Remember the Mayhem guy for Allstate Insurance? I am on
record here on this blog saying I think that mascot character is one of the
best advertising things I have ever seen. And I still mean that. And I like it
so much, I think it could be applied to another product: paper towels. I mean,
sure it would not be the Mayhem guy exactly, but it’s a very similar idea, and
the character would be called: “Hot Mess”.
We all know the expression: “Hot Mess”, do we not? And what
do paper towels clean up? Messes! And what kind of people do we want to see on
TV? Hot ones! And so: “Hot Mess”!
It would be a super hot woman or man who shows up at
someone’s house and always knocks everything over, spills stuff, etc. And
everyone sees them coming, and they say: “Look out, here comes the hot mess!”
And they show up and make a mess, and then the paper towels clean up the hot
person’s messes.
See what I mean?
I was thinking there could be an ad campaign for, oh, I
don’t know, maybe Bounty paper towels (?) where a bunch of women are getting
together for a night out on the town, and then one woman shows up, dents a car,
trips over a sprinkler, accidentally kicks a dog or cat, and then rings the
doorbell, and they all roll their eyes and say: “Here comes the hot mess!” And
of course, once she comes in, she tosses her purse down on the kitchen counter,
and it knocks over someone’s coffee or tea, and then the woman who owns the
house hands her some paper towels to clean it up with, which she does, but then
she tries to throw them into the trashcan, but she misses, and that leaves
another mess on the floor. And then she goes to pick it all up, but she knocks
over the trashcan with her head, and the trash all spills out onto the floor,
and she says: “Sorry. No, I got this.” And then we see hands handing out more
and more paper towels, and we see, in time lapse photography, the roll of paper
towels getting smaller and smaller.
And I know what you’re thinking. Yes, because I live in
California. And you know if they made this ad, someone would complain that why
is it a woman who is the klutz? That’s so sexist! (Etc. You know the drill.)
And of course the company would kowtow to them, sending out some ass-kissing
apology press release, and then conservatives would boycott that paper towel
brand for caving to the political correctness, etc. Oh, but there’s actually a
solution! (No, really, there is. {Sorry, eternally enraged protester
wannabes.})
Yes, that’s right: make TWO (That’s right: TWO!) “Hot Mess”
ad mascots. And they’re both women! Just kidding! One is a woman, and the other
one’s a man. (That’s right: A MAN! In an advertisement about paper towels!
Maybe it should be for Brawny?) And so in this one, some woman is dating a
really hot man, but he is a klutz and spills everything. Or else her daughter
is dating some hot meathead jock guy or something, and whenever he comes over,
he spills/knocks over everything, but it’s no worry, because of the paper
towels! And when they finally get so fed up of him ruining their home that they
kill him, they clean up the blood with the paper towels too and get away with
it!
See? They really do clean up all your messes!
And as a tag, in the ad without the killing part, two women
leave the woman’s house who is dating the “Hot Mess”, and one says to the
other, after witnessing him make mess after mess: “Why does she see that guy?”
And the other woman says: “Well, he is hot, and she does have (brand of paper
towels)!”
Then the announcer says: “If you’re going to make a mess, it
might as well be a hot mess!” (<That’s a joke slogan, by the way.)
But the ad mascot could be anyone. It doesn’t have to be the
same character in every ad. All you’d need to do is have a situation where
someone says: “Uh, oh: Here comes the hot mess!” And we’d know who the hot mess
is. So it could be a man, a woman, a boy, a girl, straight, gay, trans,
whatever you want. And that way nobody could get offended. I mean, except
intolerant people. But they will be offended no matter what you do, so fuck
them: there’s only so much you can do.
(BTW: The greatest TV ad of all time that I have seen is
that Little Caesars Vegetarian Society “Meatsa Meatsa” ad from the 1990s. But
someone complained that it was offensive, so they pulled the spot. (!!!) You
know what I think they should have done? I think they should have run an ad
afterwards saying someone complained about their ad so they would like to
extend a heartfelt: “Fuck You!” to people who were offended. And had they done
that, I think people would have made Little Caesars the #1 pizza chain in
America for a while just based on that pushback against whiners. And maybe we would
not have this pernicious, parasitic PC culture we find ourselves in now.
Someone has to take a stand on this, and Bill Maher, as much as I love him,
doesn’t really make that much of a cultural difference. When a big company
tells the whiners to fuck off and their business goes up, then we will win the
war for free speech in Amercia. Because after all, after Citizen’s United,
money = speech. {Don’t blame me for that: Contact your local United States
Supreme Court! And bitch at them})
