The Moderator (The Superhero)

Yes, it's The Moderator, manipulator of extremists and accomplisher of compromises! In these days of attack ads, hate speech and poisonous political propaganda, our hero mediates, minimizes malicious misinformation, and maintains mild-mannered messaging to make a most manageable meeting of minds. His super powers prevent partisanship, flatten fanatics, reign in radicals, and weaken wing nuts. Whenever things get too intense, extreme and divisive, our hero mellows them out and attains accord. It's the savior we need to moderate our debates and mitigate our discord, it's The Moderator: superhero of moderation!

Geico Mad Max Ad (Proposed)

The Geico gecko seems to speak with an Australian accent, and when I saw Mad Max recently, all the car chases and auto wrecks made me think of car insurance, while the Australian accents reminded me of the Geico gecko. So I thought it might be fun to have a Max Mad-themed Geico ad. So here’s how it might work:

We’d see the Geico gecko in one of those Mad Max police muscle cars, and the gecko could say: “I’m here down under with some local highway patrol officers to show how important driver safety is. My guide here, um, Max, I think his name is, is going to show us how to drive responsibly.” And just then, Nightrider and his motorcycle gang buddies speed past, trying unsuccessfully to run the police car off the road, and causing an accident on the road ahead. Well, this makes Max mad, and he goes in hot pursuit, at ridiculously high speeds, causing deadly crashes when he catches the bad guys, and indirectly causing multiple fender-benders and such in the process as collateral damage. And so our gecko mascot concludes that while safe driving is very important, you can’t always count on it saving you, because you cannot control the actions of others. And so it is even more important to have reliable car insurance to protect you from unforeseen accidents.

Oh, and in this ad, we see Max’s coworker “The Goose”, and this time he’s a real goose driving a police muscle car.

(There’s a new Max Mad sequel coming soon, so this could be a tie-in ad.)

How to Train Your Dragon 2 Ads

I haven’t seen any ads for How to Train Your Dragon 2 yet, but my last post was about using sequel numbers in movie ads that feel forced and don’t work, and here’s actually an example of a movie sequel whose name actually would work for such a thing. All they’d have to do is show a series of vignettes (possibly of things not even in the actual movie) showing different things you could train your dragon to do, and say: Come see How to Train Your Dragon 2, and learn How to Train Your Dragon 2: fetch, How to Train Your Dragon 2: barbecue. (Etc.) Except that it would all simply be spoken, so you wouldn’t have the awkwardness of the forced number thingy, since 2 and ‘to’ sound the same. And this would hammer the title of the film into people’s heads in making legitimate points about why someone might want to see the movie.

Anyway, I’m sure they will do this sort of thing with some of the marketing materials for How to Train Your Dragon 2, or else they will miss out on one of the only times this sort of thing would actually work well, as opposed to be embarrassing.

Trans4mers?

Sometimes movie sequel ads playfully (but usually annoyingly) try to incorporate the sequel number into places it doesn’t really work, so I was expecting Transformers 4 to use Transfourmers, or Trans4mers, but I haven’t seen it yet. All I’ve seen is a transformers face graphic with the left side a number 4. But come on! The movie will be bad, so why not have the advertising match?

Yahoo! Survey Pop-Up Ad

Anytime I try to look at anything on Yahoo! these days, a small pop-up window appears in front of what I’m trying to look at asking me to do some Yahoo! survey. I don’t want to do a survey, and even if I did, I would refuse to do it if it were advertised using a pop-up window, as I set my browser to block pop-up ads, and yet Yahoo! is doing it anyway despite knowing I do not wish it. And because I won’t do the damn survey, every single blasted page I open that’s affiliated with Yahoo! has this damn pop-up window appear, which can be multiple times per day.

This is insufferable! Not only have they taken away the option to ask the website not to follow us, which I already know they disregarded and followed us anyway because online ads I saw would change based upon things I searched for or looked at, meaning they were clearly following me anyway, or allowing someone else to do it without my knowledge or consent, but now they’re annoying their users with pop-up windows that nag us until we consent to do what they want us to do.

This site is becoming fascist and annoying. If they keep this up, loyal users really might be encouraged to fly the coop and go elsewhere: I hope they’re aware of that. And I also hope they’re aware that a lot of their users are people like me who use it out of habit, and would be happy to continue to do so unless we’re chased away with the type of loathsome tactics they are currently employing.

When are websites going to recognize that harassing and annoying their visitors is not a good strategy for obtaining interest and goodwill? It’s lazy and it’s counter-productive. And it’s obnoxious and detestable. So I hope they will wake the hell up and stop it. Remember: you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. And you lose friends when you nag them to death and try to force them to do things against their will.

What they ought to do, if they want us to do the survey, is advertise it in a banner ad across the top and say they would like our input if we would be interested in having our voices heard: that way it would feel like an invitation and make us feel important, rather than being a bothersome nagging experience that rubs us the wrong way. It’s similar to previews on DVDs/BluRays: some discs lock viewers into watching all of the previews at the beginning, before even allowing us to get to the menu. Well, everyone I know hates that, and imagine if you bought the disc, and you had to watch all of the previews every single time: it would feel like torture! But, on the other hand, if you offer the previews as a special feature, people want to watch them, and it feels like a gift. See the difference? Presentation has everything to do with making something seem desirable, and with the wrong presentation, even something desirable can seem like an imposition, or worse, an affront, or an attack.

Floki Cosmetics

The History Channel show Vikings is very popular, and everyone I know is crazy about it. And that being the case, shouldn’t they market some Vikings branded products? And if they’re going to market products from Vikings, what better place to start than cosmetic products? There are so many possibilities, from Ragnar hair clippers to Snake-in-the-Eye contact lenses, and of course, Floki eye makeup.

Hey, ladies (and gentlemen): want to get striking looks and fierce, ferocious, fashionable eyes like Floki? Then you need genuine Floki Brand eye makeup! Inspire fear in your enemies and get the gods on your side with killer eyes that will really get you noticed! That’s Floki eye makeup: Floki Eyeliner, Floki Mascara, Floki Eye Shadow: ask for it by name at cosmetics retailers near you!

In an ad for Floki eyeliner, the announcer says: “Flirt with Floki eyes!” Then we see a few beautiful women models with eye makeup exactly like Floki’s, and we see the words: “Flovely! Fluscious! Floki!” And then some famous handsome movie star, like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise, says: “I want a Floki femme fatale!”

Scotchgard Presents: The Muddy Study Buddy (Proposed Scotchgard Ad)

In this proposed ad for Scotchgard, a family’s daughter has a study buddy come over to work on some school project, but because he’s a sports player, and it’s wet outside, he shows up all covered in mud, and he tracks it all over the carpet, gets it on the couch when he sits down, etc. And what a mess he leaves! Wow, the parents say, what a good thing it is that they used Scotchgard on their carpets and furniture! Luckily for them the mud does not stain, and it just vacuums right up, thanks to Scotchgard! (And in a little animated vignette to show us how Scotchgard works, we see a Scotchgard mascot*, a Scottish Royal guard, fighting dirt and stains off of surfaces, defending anything treated with Scotchgard from stains, using one of those Scottish polearms to repel the stains.)

* This Scotchgard mascot idea is from an earlier post of mine, found here:

http://unconditionedresponse.blogspot.com/2012/06/scotchgard-mascot.html