Now a word from our sponsor
Thoughts on a long winter’s night keep intruding as I try to forge a coherent column on something or the other. In looking back over my past decade of published stuff at this time of year, the path of least resistance has generally done the trick: To wit, TV commercials. After all, it’s said the average viewer sees about 24,000 of them a year.
They reach the epitome of excess during the annual Super Bowl football game, of course.
Anheuser-Busch has traditionally been a huge source of humorous and costly beer ads. Their Clydesdales have nearly always been winners. Remember the horses’ football game, including kicking the extra point? And how about the newest installment, where the equine participants impatiently await the replay official’s verdict, to be delivered—appropriately—by a zebra. That’s what many fans call real referees wearing their black and white shirts.
So it was inevitable, I suppose, that competitor Miller Lite would tack onto the Clydesdale beer wagon thing and lampoon it. Typically the wagon features a tail-wagging Dalmatian mascot riding on top. In the Miller version, the dog leaps off the beer wagon and through a Miller truck’s open window into the cab, and then looks out happily.
One of Anheuser-Busch’s most affecting commercials of recent vintage has nothing to do with horses or beer or dogs. It depicts a typical airport lobby’s crowd scene when troops in fatigues, obviously just returned from overseas, start passing through the
waiting passengers. They start applauding. The scene is touching and memorable and honorable. Kudos.
Those flashy Super Bowl ad extravaganzas come and go. I remember one of recent vintage, again featuring animals. Cowboys are doing their best to try and round up a herd of—cats. It was hilarious. But who can remember its sponsor? It was EDS, the data management giant that Ross Perot founded and nobody ever hears much about.
Apart from Super Bowl excesses, recent commercial ad flops I’ve encountered include one by Sprint. It mimics those numerous ads for men’s sexual problems. In dissing competitors’ inadequate broadband coverage, it calls their malady “connectile dysfunction.” Ugh.
Another is a really bad new series of commercials by Toyota, where owners of older cars push their cars off cliffs, etc., so as to buy a new Toyota. I’m sure the insurance companies consider those fictional scenarios just hunky dory for real policy holders to emulate.
The only car commercial I’ve seen that seems effective is the recent one for Cadillac when the seductive young woman drives along and purrs, “When you turn it on, does it return the favor?” Nice.
And now for a local observation. Parroting advertisers, localities often adopt slogans to promote one thing or another. One with a political slant appears on D.C. license plates. In campaigning for the District to gain representation in Congress, the tags read “Taxation without Representation.” Pretty whiney, I’d say, and probably counterproductive. A more honest label: “Home of teen killers and tax cheats.” By the way, D.C. homicides in 2007 topped 180. That compares with only about 33 for all of Northern Virginia with a population that’s several times as large.
As for those numerous little spokes-creatures in commercials, lots of copycat ads try to mimic the successes of the GEICO Gekko and the AFLAC Duck. One failure, like most, is the “Gorilla in the room” commercial. They all soon get time-worn and boring.
GEICO has moved away from so much Gekko emphasis, but the substitutes haven’t worked, in my opinion. One series features news-style treatment of comics like Fred Flintstone and his family. The other series, more objectionable, presents a real customer plus backup commentary by assorted entertainment personalities. They may tickle some. Include me out.
Then there’s Peyton Manning, the Colts football star, running up and down a hotel hallway or giving sage advice. Get the hook.
I do enjoy a few commercials on occasion. One from the Internet investment service E-Trade demonstrates how many things one can do with a single finger, like plugging a leaking hole in the dam or letting your old stockbroker know he is no longer needed.
It’s also fun watching the Apple cool guy outsmarting the Microsoft PC nerd.
But my current favorites are Bill and Karolyn Slowski, the crabby old married turtles who still just love their slow dial-up Internet access, and not Comcast’s swift cable.
Political ads? No thanks. They’ll crowd out most of the good stuff in coming months. Unless there’s a repeat video of Hillary Clinton’s hilarious and endless cackling, I’ll switch the channel.
They reach the epitome of excess during the annual Super Bowl football game, of course.
Anheuser-Busch has traditionally been a huge source of humorous and costly beer ads. Their Clydesdales have nearly always been winners. Remember the horses’ football game, including kicking the extra point? And how about the newest installment, where the equine participants impatiently await the replay official’s verdict, to be delivered—appropriately—by a zebra. That’s what many fans call real referees wearing their black and white shirts.
So it was inevitable, I suppose, that competitor Miller Lite would tack onto the Clydesdale beer wagon thing and lampoon it. Typically the wagon features a tail-wagging Dalmatian mascot riding on top. In the Miller version, the dog leaps off the beer wagon and through a Miller truck’s open window into the cab, and then looks out happily.
One of Anheuser-Busch’s most affecting commercials of recent vintage has nothing to do with horses or beer or dogs. It depicts a typical airport lobby’s crowd scene when troops in fatigues, obviously just returned from overseas, start passing through the
waiting passengers. They start applauding. The scene is touching and memorable and honorable. Kudos.
Those flashy Super Bowl ad extravaganzas come and go. I remember one of recent vintage, again featuring animals. Cowboys are doing their best to try and round up a herd of—cats. It was hilarious. But who can remember its sponsor? It was EDS, the data management giant that Ross Perot founded and nobody ever hears much about.
Apart from Super Bowl excesses, recent commercial ad flops I’ve encountered include one by Sprint. It mimics those numerous ads for men’s sexual problems. In dissing competitors’ inadequate broadband coverage, it calls their malady “connectile dysfunction.” Ugh.
Another is a really bad new series of commercials by Toyota, where owners of older cars push their cars off cliffs, etc., so as to buy a new Toyota. I’m sure the insurance companies consider those fictional scenarios just hunky dory for real policy holders to emulate.
The only car commercial I’ve seen that seems effective is the recent one for Cadillac when the seductive young woman drives along and purrs, “When you turn it on, does it return the favor?” Nice.
And now for a local observation. Parroting advertisers, localities often adopt slogans to promote one thing or another. One with a political slant appears on D.C. license plates. In campaigning for the District to gain representation in Congress, the tags read “Taxation without Representation.” Pretty whiney, I’d say, and probably counterproductive. A more honest label: “Home of teen killers and tax cheats.” By the way, D.C. homicides in 2007 topped 180. That compares with only about 33 for all of Northern Virginia with a population that’s several times as large.
As for those numerous little spokes-creatures in commercials, lots of copycat ads try to mimic the successes of the GEICO Gekko and the AFLAC Duck. One failure, like most, is the “Gorilla in the room” commercial. They all soon get time-worn and boring.
GEICO has moved away from so much Gekko emphasis, but the substitutes haven’t worked, in my opinion. One series features news-style treatment of comics like Fred Flintstone and his family. The other series, more objectionable, presents a real customer plus backup commentary by assorted entertainment personalities. They may tickle some. Include me out.
Then there’s Peyton Manning, the Colts football star, running up and down a hotel hallway or giving sage advice. Get the hook.
I do enjoy a few commercials on occasion. One from the Internet investment service E-Trade demonstrates how many things one can do with a single finger, like plugging a leaking hole in the dam or letting your old stockbroker know he is no longer needed.
It’s also fun watching the Apple cool guy outsmarting the Microsoft PC nerd.
But my current favorites are Bill and Karolyn Slowski, the crabby old married turtles who still just love their slow dial-up Internet access, and not Comcast’s swift cable.
Political ads? No thanks. They’ll crowd out most of the good stuff in coming months. Unless there’s a repeat video of Hillary Clinton’s hilarious and endless cackling, I’ll switch the channel.
posted by Ben Blankenship at
6:23 PM
