I watch a lot of TV, and maybe it's because of what I do for a living, maybe it's my deep-down love of "Mad Men," maybe it's something else entirely, but I watch the commercials intently as well. Usually I do so with a metric ton of snark, because everyone in advertising seems to think they're Don Draper these days when really they're Ted Chaough. (That's very much an inside joke.) So I figured I'd bring some of that snark over to this blog-space by rating a few TV commercials and explaining why.
All advertisements are graded using a standard grading scheme, where "A+" is the greatest advertisement ever (never seen it) and "F" is Volkswagen's 1997 "Da Da Da" campaign.
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Advertisement #1: Look at This Fucking Hipster meets Straightforward Korean Engineering
You've definitely seen this commercial during the holiday season; two scarf-wearing, uncleansed hipsters straight out of Park Slope shilling for - you guessed it - Hyundai. Specifically, in the two commercials I've seen so far, the Hyundai Sonata (a stylish and highly-rated, if somewhat unassuming, $20,000 family sedan) and the Hyundai Genesis Sedan (an upscale, $35,000+ luxury sedan that gets 25 highway mpg and therefore would NEVER be driven by a hipster).
What I don't get about these commercials is the following: virtually nobody likes hipsters. They're douchey, smelly, pretentious without meaning or purpose, and are unified solely by their complete absence of social grace. (Q: How many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: ::exasperated smarmy sigh:: Don't worry, it's some number you've never heard of.)
Most people dislike most car brands as well (if Grandpa was an Oldsmobile man, by definition he wasn't a Ford man or a Chevy man), but sometimes a well-made car commercial can shift this pattern and effectively shift some of the market toward a brand. Given this possibility, why put hipsters, whom nobody likes, into your car commercial, when you're trying to get people to purchase your car brand?
Look, I will concede that it is borderline acceptable to put hipsters in a car commercial if you're trying to market a car that hipsters would actually consider driving. (This puts aside the obvious notion that, after spending all their money on organic kale, indie-rock CD's, and locally-sourced vegan tofu, most hipsters are flat broke, but still.) A Honda Fit commercial featuring hipsters, for instance, would get a far higher grade than this campaign.
This commercial misses the fundamental point that hipsters don't want family sedans or luxury sedans - they aren't GREEN enough - and those people who would purchase family sedans or luxury sedans don't want to watch a dude with an unkempt beard ring goddamn tambourines. Thus, these commercials are terrible. I smite you, Hyundai (although I do like the Genesis sedan).
Grade: D
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Advertisement #2: Can a Bank Be (Legitimately) Metal?
In my never-ending search for authenticity, I'm often extremely surprised at how many commercials fail at simply doing what they were intended to do. It's like the ad executive or the client (yeah, probably the client) for most companies ends up deciding upon a commercial that attempts to make six different statements - and executes each of them poorly - rather than something that quickly and effectively makes one solid statement and plain sticks with it.
Over the past couple of years, Ally Bank has caught a reasonable amount of flak (entirely from parents of small children, who seem eternally incapable of putting their hormonal changes into context and remembering that kids don't matter to people who don't have kids) for a series of ultra-realistic commercials that involved an adult actor stealing from small children as a metaphor for what other banks do to their customers. Supposedly the commercials were not even scripted, so the looks on these children's faces when their ice cream was taken from them was indeed real, which resulted in tons of pissed off parents who couldn't bear to see little Madison get her heart broken! (I always chuckled at these commercials, because I hate kids and feel they should learn about endless disappointment.)
To paraphrase the governor of Pennsylvania, we've become a nation of wussies. As a result, I appreciate Ally Bank's authenticity, which thankfully hasn't wavered in their latest daring ad campaign. In it, a metal band wails upon things that they hate (seriously, the first five seconds of this commercial are some of the funniest I've ever seen in a TV commercial), and then ad lib into "But I really love my bank!" And then hilarity ensues from there.
The best thing about this ad (in my opinion) is that - taking "metal" to its literal, counter-cultural definition - this commercial is legitimately metal. In the same way that it was metal to love George W. Bush in 2004, it's metal to love your bank in 2010. This commercial is not for everyone (I could see my parents - and yours - putting the TV on mute whenever it comes on), but for its target audience, it's extremely memorable. So kudos, Ally Bank, for creating an advertisement that actually does what it intends to do. However, your savings rates are piss poor, so I will not use you.
Grade: B+
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Advertisement #3: Short but Sweet (Really Sweet...)
Just to prove I have a heart, I've also become a big fan of AT&T's new Samsung Focus cell phone spot. Only 15 seconds in length, it describes the product, shows the product at work in a way that should make it very clear to the end user how it works and how it can improve their life, and then cuts away to an extremely... well, cute pink cyclops alien that bats its eye and picks a flower.
My fiancee liked this ad so much that she said she wanted a stuffed pink cyclops alien for Christmas. (This is the same woman who got me a stuffed yeast for Christmas because I've recently started brewing my own beer ... so, yeah.) I searched the Internet for a while but couldn't find anyone selling a stuffed replica of an alien creature from a cell phone commercial. But hey, at least I tried!
I think what this commercial proves is that cute will always have the capacity to sell (if, again, it's authentic). Like any social interaction, a commercial has about ten seconds to bring what we in the research business like to call "emotional rapport" - that immediate sense of, hey, this person/commercial/widget is actually kind of OK and I really want to pay more attention to it. It's not syrupy, it's actually more informative than anything, and as such it gets the job done.
However, I will stick with Verizon.
Grade: B
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Advertisement #4: Why I Hate Luxury Car Brands, Especially Lexus
Holy crap... I mean, look. I get that luxury car brands ONLY exist insofar as they can convince people with disposable income (and just as many people without disposable income) to splurge tens of thousands of extra dollars (compared with a non-luxury car) on what is essentially a means of getting from Point A to Point B. As a result of this, these brands need to justify their value by essentially appealing to prospective buyers' vanity - that is, you NEED this $40,000 car because you DESERVE the best/you need to SHOW everyone how wealthy you are/you MUST compensate for your small penis/yadda yadda, etc.
(As you may have already guessed by the tenor of the previous paragraph, I intend to drive my base-model Honda Civic to the ground, on sheer principle.)
However, each holiday season, Lexus seems to push the envelope on this principle to the brink of committing brand seppuku. This year, their pitch line on several TV spots has been: "Let's be honest; no one ever wished for a smaller holiday gift." To disprove this claim, below I've attempted to create a list of perfectly reasonable holiday gifts that are smaller than a Lexus RX350 (curb weight 4,178 lbs):
- Diamond jewelry
- A fruitcake
- A charitable gift in the recipient's behalf
- A Shake Weight
- An iPad
- Scotch of the Month club
- A stuffed microbe
- A mature adult Holstein cattle (~1,000 lb)
As a result, these commercials have become parodies unto themselves. (In searching Youtube for "Lexus holiday commercial," I found more Lexus ad spoofs than actual commercials.) It would not surprise me at all to see Lexus lose ground this holiday season to other luxury brands - Lexus (and its parent company, Toyota) haven't exactly had a banner year in 2010. If it happens in 2010, expect them to lose ground to Acura, whose "Season of Reason" holiday ad campaign, I feel, elegantly toed the line between "this is a luxury purchase" and "this is nonetheless a perfectly reasonable purchase," doing an excellent job of capturing the current American zeitgeist of purchasing luxury items, where possible, and where practical.
Grade: F------- (Not Edible for Human Consumption)
1 comment:
\m/ Bush \m/
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