…about your dysfunctional marriage/parents playing favorites commercials? They’re not funny. They’re not edgy. They’re cruel. I don’t remember what you’re selling, but I do remember the sneer in that bitch of a wife’s voice when she tells her schlubby husband that she should have married someone else. I remember the look on his face, just as I remember the look on the little boy’s face when his parents announce that his older sister is their favorite.
For years, your cellphone commercials featured that batshit crazy mother who hoarded unused minutes and browbeat her husband and kids for wasting theirs. Now, we’re treated to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Mommy/Daddy Dearest. Who thinks up this stuff? Does every single person in your ad agency have a shitty marriage, or what?
I mute the damned things now as soon as they come on.
Commercials drive me insane. To the point where they have driven me away from regular television entirely. I watch episodes online or through Netflix, buy digital copies or actual DVDs of TV programs that I like just to avoid being bombarded. Of course, I’m saying that while surfing the internet where it is just as pervasive. I just find it easier to ignore here, I suppose.
There are some commercials that I like. The Travelers’ commercials with the “Trouble” dog–he could be Gaby’s twin brother. Their older commercial featuring the older man who traveled around the country in his red umbrella were inspired, imo. Car commercials often feature cool new music, and have twigged me onto a couple of bands I had never heard of.
OTOH, if I never see another erectile dysfunction commercial, it will be too soon.
I find online ads easy to ignore because they’re static for the most part. Nothing imaginative about them. Most TV commercials are blah unto irritating, but some are inspired. I wonder how that type of ad will survive on the internet. The audience is less captive, and there are fewer opportunities to showcase an imaginative effort without funneling people to You Tube or Vimeo.
Not watching TV commercials does have a downside. I sometimes have to bring conversations to a halt to understand a reference. Happened Saturday at family girl’s night — Aflack commercial with a pigeon that kept everyone giggling. We were at mom’s and she only has dialup, so unable to resort to YouTube like I usually do in these cases.
There are definitely commercials that I like…that Old Spice commercial that went viral, for instance. They are just so rare that I don’t have the patience. The prescription medication ads are bad (and rampant), but the followup lawsuit commercials are even worse!