Did You Get My Message About My Yogurt Luv?

One of my many pet peeves in modern advertising is when a commercial adds, for no reason, a newfangled techie element... every now and then, you'll see an actor in a commercial, apropos of nothing, messing around with a touch screen, or utilizing a smart phone app, or, in an annoying new ad for Dannon, texting...



It seems every suburban housewife ever is so enamored of Dannon Pure yogurt that they need to text insipid messages of yogurt "luv" the minute their family cracks into a six pack of live culture dairy goodness. As they ignore their families and sport looks of contentment and relief, the matriarchs of many households bash away on their phone keypads, belching iPhone-like text bubbles into the air with sad little blurbs about how incredible it is that even their "hubby" "luvs" this fucking yogurt. Who are they writing to? Who could possibly care? How tiny have their worlds become?! The conceit is dumb, of course, but it's advertising... I get it. It would be odd if, while their families slurped down cup after cup of Dannon Pure, Mom was texting her pals about last night's episode of "The Good Wife." But why are the characters in the ad texting at all?!

It strikes me as a very Poochie concept... Poochie, of course, being the hip new dog character added to "Itchy & Scratchy" on "The Simpsons" by a committee of out-of-touch corporate a-holes. When the whole premise of your ad is built around the idea of texting, and that's it, it just feels like a bunch of suits with no creativity, humor or intelligence stared at the contents of their pockets until coming up with a text message based spot. No effort was put into the messages and no connection was made between the premise and the product... In 1894, the ad would have consisted of a bunch of ladies typing out stupid Morse code yogurtisms on telegraphs... in 2039, they will be telepathically spreading the hot news of how much their cyberhubby luvs his nanoyogurt. It's just such a time capsule... a weird attempt to exploit something that's part of our lives, but not quite a fad... But, I suppose it's not like most yogurt ads are aiming for timelessness.

Also, the song kind of sucks.

Now excuse me while I text everybody I know, "My whole family h8s this stupid commercial."

The Cheesesmith Will Touch You And You Will Not Like It

There is a sort of mini-trend in advertising, now, to be as bizarre as possible, drawing people into some twisted little universe of non-sequiters and oddball characters in order to sell, say, Skittles or Burger King flame broiled burgers. And sometimes, those ads are amusing... "Hit me again, Tube Sock," still makes me laugh when I see it or think of it... in fact, I'm laughing right now. "Ha ha!" I'm saying, aloud, as I think about an old guy demanding tongue shocks from anthropomorphic hosiery.

Weirdness, however, is an art, not a science... Why one weird thing can be delightful while another weird thing can just be a total drag is kind of a mystery, but I think a lot of it has to do with the very subjective sense that the weirdness hinted at in the ad is part of a larger picture, and not the tossed off whim of an ad exec trying to be hip. I know I'm thinking about this far deeper than is necessary, but the best weird ads tend to build little pocket dimensions of oddness, where there's a sort of parallel reality to the situation... Skittles ads, especially, tend to do this well, and for a brief moment, I'm drawn into the world of the boy with the Skittles tree growing from his abdomen. I think, too, that the seeming simplicity of weirdness tends to attract a host of imitators, folks who think creating a memorable surreal moment is easy as just stringing together nonsense... Velveeta's "Wield The Skillet" ads prove that good weirdness isn't easy to come by...



Again, there's a relatively high production value to the Wield The Skillet ads, meaning that thought and effort went into these unpleasant little films. The skillet wielding... blacksmith? Goldsmith? Cheesesmith? is a totally off putting presence... He appears from nowhere, dirty and disheveled and incongruously pompous by way of overwrought dialog. He has the unnerving power of slipping into women's imaginations, dragging them to a dark, medieval workshop and recreating the sexy pottery wheel scene from "Ghost" in an incredibly skeevy manner. These women, by the way, never seem seduced by the Cheesesmith, but always leave the encounter shaken and scared. While that's certainly logical, given the predicament, it seems like a bad way to sell macaroni and cheese, unless the goal is to get consumers to just make the damn stuff before having to be "persuaded" to do so by a time traveling, working class frotteur.

Also, a good rule of thumb for any food ad is to make the food being advertised seem palatable. Does equating Velveeta to a liquified metal and then showing a flood of neon-yellow, wholly manufactured cheese-like-product attacking some poor noodles really accomplish that? It does not.

The commercial definitely attempts to mine our ceaseless appetite for the bizarre, but fails spectacularly. It doesn't help that this creepy dude keeps reappearing in ad after ad after ad. Weird characters, when they work, work best as one offs... nothing dulls the sense of oddness not like repetition. So it would be wise, for so many reasons, to retire the Cheesesmith as soon as possible.

It's Really NOT Time To Get Real About What Happens In The Bathroom

Let me start by saying I HATE the Charmin Bears. I hate them with a passion. I hate them so, so much. The "Enjoy The Go" campaign is one of the worst things ever unleashed upon mankind... just beneath The Black Plague and just above Carlos Mencia.

I think this Quilted Northern ad is a response to the cringe-inducing bear-shit antics of Charmin's colored pencil ursine toilet paper consumers.



Quilted Northern, after speaking to women nationwide (portrayed in the ad by disclaimer-noted actresses standing on a map of the United States (to indicate, I suppose, which nation Quilted Northern's nationwide interviews took place in)) decided to FINALLY get real about what happens in the bathroom. That's right... the women of America (portrayed by actresses) are SICK AND TIRED of toilet paper commercials not even mentioning that we don't actually want fecal matter on our hands after wiping up. When will toilet paper companies realize that American women have no desire to watch adorable cartoon bears talk about paper schnibbles left behind on furry haunches? No, dammit, they want to hear about clean. Clean! Clean! Toilet paper is about feeling clean. Nobody wants to talk about it, but, by God, our toilet paper makers have been silent on the topic of shitfinger for too long.

Luckily, these actresses are finally steering the country in the right toilet paper advertising direction... Why, just a few years ago, Quilted Northern had fallen into the terrible trap of cartoony advertising.



The adorable quilters in the old Quilted Northern ads never once mention how well their quilted product will hold up to a big soppy mess in your backside. And this, of course, would have made the women of America apoplectic with rage.

Everybody's Laughing... But It's Derisive, Hollow Laughter

In my mind, a crappy commercial that has horrible production values is wholly superior to the well-produced, high budget commercial that still sucks. When a bad commercial looks bad and seems rushed and doesn't make sense, it's at least partly because of circumstance. Local commercials often fall into this trap... a lack of money leads to a lack of resources making the ad, and BAM! It's a suckfest.

But when a national commercial comes on, and it's well done, well directed, looks great and somehow manages to be full of poor decisions, it's a complete failure. The Honey Bunches of Oats' (herein abbreviated "HoBO") "Sunshine Day" ad is one of these ads.



Look at the resources that went into making this steaming pile of maggot buffet. There's a whole cast of dancing actors! Candy colored sets! A licensed (awful) song! This little film is the dedicated result of a whole lot of work by a whole lot of people, and it's terrible. And that makes me so mad.

The concept behind the ad is suspect from the start... something about the community of folks who enjoy HoBO having a sunnier, more positive outlook than the rest of us downtrodden Frosted Flakes lovers, and how they realize that the most important meal of the day can also be the most fun. Sure. I love the idea of some ad dude pitching this asinine idea to the HoBO execs. "What makes HoBO different from all other flake based cereals? Optimism!" SOLD.

Two of the decisions in filming totally stymy me... first, the second actor featured is obviously a horrifying, suburban serial killer sociopath. Look at his dead eyes and his ridiculously frightening grin. Some casting director PICKED that freak to be the face of HoBO. Second: the choir of triplets. That scene had to be story boarded and designed explicitly. "I feel like something's missing from this grating, sugar coated nightmare... I know! Identical triplets!"

But even if you remove ugly Ted Bundy and the Sisters Three, the commercial still presents a grotesque funhouse version of what ad execs consider "happiness." It's over the top, but not in a knowing way or a funny way... more like in a desperate way. Licensing a campy song, like this molding owl pellet from the Brady Bunch and playing it mostly straight seems like a willful act of obliviousness regarding our extremely cynical, extremely ironic culture. It's not sincere enough to be sweet or winking enough to be good... it's trapped somewhere in between. And when you tally up the hours that went into making this suburban freakshow, it's both depressing and enraging.

Oh, Hi, Eskimo. Here's Some Mall Water

For some reason Brita seems to have allowed nary of trace of their Brita Bottle Eskimo commercial anywhere on the interwebs... perhaps they should extend that tactic to television.

This confusing spot opens with a shot of an Eskimo drinking some water from his cupped hands dipped into a crystalline blue ocean. Suddenly, for some reason, some schlubby lady comes bounding toward him through the ice and snow of the arctic. She, of course, has a Brita Bottle full of filtered water from a drinking fountain at the mall. The Eskimo drinks it. He is delighted.

I guess the gist is that this Inuit gentleman, used to the pristine waters of the arctic, is still impressed by the taste of gross old mall water, as long as it's been Brita-filtered. But, ocean water, even when fed by the global-warming decimated ice caps, is still filled with ick. I'll bet Joe Eskimo, here, accustomed to the whale-sweat and polar bear urine infused water of the Arctic Ocean would be thrilled by taste of mall water, even if it was straight out of the tap. A nice filtration might help, sure, but even the worst drinking fountain is probably innately superior to the watery mating grounds of the king crab.

And why, exactly, is this woman so excited to hand out filtered water to whatever indigenous person she discovers in the tundra? Where did she come from? Why isn't she dressed appropriately for the weather? Doesn't she think the Inuit hunter/gatherer might be even more impressed by a shopping mall, itself, instead of purified water from its drinking fountains?

Why Are These People Talking Like Children??

I dislike when commercials have their own mythology, a back story you need to know to understand the ad. I'm not saying that can't be a clever conceit, but in general, it supposes a knowledge of the commercial's universe that I don't usually possess.

I don't know if that's the case with the Subway "Adults Talk Like Kids Where Subway Sub Sandwiches Are Involved" series of ads or not... I've seen several of these commercials and I always feel like I'm missing a key component. Namely: why the hell do these adults have kids' voices? Are Subway subs so delicious that they make you feel young at heart? Do they hearken back to our youths, when girls would feign affection for us just to get our lunches? Are Todd and Sally beneficiaries of Zoltar's magic? I don't understand. And I don't understand why this is supposed to make me want to eat at Subway.



But maybe there's some central joke here that I'm totally missing... some overarching pun or cleverness that I missed out on because, perhaps, I never saw the first installment of the series in which children are magically transformed into gorgeous blond chicks and doofy looking dudes and forced to get menial office jobs where they treat mediocre sandwiches like engagement rings? I'm pretty sure, though, it was probably an attempt to come up with an original twist on those creepy-ass talking baby commercials. "Instead of a baby with a grown up voice, wouldn't it be funny if adults had little kid voices?" "OH MY GOD! HILARIOUS! LET'S SHOEHORN IT INTO A COMMERCIAL!" And then, from there, it delighted people nationwide and they decided to turn it into an ongoing series. And all of us suffer.