Put Some "Big Pony" On You.

Got your attention now, haven't we? And before your mind goes to a dark place, no, "Big Pony" isn't something you go see in Tijuana with your bros and then never speak of again. Its the newest man-fragrance by Ralph Lauren.

All the pretension you would expect from a major label clothing designer comes neatly packaged with this television spot. There are beautiful model people wearing crisp, multicolored polos with the collars popped and looking off into the distance pensively at...well, at nothing. They drive vintage cars you'd never find anyone their age driving in the real world. Their girlfriends all look kind of hungry.

There are in fact four new fragrances to try from Ralph, all a part of this dubiously-named collection. We actually took the time to smell them all, because here at TIA we refuse to make uninformed decisions and have a staunch commitment to the truth. Or we just saw them while walking around Macy's and got curious. Whichever. The point is, three of the four smell remarkably similar to each other. As in exactly the same.

One thing that threw us for a loop is that the commercial uses the single, "Secrets" by the band OneRepublic as its official song. Maybe its just us, but when we're enjoying some OneRepublic coming through our trendy white earbuds, it does not immediately conjure images of dudes playing polo on horseback. Or dancing in blazers. But what do we know; we're poor people.

Really though what we've just told you with all that blathering on could have been said in the two simple words of one YouTube user: "unbelievable douchebaggery." What do you think reader, is this ad art or pretentious garbage? View and decide below.

Mayhem Is Going To Get You. After It Gets Your Children.

Imagine, if you will, a man. A scary man in a black suit. This man-this entity-loves causing vehicle-related chaos wherever he goes, and no one's car is safe. Have you run screaming in horror to check YOUR car yet? You should. Because Mayhem is coming, and he feels no remorse.

Such is the premise of a new series of frankly brilliant commercials just aired by Allstate insurance company. The ads follow the darkly comedic exploits of Mayhem personified in the form of actor Dean Winters (most notably famous for his work on the HBO drama "Oz").

This central idea is a refreshingly original way of catching people's attention, making them laugh, and (in an ever so subtle way) scaring the hell out of them so they buy your insurance services.

Our favorite scenarios by far are the teenage girl recklessly driving her pink suburban tank into someone else's car (OMG!) and the malicious windstorm. Both things/people narrated by Mayhem in his gravelly, film-noir voice; adding to the surreality and making the situation that much funnier.

Winters is perfectly cast in the role. He sells the character's evil nature seemingly without effort, waggling his eyebrows at the viewer and cackling after getting hit with a car or rear-ended. Mayhem also retains the scrapes and bruises he sustains in each accident from commercial to commercial, adding a sort of continuity to the whole thing.

Overall, our verdict is that we much prefer this new, more frightening gentleman over the guy from The Unit. He was nice and everything, but did anyone ever see him drop a tree branch on a car? Or jog with a sexy headband? The answer to that riddle is no, Billy.

P.S. we know that our last post was only two days ago, but we're trying to make up for all the times we haven't been there in your life, reader, so we thought we'd try and post a little more often. Don't expect it to become a regular thing though. The zombie concubine cosmonauts could find us any minute. Ad is posted below.

Tugging On Your Heartstrings? There's An App For That.

To the delight of geeks and pretentious dill-holes around the world, the iPhone 4 was recently released by Apple, with a sturdy new construction born of the fires of Mount Doom.

In spite of the fact that nothing is really needed to sell the technological yay-o that is Apple products, Mr. Steve Jobs (in all of his black-turtlenecked spookiness) has had his ad people come up with a campaign that gets all up in there with a warm and fuzzy feeling.

We do have to begrudgingly give Apple credit for possessing the uncanny ability to maximize the emotional impact of a thirty second commercial. The scenes depicted range from a grandfather laying eyes on his newborn grandson from (presumably) miles away to a cutesy exchange between a young couple after her new haircut.

The centerpiece of this campaign is the iPhone's "facetime" feature, which utilizes the phone's new front camera to provide a mobile "skype"-esque experience.

If we were less classy journalists, we'd make a joke here about, say, ATT dropping the call before granddad even gets to see little junior. However, we're better than that. You should be ashamed of yourself for thinking we'd stoop so low.

The most obvious reason that these commercials have so much appeal is that they are specifically designed to skew wide and hit home with a varied audience. The actors are diverse in both age and race, and the scenes shown seem plucked right out of your life. Or the life of someone you know. Because you have friends. We swear we typed that with a straight face.

On an unrelated note, a quick follow-up on our geriatric sleeper cell story of an earlier post. We invite you to look at most of the U.S. Congress. Enough said. Be ready.

While we do concede that Apple's ads are expertly crafted and affective, the eternal question of whether or not the blatant emotional manipulation present in them is ethical still exists. We invite you to comment on the issue as always, dear reader. One of the ads is posted below.

Respect Your Elders, or Get Jacked In The Neck With A Taser.

We recently happened to catch quite a comedic gem in the form of a Doritos commercial on the old idiot box a few days ago.

The commercial serves to illustrate exactly why old people make the perfect assassins. You never see the death blow coming, because who would ever expect it from the sweet old man behind you in the vending machine line?

We've actually been convinced for quite some time that there is a network of geriatric sleeper agents being place in key societal positions, and said network will eventually execute a coup of the government if we don't act now. More on this story as it develops.

But we digress. Frito Lay's Doritos ads have been, in our opinion, consistently funny over the last couple of years. If you've seen their Super Bowl spots, you already know that they focus in large part on random and unexpected comedy to sell their product (a la "snack attack samurai" and the infamous "mousetrap" commercial).

If slapstick isn't your bag (baby), you might not find these ads funny at all. And you're a horrible person. However, if you do, the "old man" advertisement is posted below for you to watch over and over again.

You're Not Just You...You're A Powerful Transmitter.

Verizon has made its way back into Truth In Advertising's airspace, so to speak, with their new television ads and slogan.

The concept centers around the individual as "transmitter;" one who can wield the force of the mysterious "signal" that cannot be overcome or shut down by the man, man. It has that "we will not be silenced" vibe that goes over so well with today's youth. The new slogan to back up this concept is "rule the air."

Now you're not just talking to Jenny on the phone for five hours about nothing, you're utilizing the signal. And if your parents don't understand that, well they're just way too square. You're not sending texts messages riddled with annoying, unintelligible abbreviations: you are laying the groundwork for the revolution! Viva la resistance!

Verizon has made their newest campaign more than sufficiently eye-catching with all the satellite dishes popping out of buildings and celebrity guest spots (in one of their ads, the actress who plays Emily Lightman on the Fox drama Lie To Me makes an appearance...are we weird for noticing that?).

Really though it appears to be the tried and true concept of attaching unrealistic importance to the individual-making every Verizon user feel like a unique little snowflake-in a pretty, pretty wrapper.

But as we're not in favor of controlling people's minds, we'll let you decide what you think for yourself. Genius and inspirational or manipulative and despicable? Ad is posted below.

P.S. sorry our posting has been so sporadic. Our headquarters were recently laid to waste by zombie concubine cosmonauts. We're doing what we can. Just kidding, we're just really lazy.

5 Hour Evil.

The atmosphere was beginning to get a little too happy around here, so we decided to focus on an advertisement that's made us a little angry.

To their credit, the five hour energy spots have progressed to become slightly less annoying of late. If any of our readers have seen the earlier commercials, you know what we're talking about. The guy in a leather jacket that looks like some kind of James Dean/Springsteen hybrid reject from the 80s that comes walking out of the elevator. The people around him with the incredible acting prowess to act impressed without laughing.

You'd think that if "millions of people are choosing five hour energy every day," they could afford higher production quality. The setting for the newer commercials is also always an office environment, and the spokesperson is always clad in a blue-collared shirt. Five hour energy knows the common man's struggle...to stay awake.

The makers of five hour energy claim that it gives you lasting energy without a crash. Asterisk. without a SUGAR crash. The supplement does have as much caffeine as a cup of regular coffee, according to the fine print, so a caffeine crash is possible.

The bottle actually advises you to take it on an empty stomach for best results as well, and if the reviewers at screamingenergy.com are to be believed (its a little hard to with a url like that), there really is no crash later.

Unless you're an espresso junkie, we wouldn't recommend the whole empty stomach thing. The supplement contains a potentially unhealthy amount of B-vitamins and you might stroke out. Strokes are bad. We're just saying.

What're You Doing Selling Cable, Mr. Hummel?

Yes the new spokesman for Time Warner cable may look awfully familiar to some of us. Its actor Mike O'Malley; famous notably for his role on the television sitcom "Yes, Dear" and, more recently, as Burt Hummel on Fox's new comedy Glee.

While O'Malley displays a more serious side on Glee (quite well, we may add), he's sticking to his comedic roots in these commercials. The cable giant has chosen not to focus so much on the services provided as on creating an atmosphere of congeniality with light humor and mischievous digs at Verizon, Time Warner's main competitor.

In order to bring that feeling to their tv spots, Time Warner successfully picked a spokesperson with an "everyman" feel to him; O'Malley skillfully sells himself as a relatable guy you'd probably like to hang out and have a beer with some afternoon. When he empirically proves that Verizon hates puppies in a particularly funny ad, one is inclined to believe him.

All in all, these promotions seem to do a good job of projecting a harmless and congenial image and connecting that image to their product. Whether or not the product actually lives up to that image is in question, if the raging YouTube debate between Time Warner and Fios customers with nothing better to do is any indication.

As making up one's own mind is often the best course, one of the ads is posted below for your purview and analysis. Get a dictionary, we'll wait.

Hey Darkside...Get Your Feet Off the Car.

Most people would probably be in agreement (should you happen to ask them) that commercials with annoying jingles are a creation of the devil. That, in fact, they are an incarnation of pure evil that get ridiculous tunes stuck inside someone's brain playing on an endless loop until that person is driven to commit unspeakable crimes against humanity. Of course thats just one opinion. That may or may not be ours.

Having said that, there are those few-and-far-between occurrences of the powers of a jingle being used for good and (dare we even speak it?) being somewhat funny. A recent State Farm television ad provides a welcome example.

Three women that are just, one assumes, hanging out and doing things that women do walk back out to the parking lot to find a garish dent in one of their vehicles. Normally one would panic in this situation, but luckily the owner of the car has a good head on her shoulders and takes the prudent action of magically summoning her State Farm agent right to the spot.

What does she use to do this? Why, the State Farm jingle. Duh. Amazed, her companions follow suit, with a bit more specificity, and a hot guy with a rescue bunny and a dark past appears to...look pretty while sitting on the car. I'm sure that helped save the day somehow.

Its a good thing State Farm guy wasn't taking a shower when this happened, isn't it? Ad is posted below.

1-800-DRAMA

Instead of taking a more boring route with their advertising, which would be easy to do with their product, 1-800-CONTACTS has been airing some new ads that have a creatively comedic twist.

One wouldn't think comedy and contacts would even go together in the same sentence, much less in a commercial, but the melodrama-heavy spots actually work decently well.

Done in typical soap opera style, the ads lay on the cheese extra heavy and without remorse. The actors over-emote brilliantly delivering lines like, "1-800 contacts?? They can't have my brand, its a special brand! I have special eyes." while looking at some indeterminate point offscreen.

One ironic aspect of the commercials is that the production value actually looks a bit better than your average soap opera soft filter. This seems to be the way that most advertisers are going, as filming in HD is becoming increasingly cheap to do.

Our favorite point in the ad is when the male character says, "My brand! I've been such a fool!" Listen to the way he says the word "brand;" its practically barked out. Probably unintentional, but hilarious. Watch the ad and try not to laugh. You'll fail.

People Love Taylor Swift So Much, Its Creepy.

Indeed, the golden-haired songstress seems to be popping up everywhere recently, and the latest incarnation of "T-Sweezy" is a Sony camera commercial.

The production quality is, of course, excellent seeing as how Sony has more money than they know what to do with. The commercial looks as if it were shot in HD, and it begins with Taylor being shown around what looks like Sony headquarters by some suited representative trying to pitch her the new camera.

They walk down into Sony's crazy basement wonderland, complete with the wheel from Wheel of Fortune and the car from Ghostbusters (which we didn't see until reading some of the comments on YouTube; it only appears for about a second seven seconds in).

To show off the panoramic sweep feature for the camera, rabid fans are lowered down on cables and Taylor takes a sweeping picture of them all, appearing to hold down only one button and simply move the camera across the panoramic area (judging from the fine print at the end of the ad, its undoubtedly more complicated than that).

As the fans are being pulled back up to...well, wherever they came from, one guy just can't let go. He clings to the fence screaming, "NO! NOT YET!" and tells Taylor, "I love you" before being yanked back to oblivion. We know crazy fency guy; we can't get enough either. Restraining order's in the mail, and the ad is posted below.

Iron Man Is Back Up In Your Grill.

Iron Man is back, and the second installment is just as good as the first.

This is the first review of a trailer from Truth In Advertising, but this particular one was so well done that it merits some attention. Everything in it flows quite well, from the music used to the scenes chosen to maximize intrigue.

From the get-go the viewer is meant to understand that everything they loved about the first movie will be making a reappearance in this one.

The trailer opens with clips from Tony Stark's senate hearing dealing with the "Iron Man weapon," as one surly politician describes it. Robert Downey Jr. delivers the same sarcastic, narcissistic, yet endearing performance.

The viewer also gets a hint of this movie's villain, as well as some of the stars contributing their talent to the cast. We get flashes of Don Cheadle as War Machine; Iron Man's silver-suited counterpart, and Scarlett Johansson kicking some serious ass as S.H.E.I.L.D. agent Black Widow. All of this is set to a rock n' roll soundtrack from the likes of AC/DC.

Watch the trailer, posted below as usual, and try see if you can resist the urge to see this movie immediately.

In Case You Haven't Heard, Droid Does. Droid Does A Lot.

Hey, can your phone brush your teeth for you, find a restaurant, solve world hunger, and download music? Droid can.

The commercials for the Droid handset for Verizon Wireless have taken an interesting approach to marketing what is now their flagship device.

They started off vague, with ads simply and ominously espousing what it would be able to do with no release date. The only information given was the name "droid" and a website.

As the launch date drew closer, television spots featuring the phones dropped in capsules from stealth bombers that looked like spaceships fueled the air of mystery and hype while still being purposefully nebulous.

Now that the phone is available in the marketplace, the ads focus more on its function. They come at it in a gritty, no-nonsense way that bears a hint of resemblance to Chuck Norris style mythology. The male announcer's voice is dead serious when he tells you that Droid is a "bare knuckle bucket of does." The message is clear: this phone is the king of badasses. If you don't have it, you're a sissy.

The newer spots use industrial backgrounds and robotic imagery constantly to keep with the image of the Droid being the Terminator/Chuck Norris of handsets, with robotic hands punching in commands on its touchscreen while it sits there looking like a secret government project.

All in all, the campaign was a good one. Verizon created interest and a defined image while never taking itself too seriously. As always, check the ad below.

Drive Your Toyota Avalon To The Sock Hop Today!

In response to the multiple crises that Toyota has endured over the last few months, it has given its advertising campaign quite the shot in the arm. Several new commercials have been released addressing the recalls and mechanical problems, as well as commercials like the one under the magnifying glass this week.

This particular ad focuses on the newest version of the Toyota Avalon; a somewhat upscale, family size sedan. The entire commercial is filmed like an informational video from the 50s; in this case, an old airline safety video.

The voiceover for the ad is in the stereotypical, fuzzy 50s narrator voice that most of us are familiar with, and everyone is dressed in era-specific airline uniforms. The purpose of all this being to stress the silence and comfort of the new car’s cabin as it “flies” through a peaceful blue sky and fluffy white clouds.

The whole purpose of imbuing the advertisement with a 50s atmosphere appears to be the invoking of nostalgia for a bygone, innocent age in their target demographic of middle aged white people.

Its interesting to note that this has been done quite a few times with the same intent, yet no one acknowledges the prevalent atmosphere of racism and emotional repression of that era. Having said that, the commercial appears to be bordering on satirical in its presentation, and the high production value is impressive. Ad is posted below.

The Double Death, er, Double Down Sandwich

Kentucky Fried Chicken has just released a new bunless chicken sandwich. Yes, you’re reading that correctly. A bunless sandwich. It seems a bit of an oxymoron. Or maybe just moronic once one finds out what it is they’ve replaced the bun with.

As you may have already figured out, KFC has replaced the bun of their new chicken sandwich with two giant, fried, boneless chicken breasts. Between the meat are two pieces of bacon, two pieces of cheese, and what looks like mayonnaise. Cardiac arrest sure tastes great! It’s tough to imagine how anyone could resist.

After looking up the commercial on youtube to watch it again (to make sure we saw it right the first time), one of the comments on the video said it best:

“This is what’s going to cause the government to regulate the fast food industry in a couple of years.”

Very few people would likely be surprised by that result, and it is a bit frustrating to have one more piece of evidence for the “why Americans are fat” trial that seems to be ongoing in the rest of the world.

Realistically, however, only a small portion of Americans will actually eat this deep-fried behemoth of a sandwich. Health consciousness has been on the rise in our nation; so much so that even the ubiquitously unhealthy golden arches is attempting to skew its menu toward healthier customers. If KFC doesn’t get the hint soon, it will fall far behind in the fast food marketplace. Ad is posted below.

P-P-P-P-P-P-Power!

Hello again! Truth In Advertising has been taking a little time off, but has returned to the blogosphere once again to discuss all the interesting, moving, or just ridiculous advertisements that catch our attention.

Most, if not all, of the advertisements reviewed at Truth In Advertising were ones that caught our eye in a negative way, so we thought it would be appropriate to make a change in the new year and start off with something positive. Now, don't get us wrong, the ad about to be discussed is by all accounts completely ridiculous, but its the kind of ridiculous that induces hysterical laughter, and that makes it alright by us.

This week we're taking a look at the brand spanking new Old Spice body wash ads starring Terry Crews. You may know Crews from one of his many hilarious movie roles, a la "Buffy the White Girl Slayer" from the movie White Chicks, Cheeseburger Eddie from the recent remake of The Longest Yard, or Damon from the Friday movies.

Crews brings the same kind of ridiculous, overly amped-up comedy to the Old Spice commercial spots, where he spends 15 to 30 seconds each ad screaming at you about how Old Spice blocks odor for 16 hours while flexing his giant pectoral muscles. How can we see his pecs? Because he's wearing nothing but tiny red shorts in every commercial.

The ads make absolutely no sense, and don't inspire one to buy their product at all, but they are endlessly entertaining. One of the more hilarious ones is posted below.