sjbooher: This is like a serial killer telling kids not to litter. Or like a child molester championing the spaying and neutering of animals. Or like Hitler being the face of an anti-smoking campaign. I don’t want to hear this garbage from Wal-Mart, one of the worst corporations in existence. Get the hell out of here with all that noise. F-.
jtherkal: Wow. I had no idea you hated WalMart so much. How do you feel about K-Mart? Kwiki-Mart? The truth is, I don’t hate WalMart and I don’t like WalMart. If I were going shopping for my militia, I think I bet I’d head there. I could probably pick up a few recruits along the way. There is some sort of documentary about WalMart that I should probably watch.
Here’s one thing that bothers me: Listen to this claim “If every WalMart shopper, all 200 million of us, used just one bulb, it would be like taking over 11 million cars off the road.” Ok. For how long would those cars be off the road? For as long as the light bulbs lasted? For .5 seconds? Why not claim it would be like taking 5 billion cars off the road, as long as you’re making outrageous claims. D+.
sjbooher: I despise these board room ads. They are boring and have been done a million times, so anything said is just a bunch of BLAH BLAH BLAH white noise. There are least two of these in circulation right now, the other being a Southwest Ad with the actor BKA Clay Davis, from The Wire. This raises another question… why are these second-rate actors sought for these? Do they get paid more than the standard commercial actor? If so, that makes these even worse, as I can throw “waste of money” into the mix. F-.
jtherkal: Overused formula, yes. Effective formula? Absolutely not. This is almost entirely irrelevant to me as a consumer. They completely bury the selling point (that DirectTV has more HD channels), meaning I walk away from this with zero understanding of what they were trying to tell me. It’s hard out there for a satellite provider. As a DirecTv subscriber I can tell you the only reason to get DirecTv is if you can’t get cable. There it is. The foundation for the future of DirecTv’s marketing: When you can’t get cable, get DirecTv. I will say that I laugh at that guy’s suggestion of making their channels louder, and then shouting the nightly news line. That keeps this from an F. D.
sjbooher: SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP! Also, SHUT UP! Fury, hate, rage and anger. Those are the emotions I feel with this whole campaign. Imagine annoyance as pure as Blue Magic heroine. These characters are all so “off-the-cuff”, so “cool”, so “it”, so “matter-of-fact”; they drive me crazy. And why do so many investment/financial ads feature one person just yapping? I feel like this whole genre is out of touch and needs some new ideas. F-
jtherkal: Whoa. Calm down. I don’t love this, but I don’t hate it. I actually like some of them. The cartoon-mapping over real people style gets your attention, but maybe not in a good way. To me, these are just really average financial ads. Person talking about money, blah blah blah. Maybe that’s what the target audience likes (target audience = real grown-ups with portfolios and a family). I agree there’s room in this category for someone to step in and do a breakthrough campaign. Talking heads and borrowing an annoying technique from A Scanner Darkly won’t do it. That movie sucked. C.
sjbooher: These existed BEFORE A Scanner Darkly, by the way, and I am getting so irritated right now thinking about how long these have run. Oh my god. Fury. I hated that movie too, if that counts. Maybe it is purely the animation style, now that you have brought that up.
sjbooher: I will preface this by telling you that in general, if a woman is considered attractive by any significant amount of men, I too find her attractive. Since I can find something attractive about most women, celebrities are usually a slam dunk, as they usually have to be attractive in the first place, in order to become a celebrity.
Enter, Kate Walsh. I hate Grey’s Anatomy, but prior to this ad, I had never really singled out Kate for any of that hatred; she was just part of the bigger blog of hate. Now everything has changed. I know, I know… she’s on whatever that spinoff is now, but you get my point. WHY was she picked for this spot? This ad is supposed to exude sexiness — “When you turn your car on, does it return the favor?” — and they were clearly trying to have a sexy woman driving the car. FAILED. Kate Walsh is only “celebrity hot”, meaning she’s pretty much average at best, but with enough makeup, styling and expensive fashion, she pulls off the illusion of hot — and sometimes even that does not do the trick. For her part in this ad, the most important sexy attribute are the words coming out of her mouth. Again, FAILED. Her voice is nasally and annoying, and it sounds like she has problems getting through the entire script in one breath. Of all the beautiful celebrities out there, how did she get the job? She’s at best the 3rd most attractive woman on her former show… hell, I think Taye Diggs turns me on more than her! F-.
jtherkal: Oh, my poor friend, this ad was not meant entirely for you. Sure, they figured they’d get a sliver of male interest from a script describing how the purr of an engine might send blood rushing to a lady’s special area, but I think they chose her for other reasons.
She’s on Grey’s Anatomy, a show clearly made for ladies. And from that show, they chose an elder, more respected character–one that other women might see as a sort of sexy mentor. They could have picked one of the younger, hotter women. But they didn’t. While on the surface this might seem like Cadillac is trying to get mens’ interest by having some broad in one of their cars talk dirty, I think it’s really designed to speak to all of the ladies out there with high paying jobs or high paying husbands. It says, “you can be older and sexy and a lady and this is your car and it might get you hot.” I still don’t really like it, but I can’t give it an F. C-.
sjbooher; Well, if that is the case, they should not air it during every sporting event known to man. F–.
sjbooher: Wow (and WAW). Could this character have been any more ridiculous? Chuck has uncombed hair, an unshaven face, and an awful looking football jersey on. Then they have him shooting baskets and shouting like an ABSOLUTE FOOL. No one acts like that in real life — only in some stupid white man’s mind do people act like that. Absurd. Imagine seeing this ad on 10 different screens in a Vegas sports book for an entire weekend, over-and-over again — that’s how I was introduced to it. Terrible. F-.
jtherkal: Well, I was getting tired of the AT&T bars campaign (where they coordinate everything in the background to look like the bars on your phone) so this is, at the very least, different. This was the worst of the series (rock’n'roll guy, snooping dad, japanese business meeting)–borderline offensive. Maybe because Chuck was waaaay overacting. If you’re going to have him playing pop-a-shot, at least have him really trying. He wouldn’t have made any of those shots. Overall, the concept isn’t that great and I don’t even believe one company can claim to have significantly better service. It’s all pretty decent now, but still cuts out in areas. D.
jtherkal: When you’re talking about the worst ads in the world, it’s hard to find footage online. And my television capturing device doesn’t run so smoothly, so we’re working with stills here. Thankfully, you’re not missing much by not seeing this titanic failure.
Basic premise: Man and mother need rental car.
Enterprise picks up man and mother.
They drive to the rental car place and we see the rental car discount offer screen.
Commercial ends with a reminder that Enterprise picks you up.
jtherkal: This is a simple formula and the story is easy to understand. Problem is, it sucks. The story sucks. The acting sucks. The direction sucks. The music sucks. It’s like someone at Enterprise decided not to hire an agency, but instead let their 45-year old mother Mormon mother write, direct and produce this stinker.
What makes it even worse is that Enterprise actually has a relevant differentiating benefit (yeah, I went to business school, bitches). They pick you up! Are you telling me you can’t come up with some brilliant advertising centered around a car company that picks you up? These commercials get me to remember that they’ll pick me up, but they also make me think of Enterprise as a retarded aunt who really likes ice cream sandwiches and soft rock. I don’t want her picking me up.
Nice diversity, though. And I love how they seamlessly and elegantly integrated the offer. And how they use the word “most” three times to let people know that in no way is anything they’re saying guaranteed and still needed four lines of disclaimer. FFFFFFF, F, F. And F.
sjbooher: Welcome to Worst Ad Wedneday! Relevant differentiating benefit in the hizzouse! Supposedly this has been on a lot during March Madness… but I couldn’t tell you that, and I’ve watched damn near every game, and I’m supposed to be paying extra attention to ads. That can’t bode well for the campaign. In my opinion, this would seem to be more “mediocre” than “worst”, but I’ve seen it 100+ times and don’t remember it, that would be a colossal failure. I’ll hold judgment until I’ve actually seen it, but things are not looking good.
I’m not even sure that if I could find this commercial online I would post it. Because that would mean I’d have to watch it again. It’s basically a guy rapping to camera about his girlfriend, presumably recording it and sending it to her via his cell phone for Valentine’s Day. I literally have to change the channel when this comes on, for fear of being consumed by a rabid fury that results in me smashing my television with a pitching wedge. That’s bad for the tv and for the wedge, both of which are very special to me.
Let me just say this: if you’re thinking of getting your girlfriend a phone with video capabilities for Valentine’s Day, good for you. Electronics are awesome. If you’re thinking of using your phone to send her new phone a video of you, the whitest man in America, doing the worst rap known to man, please stop and think again.
The worst part is that somewhere along the way this received the approval of a whole team of “advertising professionals.” Not only in concept form, but even after they saw the shockingly terrible finished product. Sometimes you need to self censor a bit; someone has to have the stones needed to step up and say you know what, we liked the idea, but you all see this, it sucks. We can’t put this on tv. They seem to have forgotten rule number one of advertising: avoid ads that will make the consumer HATE your product. This has done that for me.
Furthermore, I went to the AT&T site to try and find whatever promotion this is (so I’d have some sort of image to accompany this post) and I couldn’t find anything. No Valentine’s Day promotion at all. So even if this commercial wasn’t shotgun-eatingly bad, consumers can’t follow up and actually take advantage of the promotion.
F-. The worst.
The Hawk: Yo, Mouth, why you trippin’, home skillet? This is that new hot fire on the streets, playa-toni, pepperoni! Hotter than paprika!
Yes, horrible. Although something deep inside me says there is still a segment of society out there that laughs and likes this. I’ll even admit I think the paprika line is funny. D+.
