azurite: (cat: what the shit is this!?)
1. The Cinnamon Toast Crunch blog girl
While blogging about just about everything these days is popular, I don't know about a video blog (vlog) on a cereal. Parodying the idea would be one thing, except it's a stupid parody: the girl is a stereotypical geek and a klutz, too. (Maybe that's why it bothers me?!)

2. The Target "Hat" girl
A typical commercial that's way too blatant with its underlying message: "Buy our products and get the life you want!" Except it's ridiculous to fantasize about a HAT causing you to find a hot boyfriend, have a beautiful property with an orchard, and have perfect, well-behaved children. There's a fine line with the idea of a product enhancing your life in some way, and this commercial just crosses it and shoots off into outer space somewhere. This doesn't have even the tiniest idea that it could be a parody of commercials that do this more subtly (like car commercials), so I don't know wtf Target's ad agency was thinking.

3. Capital One with the actor who played George Costanza's father on Seinfeld
Capital One has funny commercials, especially their latest spate with the Vikings. Of course, my sense of humor is known to be very different from others, so who knows? But the idea of some old guy yelling at me about my credit card choice isn't very appetizing. He's not even very funny while employing the whole "loud old man with big opinions" schtick

Anyone have any commercials they just can't stand? I really wish I had DVR so I could just skip them, but I tend to watch a lot of shows randomly, too, and you can't really fast-forward through THOSE commercials, can you? It's too bad the quality that people strive for during the Super Bowl isn't something ad agencies attempt all year round.
azurite: (snark or smut)
I don't drink Pepsi, let alone something Diet, but I love the new Diet Pepsi Max commercial to Haddaway's "What is Love?" Everyone (including LL Cool J) is starting to pass out until they get some DPM, and then they start the old-school head bopping. It's contagious, even at the dry cleaning where Haddaway himself (at least, I think it is... would make sense) goes "STOP IT!" and storms out. Very funny.

Sometimes commercials are considered tasteless and get changed. I remember that happened once in an Axe (deodorant) commercial where a young guy who's wearing Axe gets stopped as he gets in an elevator. The original shows a hand wearing a pearl bracelet and a fuzzy pink cardigan-- you don't get a good look at the hand, but the flash shows an old woman with a devilish grin on her face. They changed it, apparently because some people thought it was tasteless that an old lady would get her knickers in a twist over a young man's deodorant. So they changed it to a young woman, which kind of ruined the humor and made it like every single other Axe commercial.

Now, there was an animated Red Bull commercial where a bird shits on a professor-like character's jacket. In the original, the guy takes a swig of Red Bull, grows wings, and then flies above the bird and starts to unbuckle his belt... it's pretty clear what it implies. Also, it uses the classic "Red Bull gives you wings" tagline. But the new version doesn't have that-- instead, the professor character takes a swig of Red Bull and then chuckles and withdraws a slingshot from his briefcase. He fires a cork into the bird's bum, and the tagline is now "Red Bull also stimulates your mind." Okay, so the original one was a bit messed up, but it was still better than "bird butt plug."

For someone that's not a marketing major or PR concentration, I sure am opinionated about commercials. In fact, there's a lot that I downright hate and think fail to get the point across. All I tend to remember about them is how annoying they are, versus the product and how much I might like to try it.

That said, I'm only being so observant of commercials tonight because of all the repeats-- thus, I'm watching shows I either have never watched (Supernatural) or ones I haven't watched in AGES (Smallville). And it's always nice to get caught up on shows I've just started to find interesting (Without a Trace).
azurite: (cat: what the shit is this!?)

I've wanted to take JOUR 371 "Women, Men, and Media" for a while, and now that I'm in it, I can really say I'm looking at my "usual media" in a different light. Like most people, I'm not the hugest fan of commercials, but occasionally I'll pay attention to one if it's funny (the Doritos Superbowl commercial), the first time for an annoyingly stupid one (the Geico cavemen commercials...), interesting (the Halo 3 commercial) or trendy... you get the idea.

But tonight I'm watching Voyager or CSI or something on Spike and I see a commercial for a new Sega Rally video game. It's got these two girls, the driver who lends her friend in the passenger seat her lipgloss. The passenger girl raves about the color-- meanwhile, you're seeing the car skid, slide, go every which-way... basically, like a rally car on a track.

The tag line? "Drive like a man."

...WHAT!?

Srsly, WTF?

I'm not sure if I should be offended or not. After all, it's basically saying that guys drive like complete schmucks and get into accidents. But it's also saying that that sort of behavior is admirable, like women should WANT to drive like that (and don't). Then again, maybe it's supposed to be "women are cool-- they can put makeup on in any situation, bumpy or not!" But I doubt that very much.

I'm sorry, I'd much rather be applying makeup and driving slow and steady than be getting highs off testosterone and racing when and where it's unnecessary, spinning, rolling, and crashing like some foolish street racers (FYI, I can admire Initial D as a piece of fiction, but there was recently a bunch of street racers here in the San Fernando Valley that were responsible for the death of a mother and two children. I don't consider *real* street racers in high regard, and think they're a bunch of fucktwits).

...Ugh.

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