Last night, I was at a party, and I was talking about bad and humorously misguided ads, and someone asked me: “What’s the worst ad you’ve ever seen?” Gosh, there have been so many, but I knew right away which one I thought was the absolute worst ad I’ve ever seen! And I saw it just recently, too: like just a couple of months ago; but that's no reason why it goes to the top of the list, as I remember quite clearly the worst of the worst commercials from my childhood too, and this one clearly sinks lower than any of them could have dreamt of doing! But the funny thing is, this ad was so generic-y in spirit! Seriously, we’ve all seen this type of commercial a million times, especially if you watch cable news at all. But this one stood out as a tower of awfulness in an ocean of sameness and mediocrity! And I’ve only seen it once! It’s like they pulled it immediately after they saw it on TV, and I can hardly blame them! It’s the absolute nadir of this kind of commercial; in fact, it’s the nadir of advertising in general!
So, what was the commercial like, and what made it so God-awfully bad? Well, the ad was basically one of those “bad drug”-type ads for some ambulance-chasing law firm trying to find people to sue drug companies for. We all know these commercials, right? Avandia: Have you or someone you love suffered any of these complications, blah blah… Darvon: Serious risk of heart arrhythmias, heart attacks or even death, yadda yadda… And you may be entitled to compensation (!), etc. You know the drill. But usually these ads are very bland, and with a caring-sounding voice-over guy doing the narration over a still frame of a graphic with the name of the drug, the words “warning”, and “bad drug”, and maybe a crawl for the side effects they’re trying to get people to sue over. Oh, and of course the phone number to call! (Don't forget that! How else can you {and, more importantly, they} cash in on your suffering?)
Most of these types of "sue the drug company" ads are like that. But not this one! I’m sorry, but since I saw it only once, I cannot even begin to remember the law firm here trolling for victims to represent (lucky them {that I, and hopefully everyone else, can't remember it!}), nor the pharmaceutical product they were attacking, but it was definitely not one of the usual suspects. No, this one had side effects that included paralysis, limb amputation, gangrenous infections, etc.: totally horrible stuff! And the guy who was doing the voice-over work was shilling for this law firm and encouraging people to sue over this stuff with such obvious greed and barely repressed glee that he came across like that moment in the original movie of Mel Brooks’s The Producers, where Zero Mostel drops Gene Wilder to the floor and grabs his own hair, raises his head and screams at the ceiling: “I WANT THAT MONEY!!” And as a result, that's how this company ends up looking to us, too: greedy, corrupt, and money-grubbing; for this feeling is what this spot is leaving the viewer with, just from the voice-over guy's reading of the ad copy.
So you could tell from what the guy was saying, and more importantly, how he was saying it: they didn’t care about you at all! No, you and your paralysis or amputated limbs were simply a means to an end for them whereby they could sue, sue, sue and get piles of money by collecting 50% (or whatever outrageously high percentage) of whatever amount got awarded to you! They were obviously hoping and praying that loads and loads of people would have these horrendous side effects and life-ruining conditions so that they could cash-in on all of their misery! And from the guy’s voice, you could tell just how unscrupulous and immoral and greedy and crass this law firm was! Or so it seemed from this ad, anyway. He (the narrator: our identification figure for this spot) was simply giddy with greedy expectation of hopeful riches, and it showed in his performance! I mean, YUCK! I felt like I needed a shower just after seeing this ad one time! Ew! And it gets worse!
Oh yes, you read that correctly: it gets worse! For while the guy was narrating and ruining his part of the ad, the images on the screen were absolutely horrific! Yes, instead of listing the possible side effects, complications, and medical conditions resultant from this drug/procedure/whatever it was, they decided to show us! So there are what look like the worst, most graphic, nauseating, vomit-inducing images from photographs that appeared to be straight out of the “Disgusting Diseases Handbook” (if there was such a thing), and they get progressively worse and more un-look-at-able as they proceed along through this slide show of gross-out goodies. Oh, and the worse the pictures become, the more gleefully greedy the voice-over guy’s reading becomes, as if he sees more and yet more dollar signs and piles of cash with every increasing level they ramp up the disgustingness of the horribly stomach-churning images! It was truly the most tasteless thing I’ve ever seen on television; and that’s saying something!
But, oh God, how I wish I could find this commercial on the internet just so you all could see exactly what I’m talking about and how disgustingly seedy and unseemly it all seemed just from that guy’s voice, plus the horrible medical conditions they were attempting to get rich off of, not to mention the people they would be taking all that money from. These ads, in general, are not always evil and slippery-sounding/seeming. Some people actually are harmed by complication-prone pharmaceuticals, and when they are, there needs to be some mechanism by which they can get some compensation, assuming they didn’t abuse the drugs, etc. But the way it’s set up, the legal system simply encourages slippery, selfish lawyers to cash-in on these poor folks, taking up to half of the money they’re entitled to as a settlement! An ad for this kind of service should have a very caring and concerned-sounding narrator, and they should specifically say that this law firm actually cares about their clients, and to prove it, they will agree to only take 10-15% of what they end up winning for them, maximum! And of course the client should pay nothing if the lawyers don't win them a settlement! Then they should attract more clients and be able to do pretty well as a result. But with these greedy ambulance-chasers I see on TV all the time, trying to pressure people into suing over harmless stuff like Darvon: I mean, really! But this ad I’m writing about here, the single worst ad I’ve ever seen, makes even the worst ambulance-chaser ads seem like Wilford Brimley talking about oatmeal by comparison! (“It’s the right thing to do!”)
Seriously, in a world full of lame and just downright terrible, crappy, amateurish, clueless, etc., locally self-produced commercials for regional businesses, and “not available in stores” (Order now!), “now how much would you pay?”, “but wait: there’s more” ads, this one, singular spot, broadcast only once (from what I can tell) stands proudly above them all as the worst commercial I’ve ever seen! For real: you don’t know what you’re missing! It’s like the Weinergate or John Edwards scandal of ambulance-chaser “bad drug” ads! It’s such a classic, it would be perfect for inclusion in a black-comedy movie about corrupt, heartless lawyers. But this was no joke! This was, most likely, a serious attempt to win over clients and cash in on some tragic and hideous medical complications suffered by unfortunate regular people like you and me. And it’s outstanding awfulness towers above everything else due primarily to the fact that the ad probably honestly and accurately shows these lawyers’ actual attitude about this issue of what they can get out of other people’s suffering. (Cha-Ching! {<Cash register sound-effect.})
It seems to me that it must have been one of the lawyers themselves who did the voice-over for the ad as a cost-saving measure, as professional (or even amateur) voice actors would never fuck something up so badly as this! Imagine the worst possible way a guy could say: “Are you suffering from paralysis, limb amputation, (etc.)? Then call us now! We’ll get you the money you deserve! But act right now, as time is limited for us to get cash for your medical conditions! So call now!” Can you hear it in your head? Well, the real thing was way worse, I promise you! Especially how that gleefully greedy-sounding voice came across over those horrific medical photographs, it was simply unbelievable; like I said before: the absolute nadir of advertising! (And that copy text was just the best I could do to try to replicate what it was kind of like, but it was a lot more cynical and greedy-sounding than that, too! {I'm not exaggerating at all either!})
When you see an ad like this one, it does the exact opposite of what an ad is supposed to do: it turns you against the company or product being advertised! So that, I contend, actually would be counter-productive for the company running the commercial! Unless they’re already rich and don’t really need any more money, and they hate everyone and just want to really annoy people anyway; if that were the case, I would be forced to concede that this spot is an unqualified success. (OR, what I just thought of is that a company could make an ad like this about their competition to try to kill their business! That would be brilliant!* And I'll bet there are no laws against doing something like that, since they wouldn't actually be slandering them exactly, as it all would be technically accurate, and the bad stuff simply would be implied! Oh, I hope companies start doing this; just like what political ads do! Oh, the hilarity! It would be classic!)
* Actually, I just remembered one of my all-time favorite ads, and I think it kind-of uses this strategy! Check it out and see what you think. Does it sort-of smear the competition by telling the ugly truth about the product? (Actually, it's more the service they're going after here...) {But this is a great ad, not the awful one I've been writing about earlier.} Take a look:
