting. And if this is what we have to look forward to in the year of advertising, let's all stock up on our Paxil now.
Showing posts with label Ads. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ads. Show all posts
Character Study
The first (and largest) necessity for any commercial is to grab the viewer's attention. To marketing people, being boring is a far graver sin than being bad, and there's often no such thing as bad publicity, as long as people know your commercial exists. Once your commercial is noticed, however, its secondary necessity is to portray the product being sold in a positive light, often by asking the viewer to identify with the ad's protagonist. Look at this person using the product. Aren't they intelligent? Or clever? Or charming? Or sexy? You, being the shrewd consumer that you are, want to be as wonderful as this protagonist is, so you'd better get your hands on this product.
But what happens when the Wonderful Protagonist isn't so wonderful? What if they're laughably annoying, or annoyingly laughable? Like, oh say...a grandpa being unable to control his enthusiasm for Disney, thus ruining his grandson's school play?
Not cute. Not charming. I like to imagine what would happen if a person did this in real life. Rather than a fun-filled trip to the amusement park, I envision years of tense Thanksgivings and this kid being mercilessly ridiculed in the lunchroom. But at least I understand what this ad is aiming for. And none of the actors is to blame. It's just an unfunny joke. What's more mystifying than an unfunny joke? How about a serial killer masquerading as a dreamboat?
I hope those poor women were adequately compensated for mooning over a guy who is clearly about to turn their ribcages into a coat rack. I work in the sciences, so I like to do the proper experimental research. I have asked straight women, gay men, and bisexuals if the man featured in this line of ads is sexy to them. Shivers of terror is the only response he evokes. Seriously, pluck that actor out of these coffee commercials, plop him down in the middle of an episode of Hannibal, and tell me he wouldn't fit right in.
Neither of these ads offends me on any deep level. I don't feel the need to punish Disney or some random coffee company for insulting my intelligence. They're more confusing than irritating. My scientific curiosity is piqued once more! Someone please introduce me to the advertising executives who thought these were appealing characters. I want to do an intense study of their concept of human nature.
But what happens when the Wonderful Protagonist isn't so wonderful? What if they're laughably annoying, or annoyingly laughable? Like, oh say...a grandpa being unable to control his enthusiasm for Disney, thus ruining his grandson's school play?
Not cute. Not charming. I like to imagine what would happen if a person did this in real life. Rather than a fun-filled trip to the amusement park, I envision years of tense Thanksgivings and this kid being mercilessly ridiculed in the lunchroom. But at least I understand what this ad is aiming for. And none of the actors is to blame. It's just an unfunny joke. What's more mystifying than an unfunny joke? How about a serial killer masquerading as a dreamboat?
I hope those poor women were adequately compensated for mooning over a guy who is clearly about to turn their ribcages into a coat rack. I work in the sciences, so I like to do the proper experimental research. I have asked straight women, gay men, and bisexuals if the man featured in this line of ads is sexy to them. Shivers of terror is the only response he evokes. Seriously, pluck that actor out of these coffee commercials, plop him down in the middle of an episode of Hannibal, and tell me he wouldn't fit right in.
Neither of these ads offends me on any deep level. I don't feel the need to punish Disney or some random coffee company for insulting my intelligence. They're more confusing than irritating. My scientific curiosity is piqued once more! Someone please introduce me to the advertising executives who thought these were appealing characters. I want to do an intense study of their concept of human nature.
Big Game Hunt
I may not be the biggest sports fan ever conceived, but I do enjoy certain aspects of sports culture. What's to dislike about gathering with friends, loading up on snacks, checking out the best creative output that marketers can conceive of, and watching a contest that you can immediately discuss with millions of other people? So no, you'll never see me on social media sniffing about how above the Super Bowl I am. I enjoy it, even if the DVR needs to be paused for a moment so the hostess can educate me on what a safety entails.
You can bet that there's plenty of sports analysis flying around about last night's game, but I thought it would be fun to review the Super Bowl as an entertainment experience. They certainly hope to pull in plenty of people each year that don't give a fig about sports, so it seems fair to judge how they did. From the angle of it being an exciting game, there's little that can be done. The players are going to play to win, and if, say, one team excels while the other cannot do a single thing right and the game turns into a giant blowout, DENVER, it's got the potential to be dull. Actually, I rather enjoyed it. I didn't much care who won, so the constant string of humiliations wrought upon the Broncos was pretty fascinating. It was also kind of funny to watch the tone of the announcers slowly evolve over the course of the game, from "Don't worry folks, there's a lot of game to go..." to "Well, they have a lot of work to do, but they can mount a comeback any moment now..." to "God, these people are playing some terrible football."
Aside from that, the commentary was pretty useless. It's not surprising. One of the things that keeps me from being more of a sports fan in general is that inane sideline chatter. Most of it sounds like this. What was it that Erin Andrews said? That if Denver wants to score some points, they should probably stop turning the ball over to Seattle so much? Wow, thanks for that stellar analysis. Sports commentators are terrified of dead air, but I'd rather they contribute when there's actually something relevant to mention than feel pressured to fill every second with babble.
A game so lopsided was fun for some and boring for others, but as I said, nobody can control for the entertainment value of the game itself. What they can control are things like musical performances and the much-anticipated Super Bowl commercials. How did people do on those this year? Queen Latifah sang "America the Beautiful", and looked/sounded like Latifah the Beautiful while doing it. I've actually seen a lot of online debate about opera soprano Renée Fleming's rendition of the National Anthem, which surprises me. I'm not talking about the mouth-breathers who were mortally offended at seeing any opera singer, and loudly agitated for a real 'Murican country singer to spew a puddle of melisma all over the stage. I mean people who are knowledgeable about the more classical arts roundly criticizing the arrangement, and Fleming's embellishments of particular passages. "Why can't someone just sing a straightforward, clear rendition without dipping and soaring and sliding all over the place?" is the gist of several grumbling music student posts I saw. I had no problem with the performance; maybe it wasn't the best arrangement I've ever heard, but vocally, it was lovely. Don't get me wrong, I would totally support a straightforward, clear rendition. But Fleming wasn't up there trying to stoke her ego with wild vibrato or glory notes.
Bruno Mars and the Red Hot Chili Peppers put on the halftime show, and zzz....... Sorry, I nodded off for a second there. What I meant to say is that I really appreciated their zzz...... You get the idea. Here we sit not even twenty-four hours later, and I can't remember a single thing about the halftime show. It was that boring. Now I feel bad for complaining about all that hysteria surrounding Janet Jackson's nipple; a little stupid controversy would be pretty welcome right about now.
That brings us to the ads. They're talked about in as much detail as the game every year, and despite a cute one here or there, they were mostly duds this year. Some weren't too bad: The follow-up to last year's Cheerios ad, Terry Crews partying with the Muppets, Butterfingers suggesting that a married couple would benefit from including a third, and a couple of the beer ads were fairly clever, and brought a smile to my face. Overall, though, the commercials mostly just substituted spectacle for substance. Spending a metric ton of money isn't enough anymore. You can't just have movie stars and fireworks; the concept needs to be interesting. There were only two that stood out to me, both for products/companies that I have no interest in giving my money to. Still, I do need to give them credit. I honestly forgot that Radio Shack was even still in business. They obviously know they have that reputation, and gave us this wonderful, self-effacing ad:
And then, there's Anna Kendrick for Newcastle Brown Ale. This one doesn't need any explanation:
So, despite it being a fairly spare year, entertainment-wise, it was still a fun Super Bowl. I can't recommend not giving a shit who wins the game highly enough.
You can bet that there's plenty of sports analysis flying around about last night's game, but I thought it would be fun to review the Super Bowl as an entertainment experience. They certainly hope to pull in plenty of people each year that don't give a fig about sports, so it seems fair to judge how they did. From the angle of it being an exciting game, there's little that can be done. The players are going to play to win, and if, say, one team excels while the other cannot do a single thing right and the game turns into a giant blowout, DENVER, it's got the potential to be dull. Actually, I rather enjoyed it. I didn't much care who won, so the constant string of humiliations wrought upon the Broncos was pretty fascinating. It was also kind of funny to watch the tone of the announcers slowly evolve over the course of the game, from "Don't worry folks, there's a lot of game to go..." to "Well, they have a lot of work to do, but they can mount a comeback any moment now..." to "God, these people are playing some terrible football."
Aside from that, the commentary was pretty useless. It's not surprising. One of the things that keeps me from being more of a sports fan in general is that inane sideline chatter. Most of it sounds like this. What was it that Erin Andrews said? That if Denver wants to score some points, they should probably stop turning the ball over to Seattle so much? Wow, thanks for that stellar analysis. Sports commentators are terrified of dead air, but I'd rather they contribute when there's actually something relevant to mention than feel pressured to fill every second with babble.
A game so lopsided was fun for some and boring for others, but as I said, nobody can control for the entertainment value of the game itself. What they can control are things like musical performances and the much-anticipated Super Bowl commercials. How did people do on those this year? Queen Latifah sang "America the Beautiful", and looked/sounded like Latifah the Beautiful while doing it. I've actually seen a lot of online debate about opera soprano Renée Fleming's rendition of the National Anthem, which surprises me. I'm not talking about the mouth-breathers who were mortally offended at seeing any opera singer, and loudly agitated for a real 'Murican country singer to spew a puddle of melisma all over the stage. I mean people who are knowledgeable about the more classical arts roundly criticizing the arrangement, and Fleming's embellishments of particular passages. "Why can't someone just sing a straightforward, clear rendition without dipping and soaring and sliding all over the place?" is the gist of several grumbling music student posts I saw. I had no problem with the performance; maybe it wasn't the best arrangement I've ever heard, but vocally, it was lovely. Don't get me wrong, I would totally support a straightforward, clear rendition. But Fleming wasn't up there trying to stoke her ego with wild vibrato or glory notes.
Bruno Mars and the Red Hot Chili Peppers put on the halftime show, and zzz....... Sorry, I nodded off for a second there. What I meant to say is that I really appreciated their zzz...... You get the idea. Here we sit not even twenty-four hours later, and I can't remember a single thing about the halftime show. It was that boring. Now I feel bad for complaining about all that hysteria surrounding Janet Jackson's nipple; a little stupid controversy would be pretty welcome right about now.
That brings us to the ads. They're talked about in as much detail as the game every year, and despite a cute one here or there, they were mostly duds this year. Some weren't too bad: The follow-up to last year's Cheerios ad, Terry Crews partying with the Muppets, Butterfingers suggesting that a married couple would benefit from including a third, and a couple of the beer ads were fairly clever, and brought a smile to my face. Overall, though, the commercials mostly just substituted spectacle for substance. Spending a metric ton of money isn't enough anymore. You can't just have movie stars and fireworks; the concept needs to be interesting. There were only two that stood out to me, both for products/companies that I have no interest in giving my money to. Still, I do need to give them credit. I honestly forgot that Radio Shack was even still in business. They obviously know they have that reputation, and gave us this wonderful, self-effacing ad:
And then, there's Anna Kendrick for Newcastle Brown Ale. This one doesn't need any explanation:
So, despite it being a fairly spare year, entertainment-wise, it was still a fun Super Bowl. I can't recommend not giving a shit who wins the game highly enough.
Artistic Integrity
Analyzing which ads amuse me and which ones enrage me is an interesting way to do a little self-examination. Last time I felt a commercial was bad enough to warrant specific mention, it was because I have a big problem with the character portrayal. The company seems to be suggesting that this is either the type of person they believe their typical customer represents, or that it's the type of person we should aspire to be. "Aren't these people silly and fun? Tee-hee!" Bleh.
This next ad that pushes all the wrong buttons fails because of the same type of problem - that of the obnoxious protagonist. Take a look at this popular lady:
The takeaway message for me is less about the supposed features of the offered product, and more that we're being told that this incredibly rude bitch is someone we should want to be like. "The Birth of Venus" cannot hold this woman's attention for more than three seconds, but a picture of her friends eating candy or sporting an afro draw her in like a tractor beam. If you have any reservations that she doesn't know that what she's doing is unacceptable, take a look at the glance she gives her boyfriend before surreptitiously checking her phone. It's a look that plainly says "Can I get away with this? Oh, good. He's enraptured with this retarded painting. I'm in the clear."
The thing is, I actually have no problem with the setting. I'm not some crotchety old man who will shoot a withering glance at someone using a smartphone in a museum. But there are ways they could have integrated this product into this story in ways that weren't so unbelievably annoying. Maybe this woman shares a photo of a painting that particularly speaks to her, and her social network responds with interest. Maybe she follows the museum's page, and learns something new and intriguing about the art she's surrounded by. Anything that would suggest that her experience is being enhanced by having access to Facebook would be fine. But it's the opposite; she's completely disconnected from the experience. She may as well be in a restaurant or a board meeting or on the toilet like the jerk in that last ad.
And again, we're supposed to like her, and to want to be able to do the things she can do. Far from being enchanted, I'm insulted by the idea that ignoring my boyfriend, my immediate surroundings, and some of the most significant cultural work ever created in favor of haircut photos is a character asset, when it's really a flaw. So, some unsolicited advice to the bespectacled gentleman at the beginning of this ad:
Sir, I know I don't know you, and I know that you're fictional, but you can do better. Much better.
This next ad that pushes all the wrong buttons fails because of the same type of problem - that of the obnoxious protagonist. Take a look at this popular lady:
The takeaway message for me is less about the supposed features of the offered product, and more that we're being told that this incredibly rude bitch is someone we should want to be like. "The Birth of Venus" cannot hold this woman's attention for more than three seconds, but a picture of her friends eating candy or sporting an afro draw her in like a tractor beam. If you have any reservations that she doesn't know that what she's doing is unacceptable, take a look at the glance she gives her boyfriend before surreptitiously checking her phone. It's a look that plainly says "Can I get away with this? Oh, good. He's enraptured with this retarded painting. I'm in the clear."
The thing is, I actually have no problem with the setting. I'm not some crotchety old man who will shoot a withering glance at someone using a smartphone in a museum. But there are ways they could have integrated this product into this story in ways that weren't so unbelievably annoying. Maybe this woman shares a photo of a painting that particularly speaks to her, and her social network responds with interest. Maybe she follows the museum's page, and learns something new and intriguing about the art she's surrounded by. Anything that would suggest that her experience is being enhanced by having access to Facebook would be fine. But it's the opposite; she's completely disconnected from the experience. She may as well be in a restaurant or a board meeting or on the toilet like the jerk in that last ad.
And again, we're supposed to like her, and to want to be able to do the things she can do. Far from being enchanted, I'm insulted by the idea that ignoring my boyfriend, my immediate surroundings, and some of the most significant cultural work ever created in favor of haircut photos is a character asset, when it's really a flaw. So, some unsolicited advice to the bespectacled gentleman at the beginning of this ad:
Sir, I know I don't know you, and I know that you're fictional, but you can do better. Much better.
Ya Cahnt Git Theah Frum Heeya
The majority of the television I've watched over the past year or so has been via online streaming or DVDs, which means that I haven't seen as many commercials lately. That is certainly not a complaint. Over the last few weeks, though, I've been watching shows as they air, which means that Madison Avenue is once again free to work its magic on my pliable brain. Or not. Long ago, I confessed my puzzlement/confusion/anger over the "Hi there, loser!" type of ad. Why on Earth would companies want to give a viewer the impression that this is the kind of person they think consumes their product? But hey, I wrote that five years ago. Surely, corporate America has grown and matured. There's no way they're still pushing the idea that their customers are idiotic freaks.
Whoops. YouTube comments are usually a haven for sub-literate, racist assholes, but someone over there pretty much nailed it with the succinct "1 step closer to Wall-E". Seriously, what's the demographic that DISH is aiming for here? Post-football game rioters? People who thought the family in Silver Linings Playbook were role models?
I know there's a school of thought that argues that when it comes to commercials, there's no such thing as bad attention. Any ad that gets people talking about it is, by definition, "good". I'm not sure if economics supports that hypothesis, but I can only react as an individual viewer. And my reaction is "Ew." I hate this ad. I hate the accents. I hate the characters' personalities. I hate the idea that we're supposed to find these people amusing. I hate that they literally rely on toilet humor. I hate the idea that this type of campaign must actually work on consumers.
It's ironic that AMC showed this multiple times during last night's Mad Men episode. True, that show is more about the people who happen to work at ad agencies than the work that those people do, but they've still shown multiple times that there's a lot of creative genius that goes into selling a product. No matter what the original idea of pairing this commercial with Mad Men was, the resulting message comes across the same: In the 1960s, advertisers caught our attention with cleverness and appeals to our emotion. In 2013, it's a man with an obnoxious voice taking a dump. We've come a long way, baby.
Whoops. YouTube comments are usually a haven for sub-literate, racist assholes, but someone over there pretty much nailed it with the succinct "1 step closer to Wall-E". Seriously, what's the demographic that DISH is aiming for here? Post-football game rioters? People who thought the family in Silver Linings Playbook were role models?
I know there's a school of thought that argues that when it comes to commercials, there's no such thing as bad attention. Any ad that gets people talking about it is, by definition, "good". I'm not sure if economics supports that hypothesis, but I can only react as an individual viewer. And my reaction is "Ew." I hate this ad. I hate the accents. I hate the characters' personalities. I hate the idea that we're supposed to find these people amusing. I hate that they literally rely on toilet humor. I hate the idea that this type of campaign must actually work on consumers.
It's ironic that AMC showed this multiple times during last night's Mad Men episode. True, that show is more about the people who happen to work at ad agencies than the work that those people do, but they've still shown multiple times that there's a lot of creative genius that goes into selling a product. No matter what the original idea of pairing this commercial with Mad Men was, the resulting message comes across the same: In the 1960s, advertisers caught our attention with cleverness and appeals to our emotion. In 2013, it's a man with an obnoxious voice taking a dump. We've come a long way, baby.
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