jtherkal: The only things certain in life are death and taxes. The premise of this seems like it should be funny, but for some reason the ad doesn’t pay off. And the focus of this is on someone else, not on H&R Block. I also don’t like Death’s voice in this. Average. C.
sjbooher: I like everything about it, including when Death tells the guy he’ll seem in 8 days, and the dumb parking validation joke. Good work. A.
jtherkal: Ha! Her mouth goes bouncing down that hill so he doesn’t have to listen to her nag anymore. Then she puts in her mean eyes. We can relate to that, can’t we fellas, huh? Bitches be talkin’. I like Mr. Potatohead and I like this. A.
sjbooher: Kind of good. But didn’t the brakes save the potatoes and not the tires? Whatever. C.
sjbooher: Who knew I would like this? I don’t really like Conan, but this is pretty funny. Of course, the Conan parts do not make me laugh, but the pedestrian at the end doing the robot and imitating Conan, that makes me laugh. But I still don’t know what this ad is for. Is it for Conan? C for Conan.
jtherkal: Oh, wait, you mean everyone saw that ad? Even though they said it would only be in Sweden? Conan should have kept not doing ads. F.
Sony Bravia “Domino City” from Film Construction on Vimeo.
sjbooher: You know you love, jtherkal. Gush away.
jtherkal: Gush? Gush? While I do love the Sony Bravia ad series (bunnies & balls), I’m certainly not required to like all of the ads. Your gripe was that only people watching on HDTV would appreciate the vivid color in these spots. My love for them came from the life and beauty, which when viewed in HD really is great. This one misses the mark. I don’t feel inspired when I see this. The song makes me want to go to sleep and I don’t really care if I ever see this again, in HD or not HD. They’re trying to force more great spots out of the formula established by balls and bunnies, and it just doesn’t work this time. Sorry to disappoint you, C.
sjbooher: Throughout his campaign, one aspect of Obama’s personality that has really struck me, is his ability to take the high road. McCain and his party have continually done the opposite of that, attacking Obama at any and every point. With this ad, criticizing McCain for criticizing Obama… has Barack decided stop turning the other cheek? It’s somewhat disappointing but I guess inevitable. Let mud slinging begin. All-in-all this ad is straightforward, standard and boring, and I have never met anyone who changed their mind about presidential candidates, so I’m not even sure if these things work. C.
jtherkal: This ad had the proportions wrong. 80% should have been focused on the last part, where he calls out McCain’s history of voting with Bush; 20% on McCain’s smear ads. It seems hypocritical to run a smear ad about your opponent running smear ads. Instead, Obama could have simply corrected all of McCain’s misinformation. That would both point out that McCain runs deceptive ads AND show you the positive things Obama stands for. If you’re going to take the moral high road, you can’t be pulling stunts like this. This isn’t change. D for disappointed.
In related news, there was something in the paper this morning about the absurd amount of money spent on political advertising. I have to agree that the whole thing gets a bit ridiculous. In my opinion, political ads are never really about the issues (and if they are, there is generally some sort of false spin on them) and they should be outlawed. Leave the campaigning to the hippie tree-huggers with buttons and bible-toting pro-lifer’s bumper stickers.
jtherkal: Following the growing trend of pulling seemingly “offensive” advertising, Verizon yanked this off the air after getting pressure from PETA and other animal-rights groups, who claim the commercial promoted animal cruelty. They went on to explain “that chained dogs are deprived of social interaction and forced to endure weather extremes, adding that the spot perpetuated stereotypes against pit bulls as a violent breed.” Hmmm, you know what else perpetuates those stereotypes? When pit bulls eat people. The only thing offensive about this ad is that it royally sucks. Maybe that’s why they took it off the air. F.
sjbooher: I’ll never understand the concept of spending ones time saving dogs when there’s poverty and inhumane conditions for HUMANS in our own backyards, but that’s just me — call me crazy. So with that being said, I obviously do not find this ad offensive. I do not think this ad is that bad, either. That guy wants to touch that phone, and he’s willing to risk life and limb to do it. The best part? Even though he appears at the end, that dumb “network” guy doesn’t talk and his time is limited. I will say this spot has the “feel” of the Boost mobile brand, to me… if I didn’t know which provider it was for, that would have been my guess. C.
FREE MIKE VICK!!!!!!!!!!!
sjbooher: Well looky there… that spider done built itself a shoe web. Well I’ll be gosh-darned tootin’. I get it and everything… and it’s visually pleasing, but still kind of boring. It borders dangerously close to AEM. C.
jtherkal: You’ve lost your mind. Spiders = awesome. A.
jtherkal: This ad makes me want to throw up. I hate hate hate that spike-haired guy, who is supposedly some sort of chef. DOUCHE. His name is GUY. Guy!? The only person, ever, in the history of the world who should be named Guy is that muppet, Guy Smiley.
After that they should have retired the name forever. I want to like TGIFridays ads, because I love TGIFridays. Their BBQ burger is awesome. They have the best French onion soup I’ve ever had–and I’ve had a lot of French onion soups. But having that guy, Guy, talk to me turns my stomach. Yuck. F.
sjbooher: This “guy” is sort of annoying to me, but I am not on the Hate Train. This series of ads aired non-stop during the NCAA tournament, and my wife was constantly talking about Friday’s, as a result. If we lived anywhere near a Friday’s, this would have for sure fallen into the Ads That Work category. Beyond spike head, this is your average restaurant ad. They do a good job of showing mouth-watering food, and infusing their brand with the red-and-white stripe background. C.
P.S. I didn’t recognize him, but I guess Guy Fieri is a TV personality. You learn something new everyday…
jtherkal: With the whole Arthur-Anderson-renamed-Accenture sneaky marketing move gone and all but forgotten, Accenture has moved on to further disgrace themselves by creating terrible ads. I see the logic they’re using: Tiger Woods is good at golf, businessmen like golf, so let’s put Tiger and golf and business together. Their line “Go on, be a Tiger” makes me throw up in my mouth, and the new line “We know what it takes to be a Tiger” is almost as bad. They force fit their message clumsily into images of Tiger golfing, resulting in an embarassing, pun-filled, hack-job campaign.
The only redeeming value is that this campaign gave birth to one of my favorite advertising stories. I know two of the creatives who were unfortunate enough to work on it. Unhappy as they were to be strapped with the assignment of writing terrible lines to go with pictures of Tiger golfing, they gave it the old college try. During their work, they noticed that a lot of the headlines bought by the client sounded like they came right from fortune cookies. So they went down to Chinatown and bought a bag of 200 fortune cookies, cracked them open and started to pick out the fortunes that might work as lines. They presented the list of lines to their creative director, who thought they were BRILLIANT. The lines sold and now, in the archives of Accenture ads, you can find some fortune cookie gems. I was in the airport one day and saw one that was clearly a result of their efforts, which read “At first, all great tasks seem impossible.” Like doing a good ad for this campaign, I imagine. F.
sjbooher: True confessions: I love puns. True confessions part II: I have no idea why this is so bad. Seems fine to me. Simply including the stills and clips of Tiger is probably a win… and then they didn’t get too over-the-top with “we’re so witty” copy — just simple puns and quotes that don’t detract from the message: “Be the best in the world at what you do, come to us”. Overly creative? No. Will it win any awards at some holier-than-thou ad awards ceremony? Apparently not. Will business people like a company associated with Tiger? Yes. C.
sjbooher: I first heard about this on Hip-Hop news site, nahright.com. I don’t know anything about Roy Black — apparently he is famous in Germany — and I don’t even know what this is advertising. Perhaps Snoop is singing about it in German? No matter — this is awesome. Snoop coming out of a fridge? Hot girls coming out of a dishwasher and dancing around? Fabulous. A+.
jtherkal: My associate seems to ignore his own rules whenever he sees fit. Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t understand German advertising and is giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don’t deny the greatness this 40 seconds of films brings to this world, but you need to tell me what it’s for. Maybe this is just some sort of incomplete YouTube clip. I can’t give this better than a C without knowing what it’s for.
sjbooher: You are sort of right… I was just making the assumption that if I knew German, I would know what the product was.