Sunday, August 24, 2008

Ridiculous Commercials

Have you ever watched a commercial and thought to yourself, that's ridiculous, impossible, or extremely unlikely? I'm sure many of you have thought this, and many times the advertisers want you to think this to demonstrate how awesome the product is and how much more you need it. But, have any of you, instead of instantly coveting said product (like we are supposed to), are put-off and don't want it?

Recently I saw the Subway commercial where you can win instantly if you peel something off your cup. Whenever someone wins (in the commercial), they throw up their cup, full of their soft drink of choice, and then drench their fellow diners in sticky, sugary, brown soda. Despite dripping in cola, the onlookers look at the winner in complete awe, happy for the winner and their newly awarded prize. The soggy people then continue talking and eating as if nothing happened.

What I thought at first was, if I had someone just spill soda all over me, I wouldn't be happy for them, I'd be angry at them. Depending on how many times it happened, I would have demanded they apologize and buy me a new outfit. Then, my next thought is, man, Subway drink lids must be really crappy. The point of a lid is to prevent spillage. If it can't even contain a beverage well enough to prevent a major accident with a gentle toss, what's the point?

Then I thought, well maybe those people don't have lids on their drinks. Who doesn't get a lid? It's like they are asking for their chilly beverage to spill everywhere. Why must others be victims to their stupidity?

Ok, so maybe I analyzed this commercial too much. But, I have thought about these kinds of things with other commercials too. Like the car commercial where the two cars (one driven by a man, the other driven by a woman) play Marco Polo around the city. Could you really do that? I thought the GPS was to determine where you are, not other cars. If it does that, I'm sure government officials and stalkers alike would be excited about that new feature. How are they communicating? I thought it was a pohne, but then it seems like it's another feature of the car. Now that's just creepy.

There are some pretty hilarious and ingenious advertisements out there, but then there are still others that afterwords you just can't believe you wasted two minutes of your life actually watching that stupid commercial. Anyone else feel this way? Any other commercials that spring to mind that make you ask, what was that company thinking; someone needs to get fired for this?

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