A nuclear bomb of schmaltz. That is the only way we can begin to describe the newest commercials Old Navy has begun airing on television screens across America. One of them has the fictional girl-group stars of the ad singing a little ditty called, "Welcome To The Ankle Show." The other features a Kim Kardashian look-alike singing a song about being, "super c-u-t-e," whatever she may be doing. We're not kidding.
"The ankle show" is by far the more ridiculous of the two. The entire 30-second song is a failed attempt to sexify the ankle. We'd like to ask the people at Old Navy: have you looked closely at an ankle? Its the least sexy part of the leg. Perhaps of the entire body. Its weird. Its knobby. Its not provocative at all, unless the definition of the word has reverted to what it was in the 17th century. "I say, Wentworth, that willful harridan is running around with exposed ankles! Good lord, get the constable post-haste!"
There's campy done right, and then there's this. No one reined it in, and now its out of control and kicking people in the metaphorical head. With metaphorical, campy-ass, horseshoed hooves.
We struggle to comprehend why some companies like to make such corniness their standard. Sure, it sticks in the memory, but if it were up to us, we'd rather be remembered for wit or poignancy in advertising than boring into people's minds with unbelievable, corny corn. Little, yellow, evil kernels of it. Its worse than candy corn.
In sum, these spots are all flash and no substance. Garishly so. Oh, and that DJ in the "ankle show" commercial looks like a 5th Element reject. Think about that.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
No, She Doesn't Come With The Bottle.
We of the humble TIA team are all for health, and completely in favor of taking care of oneself, but when you're cobbling together an advertisement to try and sell us something that could possibly aid in that goal, we'd prefer one or two facts in there.
What we're talking about (Willis) are the three ads that POM Wonderful juice has recently cranked out. Each one looks like a terrible Calvin Klein spot, and you believe you know what you're in for. But you're wrong. Because they're selling juice. Arguably, using pseudo-artsy black and white erotica to sell fruit blood is even more horrible than using it to sell man-perfume. Its a very close tie, however.
We've been watching a lot of Hulu here at the TIA office, and of the three, the "Adam and Eve" spot is the one we're exposed to with the most frequency in between quips on Glee. Shut up, don't judge us.
It begins with the narrator (Malcolm McDowell, oddly enough) spinning the biblical yarn of Adam and Eve. We see a snake. It climbs over a basically naked woman as McDowell lets us in on the secret that, "some scholars" believe it was a pomegranate, not an apple, that Eve tempted Adam with. Just when you're recovering from that knowledge bomb, he says POM wonderful is "backed by modern science." Would that be naked snake science? Because that's all we saw.
Now, TIA sees nothing wrong with the female figure, or snakes. We simply fail to see what it has to do with juice. What it has to do with selling the juice, on the other hand, is painfully obvious. Scores upon scores of advertisements use overt sexual innuendo to push product, to the point that the most ludicrous things (like f*cking juice) are striving to become entangled with it in our subconscious. The image of an attractive naked woman, coupled with the phallic imagery (don't bitch out now) of the snake attempt to couple the arousal they hope to elicit from said images with POM wonderful juice.
We wouldn't even take issue with the depiction of a naked woman on television (it was done with some class) if it weren't for our society schizophrenically condemning sex one minute and then using it to sell junk to us the next. The proverbial sex carrot is forever dangled out of our reach, it seems, and that can screw with a person's psyche on a level they don't even realize.
Well, we hope you've enjoyed "a very special Truth In Advertising." And please report back to us on your opinions of the sexualization of the advertising world, and its societal implications. This will count for 40 percent of your grade.
What we're talking about (Willis) are the three ads that POM Wonderful juice has recently cranked out. Each one looks like a terrible Calvin Klein spot, and you believe you know what you're in for. But you're wrong. Because they're selling juice. Arguably, using pseudo-artsy black and white erotica to sell fruit blood is even more horrible than using it to sell man-perfume. Its a very close tie, however.
We've been watching a lot of Hulu here at the TIA office, and of the three, the "Adam and Eve" spot is the one we're exposed to with the most frequency in between quips on Glee. Shut up, don't judge us.
It begins with the narrator (Malcolm McDowell, oddly enough) spinning the biblical yarn of Adam and Eve. We see a snake. It climbs over a basically naked woman as McDowell lets us in on the secret that, "some scholars" believe it was a pomegranate, not an apple, that Eve tempted Adam with. Just when you're recovering from that knowledge bomb, he says POM wonderful is "backed by modern science." Would that be naked snake science? Because that's all we saw.
Now, TIA sees nothing wrong with the female figure, or snakes. We simply fail to see what it has to do with juice. What it has to do with selling the juice, on the other hand, is painfully obvious. Scores upon scores of advertisements use overt sexual innuendo to push product, to the point that the most ludicrous things (like f*cking juice) are striving to become entangled with it in our subconscious. The image of an attractive naked woman, coupled with the phallic imagery (don't bitch out now) of the snake attempt to couple the arousal they hope to elicit from said images with POM wonderful juice.
We wouldn't even take issue with the depiction of a naked woman on television (it was done with some class) if it weren't for our society schizophrenically condemning sex one minute and then using it to sell junk to us the next. The proverbial sex carrot is forever dangled out of our reach, it seems, and that can screw with a person's psyche on a level they don't even realize.
Well, we hope you've enjoyed "a very special Truth In Advertising." And please report back to us on your opinions of the sexualization of the advertising world, and its societal implications. This will count for 40 percent of your grade.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Four Times The Douche.
Look here Taco Bell, it isn't bad enough that you pump deadly, deadly fast food through the collective veins of a defenseless America; you have to assault our eyeballs with this as well? Not to mention our ears. Ever since we caught the ad for the new bovine infarction (excuse us, "quad steak") burrito, we've had its ridiculous jingle stuck in our heads.
It replays frame-by-frame constantly. The pasty, chinless man at the piano bleating, "fo' times the STEEAAAKK-UH." The audience joining in, clapping the rhythm like he's Billy Joel in the middle of "Piano Man." The pasty pianist's head tweaking at impossible angles as he decries the deliciousness of the "quad steak." Giant images of cow meat rotating in thin air behind him as he plays, seemingly unwitting. It approaches something out of an Eli Roth movie.
Speaking of cow meat, your mom called. Just kidding. Actually this whole "four times the steak" deal started us pondering what's been going on for years in the fast food industry: steadily increasing proportion size. As just one example, if you hadn't heard already, Starbuck's coffee recently introduced a thirty ounce size to its lineup. Thirty. Ounces. Of coffee.
In the Taco Bell spot, and countless others, horrible gluttony has become somehow equated with manhood, which makes it that much harder to remove it from our collective psyche, in TIA's humble opinion. Pretty soon they'll just be offering us whole, deep-fried cows to gnaw on.
We can feel you thinking, "preachyyyy," so we'll stop getting all Green Day on you and simply bottom-line this. The ad is awful. No one eats Taco Bell dressed in formal wear, they eat it in their underwear. On the couch. We'd love it if there were a live show with your meal in fast food places for us humble folk, but that doesn't look to be happening anytime soon either.
Taco Bell did, however, come up with a jingle that successfully lodges itself in people's brains. On the business side, that's a win. It'll make people more likely to remember the product. On the normal human side, its a crime against our senses. In addition to the ones they've already committed against our mouth. We may petition the U.N. when we finish writing this.
One final note, to the YouTube user who said the Taco Bell "quad steak" jingle reminded them of Queen (yes, THAT Queen): we are going to find you. We are going to set you on fire.
It replays frame-by-frame constantly. The pasty, chinless man at the piano bleating, "fo' times the STEEAAAKK-UH." The audience joining in, clapping the rhythm like he's Billy Joel in the middle of "Piano Man." The pasty pianist's head tweaking at impossible angles as he decries the deliciousness of the "quad steak." Giant images of cow meat rotating in thin air behind him as he plays, seemingly unwitting. It approaches something out of an Eli Roth movie.
Speaking of cow meat, your mom called. Just kidding. Actually this whole "four times the steak" deal started us pondering what's been going on for years in the fast food industry: steadily increasing proportion size. As just one example, if you hadn't heard already, Starbuck's coffee recently introduced a thirty ounce size to its lineup. Thirty. Ounces. Of coffee.
In the Taco Bell spot, and countless others, horrible gluttony has become somehow equated with manhood, which makes it that much harder to remove it from our collective psyche, in TIA's humble opinion. Pretty soon they'll just be offering us whole, deep-fried cows to gnaw on.
We can feel you thinking, "preachyyyy," so we'll stop getting all Green Day on you and simply bottom-line this. The ad is awful. No one eats Taco Bell dressed in formal wear, they eat it in their underwear. On the couch. We'd love it if there were a live show with your meal in fast food places for us humble folk, but that doesn't look to be happening anytime soon either.
Taco Bell did, however, come up with a jingle that successfully lodges itself in people's brains. On the business side, that's a win. It'll make people more likely to remember the product. On the normal human side, its a crime against our senses. In addition to the ones they've already committed against our mouth. We may petition the U.N. when we finish writing this.
One final note, to the YouTube user who said the Taco Bell "quad steak" jingle reminded them of Queen (yes, THAT Queen): we are going to find you. We are going to set you on fire.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
"I'm Gettin' Stupid Loose."
We know this one's a bit of a throwback, since its been on the tube for a couple of months at least, but its just so incredible. Not to mention a refreshing angle on internet dating. Zoosk is the name, and they don't appear to take themselves too seriously.
Unlike other dating websites (read "Eharmony and Match.com"), who claim to be able to hand you the perfect relationship in a neat little test tube, the message behind the Zoosk campaign appears to be, "Hey, whatever you're into. We got it." Now, whether that's good or bad, we leave up to you, reader. It goes without saying that any website of this ilk is a Lifetime movie waiting to happen. And not the weepy, inspirational kind.
Online dating is nothing to be scoffed at, however. Its become something of a "growth industry," as the suits like to say (please note our use of the term "suits" and its indication of our anti-establishment standing). Once a source of derision and scorn, its rapidly becoming mainstream, as the ads take great delight in reminding us.
But, we digress. Female readers may find this week's ad especially entertaining, since it features two female coworkers checking out people's social networking *cough* Facebook *cough* profiles on the internet (you know, stalking bitches. we've all done it; get the hell off your soapbox). Flashback to a blind date with a professionally sponsored darts player gone horribly wrong. Seriously, we're pretty sure the guy at the end is dead.
The spot is quite obviously targeted at twenty-something women in your typical office workplace. From the casting, we'd actually like to ad "super-attractive" to that demographic list. Zoosk isn't run by idiots. They subconsciously try and net the dudes too. We're sure there's a swarm of hot twenty-something women just waiting for us to try and pick up on them. So they can laugh at us. And another little piece of us can die.
This week's reader question: what's your take on online dating? Is it legitimate? Does the use of electronics in the courting process remove essential human interaction? Will Cartman ever find out who his father is? Get us back.
Unlike other dating websites (read "Eharmony and Match.com"), who claim to be able to hand you the perfect relationship in a neat little test tube, the message behind the Zoosk campaign appears to be, "Hey, whatever you're into. We got it." Now, whether that's good or bad, we leave up to you, reader. It goes without saying that any website of this ilk is a Lifetime movie waiting to happen. And not the weepy, inspirational kind.
Online dating is nothing to be scoffed at, however. Its become something of a "growth industry," as the suits like to say (please note our use of the term "suits" and its indication of our anti-establishment standing). Once a source of derision and scorn, its rapidly becoming mainstream, as the ads take great delight in reminding us.
But, we digress. Female readers may find this week's ad especially entertaining, since it features two female coworkers checking out people's social networking *cough* Facebook *cough* profiles on the internet (you know, stalking bitches. we've all done it; get the hell off your soapbox). Flashback to a blind date with a professionally sponsored darts player gone horribly wrong. Seriously, we're pretty sure the guy at the end is dead.
The spot is quite obviously targeted at twenty-something women in your typical office workplace. From the casting, we'd actually like to ad "super-attractive" to that demographic list. Zoosk isn't run by idiots. They subconsciously try and net the dudes too. We're sure there's a swarm of hot twenty-something women just waiting for us to try and pick up on them. So they can laugh at us. And another little piece of us can die.
This week's reader question: what's your take on online dating? Is it legitimate? Does the use of electronics in the courting process remove essential human interaction? Will Cartman ever find out who his father is? Get us back.
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