This spot for Subway contains a moment where we see a silly fast food restaurant mascot, and the announcer says that mascots don’t make the food taste any better.
Yeah, you know, I think maybe that’s true. In fact, I remember recently where one fast food restaurant chain had some creepy pasty-faced mascot who allegedly lost a bunch of weight from eating the restaurant’s calorie bomb sandwiches, and after running what has to be the worst ad campaign of all time for like 15 years, it turned out that the mascot guy was a child molester, and because the ad campaign ran for so long, it allowed this pervert to become rich and famous, which enabled him to actually commit sex crimes against minors. (Ew!)
Yeah, you know, I think maybe that’s true. In fact, I remember recently where one fast food restaurant chain had some creepy pasty-faced mascot who allegedly lost a bunch of weight from eating the restaurant’s calorie bomb sandwiches, and after running what has to be the worst ad campaign of all time for like 15 years, it turned out that the mascot guy was a child molester, and because the ad campaign ran for so long, it allowed this pervert to become rich and famous, which enabled him to actually commit sex crimes against minors. (Ew!)
Oh, wait, that was Subway’s mascot, Jared, wasn’t it? And this is an ad for Subway, isn’t it? And by putting in the part about mascots in this ad, they actually remind us about their old mascot Jared and his crimes, don’t they?
And yes, I believe he did leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth, so I guess the point about mascots not making the food taste any better is true. But I would have thought they would want us to forget about their former mascot Jared. I guess not though, as that mascot reference sure reminds us of him. (Oops!)
It’s positively hilarious that this ad tries to distance Subway from mascots, as Jared was totally the Subway mascot for years and years.
Boy, that whole Jared thing must have been very humiliating for Subway. It’s kind of like if Ronald McDonald ended up getting caught with multiple bodies buried under his house like John Wayne Gacy or something. But they could have avoided it if they had ended that lame ad campaign featuring Jared after one cycle, rather than keeping it going year after year after year. And the message of that ad campaign was essentially to get us to want to be like Jared, because their sandwiches made him into the man he is today. It doesn’t seem like such a great message now.
I’m not sure this new Subway ad was supposed to make me think of all this stuff, but if it was, then a fine job indeed; otherwise, they might want to consider editing out that mascot part, as it reminds us of something perhaps they would prefer we forget. (But it’s just a suggestion…)
Here’s the mascot spot (actually called the “Founders” spot):
It’s funny, because this Subway ad has the exact same problem that the previous Toyota Tacoma ad I wrote about does: they both remind us of bad things about the company because of elements in the commercials: the mascot bit in the Subway ad reminds us of Jared, and the explosions in the desert in the Toyota ad remind us of the fact that most terrorists drive Toyota pickup trucks. I think ads really ought to avoid reminding us of these things, but maybe that’s impossible, and if so I guess they might as well own it and make fun of it.
