Catholic Church “The Picture of Dorian Gray” Ad (Proposed)

The Showtime series Penny Dreadful lumps lots of different classic horror characters into one horrible potpourri (like lots of other works do these days), and one of the characters we see again is Dorian Gray, from the Oscar Wilde novel. Well, seeing the beginning of the most recent episode of Penny Dreadful (I think it’s Episode 4) made me think of the sacrament of penance, or confession as it’s commonly known, and how it forgives one of sins, and what that might do to Dorian Gray’s portrait.

As we all know, Dorian Gray does not physically age and suffers no visible cosmetic corruption due to his sinful behavior, but his painted portrait ages and is visibly horribly corrupted by his cruelty and hedonistic lifestyle. But that’s because his sins weigh heavily upon him, as he does not seek absolution. But were he to go to church and to confession, maybe he could find salvation, and then perhaps his portrait could be brought back to looking like a normal portrait of him again. And so, it seems to me that this idea might make for a fun ad for the Catholic Church to try to lure cynics and/or hedonists back to the flock.

So here’s how an ad using this idea might work:

We see Dorian Gray at some hedonistic party (a tame one, for the TV version: just some drinking and drug use and some superficial sexual attraction stuff going on around him), and he’s bored and feeling empty. So he goes home, and we can see something is bothering him. He goes to look at his portrait, and it is distorted with sin and corruption, which concerns him. He looks troubled and pensive when he looks out of his window to see the cross on the top of a church steeple, and he gets an idea. And so we see Dorian Gray going into a nearly Catholic church, and he goes to confession. As he leaves the church, he looks as if a great weight has been lifted from his shoulders. Then we see him back at home, and he looks upon his portrait, and it looks normal again, showing he has been forgiven.

(BTW: I’m not Catholic, but I went to Catholic school, and I think this would work well as an outreach for the Church to people who may have been Catholic but left the Church and are now getting to the age where they’re looking for more spirituality and peace-of-mind. This is merely the presentation of an advertising concept, and not an attempt at proselytizing. This ad might work well for all Christian sects, but since confession is more of an overt act, and indeed a sacrament, in the Catholic Church, I thought it would work best for them.)

Jerk Chicken Ad

We see a chicken being a jerk to everyone, bullying people, pecking children and making them cry, slashing tires, spray-painting obscenities onto walls, etc. Then someone grabs the chicken by its neck, and we cut to a product shot of the delicious jerk chicken dish being advertised, and the announcer says: “We put only the jerkiest chickens in our Jerk Chicken.”

New Sargento Cheese Slogan?

Cheese, Greater.

Kraken World Cup Game Prediction Ad (Proposed)

I think most people remember Paul the Octopus, the German cephalopod from the 2010 World Cup who accurately predicted the outcome of Germany’s games and the final between Spain and Holland. Well, seeing as how the Kraken (the mascot for Kraken brand spiced rum) is a giant octopus, I thought it would make for a fun World Cup ad to show the kraken predicting the outcome of World Cup games this time around. The ad would show countries sending out old-style tall ships, two at a time, with their country’s flag flying on their ship, and the kraken would predict the winner of the game by attacking and sinking the ship from that country. (We would see this happen once per TV spot, with fictitious flags to represent fictitious countries, so as not to insult anyone specific.)

The commercial, if it were made, would be relatively simple to make, using something like Flash or After Effects to animate sepia pen & ink drawings like those used in the other ads for Kraken Spiced Rum.

I suggested this idea for the Euro 2012 tournament, but this year’s World Cup is where it would really work best.

Here’s my original post for this ad concept (for Euro 2012):

http://unconditionedresponse.blogspot.com/2012/06/kraken-spiced-rum-euro-2012-kraken-game.html

Game of Thrones Burger King Ad (Proposed)

Okay, last week I made fun of Burger King with a joke/proposed Game of Thrones-themed ad for White Castle, so now I'll make it up to Burger King by proposing a Game of Thrones-inspired ad concept for them.

So I was thinking that maybe this Burger King image is not badass enough anymore. Perhaps what they need is a new barbarian warrior king as a mascot, rather than the cartoonish medieval European one. So their new mascot could look like a Frank Frazetta painting of a tough guy warrior king, and he'd always have lots of delicious meat being barbecued on a spit over an open fire, and there would always be outdoor banquets and such, like the Dothraki in Game of Thrones.

And their premium meal would be the "Usurper's Supper".

Grab what it rightfully yours from the King: a Whopper and a goblet of Coke!

(And then we could take a tour through the Burger King's torture dungeon, and see what being "flame broiled" really means! {Yeeeeaaaarrrgghh!} And, naturally, Ronald McDonald is on the rack down there for displeasing the King with his "jest" of a hamburger.)

Fiat Godzilla Ad

Apparently, according to this ad, if you want to get eaten by Godzilla, you should buy a Fiat, because that’s what giant monsters want to eat. They’re like M&Ms and Skittles to giant monsters! (Although I heard Godzilla thought they were Minis, and he was so disgusted by the Fiat when he was expecting a Mini that he attacked the city and destroyed it. And that’s why he spits out the last Fiat at the end of the ad: because they taste lousy! {I guess Fiats are the Reese’s Pieces of cars.})

But whether you get eaten by Godzilla or what, you’ll definitely die in a Fiat!* That’s the message they’re trying to send with this ad; but they didn’t want to just come out and say it, so they used the Godzilla metaphor.

Here’s the consumed car commercial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKpzU2GSVC0

* (That certainly is what it looks like they’re trying to say with this commercial, doesn’t it? Unless you drive a yellow one, that is: then you get spit out, but usually from a much greater height. But this ad edits out the part where Godzilla uses his atomic ray breath to atomize the car after spitting it out; he almost always does that to the yellow ones I hear.)

Buick “Hmm” Ad

In this new ad for Buick, we see people who have bought new Buicks confuse their friends (who know they’ve bought a Buick) by showing up in a nice car.

Um, I’m not so sure the best advertising strategy is to say their new products don’t suck nearly as badly as their older ones did, but if that’s the direction they want to go in, um, okay… (As the title of this commercial states: “Hmm.”)

It is true that many American cars were pretty lame excuses for automobiles from around the mid 1970s until recently, so this strategy might work to get some interest for their cars after all by admitting the previous models were not so great due to laziness, overprotection by Congress (due to lobbying), cutting corners, mandates to use up their stock of old parts (which is exactly what the current GM ignition key recalls are all about: following old protectionist penny-pinching bad habits), etc.

But there’s just something about people in a Buick ad essentially saying: “I thought you bought a piece-of-sh!t Buick, and I don’t see a piece-of-sh!t car, so where are you?” that does not exactly inspire confidence in Buicks. But maybe that’s just me. (You know, most American cars were beautiful, cool, awesome, etc., from the early days until the early 1970s, so instead of insulting their brand by maligning all their previous cars, why not say instead that their new cars bring back the glory days of Buick, back when they were beautiful? That would essentially do the same thing strategy-wise, but without insulting the brand as undesirable. See what I mean?)

Here’s the questionable car commercial:

http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7SDn/2014-buick-lineup-hmm

And here are some old Buicks (These are definitely some gorgeous cars! An ad for new Buicks could show these and then show their new cars and say they’re keeping up the tradition of beautiful car design. Wouldn’t that work better for making Buicks seem desirable than this ad they’re currently running?):

http://carnewscafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/1938-buick-yjob-concept-large-1.jpg

http://www.hobbycar.com/MarkLobBuickSuper56.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/1959_Buick_Electra_225_Riviera_Sedan_wings.JPG

http://www.automobile-riekmann.at/verkauf/buick_riviera_gs_1967_rot_l.jpg

http://img005.lazycars.info/cars/buick_riviera_boattail/buick_riviera_boattail_boattail_78AHchL3.sized.jpg

http://www.midamericaauctions.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/133A_2-1971-Buick-Riviera-Boattail.jpg