Wednesday, May 11, 2011

76 "Why Stopper" Ad

ConocoPhillips 76 has an ad running right now that shows a couple lost on the freeway being nagged by their kid’s mercilessly unrelenting questions, and rather than suggest that they toss him out the window, the ad offers a new service called the “Whystopper™”, which is some sort of automated cell phone service that has a computerized voice programmed to answer kids’ questions without eventually snapping, biting their heads off, and trying to kill them while swerving all over the road like humans might do. I had originally thought this ad was a joke, like the Bud Light ads that used to say stuff like: “Invisibility no longer available in Bud Light”, after showing some guy get drunk on a case of Bud Light and then get bitten on the butt by a Doberman pinscher while on an invisible panty-raid on some sorority house, or whatever they used to do in those ads. But then I read this:


So maybe it’s not a joke after all! The number is 1-888-WHY-STOP, so if you’re ever really drunk and lonely, and all your friends are tired of you drunk-dialing them in the middle of the night, how about giving this a try and let me know what you find out?

Want to see the ad? Here’s the link, but to see it, you actually have to click on the 3rd option down in the list of TV commercials, labeled “Whystopper™”:


You know what else? You might just want to click on the first commercial in that list and get a load of something really intellectually-challenged called the “The Road Stress Reliever™”. It’s like some audio/video thingy for your smartphone to help you relax when you’re really stressed out on the road. Like, say you’re going 80 mph, and you need to get across 4 lanes of traffic in half-a-mile to make an exit or you’ll be stuck in rush-hour traffic for 30 miles before the next exit, but nobody will let you in and everyone is bumper-to-bumper, screaming down the highway? Just look down at your phone’s video screen and watch that content for a few minutes! You’ll soon feel all better. What could go wrong? (I can see the lawsuits rolling in now…)