A man has his football buddies over to his house after
playing football together at a local park. The man tells his friends: “Let’s
have some rest and recreation.” They all drink shots, and then he sits down in
a recliner chair and falls asleep. He is awakened by the noise of his friends
trashing and breaking everything in sight, and shocked, he demands to know what
is going on. They say he said he wanted to “rest and wreck creation.” Then the
announcer says that it’s times like these where it’s comforting to know you
have a good homeowner’s insurance policy.
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Energizer EcoAdvanced “The Box” Ad
In this silly spot for Energizer EcoAdvanced batteries, a boy in a garage invents a cardboard box that “takes worn out things and makes them better”, and he demonstrates it to his friends by pushing in an old rusty tricycle that comes out the other end as a big honking three-wheeled motorcycle for the kids to illegally ride and kill themselves on. (It is running when it emerges from the cardboard box, generating toxic carbon monoxide fumes inside a garage where children are playing: very irresponsible!) Then the kids ask what else he’s got to use the machine on, and so the kid inserts an old plastic Apatosaurus (or Diplodocus, or some such dinosaur), and it bursts out the other side as an enormous, real live dinosaur, smashing through the garage roof and roaring at the children. Well, the children are suitably impressed until the dinosaur eats them, and the parents run outside to witness the costly devastation to their home, swearing vengeance upon their son in the form of a long, perhaps permanent grounding, but soon incur the wrath of the dinosaur, which eats them too. And now, with a taste for human flesh and a penchant for destroying buildings, the dinosaur goes on a rampage, destroying the city. And the army would intervene and kill the dinosaur like in 1950s sci-fi/horror movies, but animal rights protesters show up and form a human chain to protect the beast as it decimates the country’s population and devastates the nation’s buildings and infrastructure. And it’s all been made possible by Energizer’s new EcoAdvanced batteries! Yea! And, um; oh, the humanity?
Oh, wait; um, I think I got carried away there, and the dinosaur only ruins the kid’s home and roars at the kids. Or at least that’s all we’re allowed to see before the inevitable monster movie-style rampage. (I have seen the 1925 silent movie The Lost World, so I am familiar with this type of scenario.) Oh, and the kid being grounded for life, if not disowned altogether for destroying the family home.
Actually, the spot is fun and whimsical, but it seems a bit destructive too. Will the Energizer batteries, after they emerge from the box, become giant monster batteries that shoot electricity and kill by high voltage electrocutions? That would be awesome. (Can your battery do that? Oh, wait; that might be another company’s slogan.)
In the next ad in this campaign, the kid should put a plastic T Rex through the box and make a giant pet T Rex he uses to eat all the kids who bully him by calling him a nerd and a geek for all the groundbreaking scientific research he is doing in his garage. Oh, and have it attack the city too, I suppose…
Here’s the advanced Apatosaurus ad:
Pepsi “Say Hello to My Little Friend” Billboard Ad
Seemingly for months there has been a billboard ad at the corner of Hollywood and Highland in Hollywood showing a small can of Pepsi being served on a silver platter underneath the headline: “Say hello to my little friend.”
So, are they trying to convey the idea that drinking soda is dangerous to our health? I only ask because the line: “Say hello to my little friend” is well known to come from the movie Scarface, and it is in reference to an enormous gun Al Pacino uses to maim and kill people. And so destruction and death is what this quote makes me think of, which then gets me thinking of the possible relationship a soda like Pepsi might have to death, and then I think about obesity and diabetes, etc. So while it’s catchy, I’m not sure the Scarface quote is the best idea to describe a food or drink.
But maybe other people do not have the same types of flights of fancy I have when seeing this Scarface quote used in reference to Pepsi. And like I said, it definitely catches people’s attention, mostly due to the movie connection we’re (mostly) all so familiar with.
This is the killer Pepsi billboard ad:
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Beano Post-Fartum Depression Ad (Joke/Proposed)
A woman is sitting around, hanging out with her friends, when she audibly lets out a fart, the smell of which drives her friends away, leaving her sitting alone and sad. Then the announcer says that gas can drive people away, leaving you lonely and depressed, so to avoid this condition, which is known scientifically as post-fartum depression, take Beano.
Omega Watch “The Omega Man” Ad (Joke/Proposed)
In this
joke/proposed ad for Omega watches, we see Charlton Heston (or a reasonable
facsimile) as The Omega Man, and he’s driving around post-apocalyptic
Los Angeles, and he’s getting supplies and such, and he’s trying to find the
last uninfected woman in the city (she’s hiding in a building or something),
and he’s so busy that he doesn’t notice that the sun is going down and
nighttime is falling, so soon the city will be infested with vampiric hordes.
And once it’s too late for him to escape during the light of day, he looks down
at his watch, and it has stopped, whereupon he gets swarmed by vampires and has
to fight his way out (unsuccessfully). Then the announcer chimes in, saying:
“Even if you’re the last man on Earth, you still need an accurate, reliable
watch; it might be later than you think!”
(This is mainly a
joke ad, but it could actually make for a fun Halloween or horror-themed ad for
Omega watches if the company were game enough to try it.)
This is The Omega Man:
(The 1964 Vincent Price movie The
Last Man on Earth, an earlier version of The Omega Man, was on TCM today, and it made me think of this ad idea.)
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Star Kist Tuna Creations “Lunch Wish” Ad
This new Star Kist TV spot is pretty cute, using the animated Charlie the Tuna as a spokesman, suggesting to two young women that they try the Star Kist Tuna Creations for a lively lunch.
After our heroines wish their salads were better, Charlie swims up to them in the air like the big monster bee hallucination that kid had in the hospital in the disaster movie The Swarm, and he does his little ad pitch. We can tell these young women are tripping on LSD because they smile and giggle, rather than screaming in terror and attacking Charlie with their forks. Or, wait; maybe we know they’re not on acid because they don’t panic and attack their fishy hallucination.
This ad approach is better than what they did a couple of years ago, when Charlie was shown in a TV spot to be the chef who created these dishes. That’s not the best idea due to the original Star Kist ad campaign where Charlie is shown to be a liar and con man with certifiably bad taste. (I covered this issue in earlier posts, listed below.) But he was always very enthusiastic about Star Kist tuna products, and so here as a pitchman suggesting we try them he fits the bill quite effectively. And Charlie the Tuna is a well-established and well-liked corporate mascot, so it’s fun to bring him back (so long as he is neither cooking, nor bodily in, the food himself).
I guess Charlie is lucky he doesn’t taste good himself, or those hungry lunchers might have gone at him with their forks and knives for some impromptu extra fresh sashimi.
Here’s the tuna creation commercial:
Here are my earlier posts about Charlie the Tuna as a chef:
http://unconditionedresponse.blogspot.com/2011/04/sorry-charlie.html
You know, those young women are lucky the Wishmaster didn't show up to grant their wish.
You know, those young women are lucky the Wishmaster didn't show up to grant their wish.
Northrop Grumman Hangar Ad
This ad for Northrop Grumman, the airplane manufacturer and
defense contractor (Why do they have a TV spot? It’s not like we can just go
have them design and build a stealth fighter for us, the TV watching public.),
really reminds me of a luxury car commercial. We see a series of beautifully
designed, innovative airplanes, and then some pilot walks up to one under a
cover, and he smiles, anticipating the wonder with which he will admire this
new aircraft. And then we see a splash screen for Northrop Grumman. It’s a pretty effective ad for the company.
But usually this kind of approach would be used in some braggadocio
luxury car commercial, where after seeing a series of amazing stealth aircraft we’d
see the cover pulled off of the new groundbreaking example of engineering, and
it would just be some luxury sedan that has no apparent relationship to the
design of the cutting-edge technology that was displayed before it as though the
car were the culmination of the same technological advancement, even though it
clearly isn’t, and in fact isn’t even related whatsoever in the manner of
transportation (What does the design of a sedan have to do with developing the
technology of stealth bombers?) or the manufacturer that makes it.
So in this case we get surprised when we find out that this
ad actually is not giving us a twist at the end to try to ride on the coattails
of military aircraft technology; the military aircraft technology is what they’re advertising. I just don’t
know why a defense contractor would need to (or even want to) run ads on TV.
Wow, I hope this ad does not give away any military aircraft
design technology to our enemies in the same way all those TV shows on Discovery
and TLC reveal all the design secrets of current stealth aircraft so our
enemies can build them too (as they are currently doing).
Here’s the stealthy spot:
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