![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Bad commercials are making a comeback.
Jun. 29th, 2015 01:07 amThey say they've focused tested commercials from the beginning, but that literally cannot be true. In the 80's and 90's the commercials were often so atrocious that I'd often refuse to use a product out of spite. And nobody liked them. There is no way they focused tested certain commercials and gotten positive feedback for them. None. Now they DO focus test these things, which is why commercials aren't as terrible as they used to be. Or so I thought.
Sunny Delight, Honey Bunches of Oats, Bubble Tape, Apple Jacks, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, I HATED all of those. The kids cereal and gum commercials were especially annoying because they were specifically teaching children to be rude and disrespectful to adults, and the world had enough ahole children in it already, and didn't need to breed any more. They were how-to guides on how to be insolent jerks.
But the worst commercial from the 1980's was easily the Duracell Battery family. And this was an ad campaign that must have run for like ten years. I have never met a single person who didn't hate those commercials, and feel creeped out by them, but Duracell stuck with them as if they were popular.
Now we get to today. I recently saw two commercials so bad I thought it was the 1980's again. The first is that new horrible KFC ad campaign with the Colonel straight out of Hee Haw, who sings in that whiny voice with the George W. Bush laugh. So obnoxious and I changed the channel every time it is on. I'm not sure the other sponsors of the program I was previously watching would appreciate that.
The second commercial I actually saw in a movie theater (before The Avengers). I was shocked at how bad it was. Everyone in the theater was rolling, but beneath the derisive laughter there seemed to be a bit of embarrassment shared between everybody in realizing this is what certain admen thought appealed to women.
The commercial was a tie-in to Pitch Perfect 2 for lady razors and featured a huge, appalling musical number of women wearing nothing but towels singing about leg hair (there was an actual line about cactus spines). Usually when you see a bad commercial, you're annoyed on your own. But seeing it with a group of people feels especially humiliating for some reason.
I was never going to buy lady razors anyways, but now I am definitely not seeing Pitch Perfect or its sequel. If that is how it chooses to advertise itself, it must suck beyond belief.
For the record, as bad as the old 90's Mentos commercials were, they didn't offend me quite as badly as they seemed to other people. They sucked, but they weren't kids high-fiving themselves over orange juice, or a kid with headphones singing random "Yeah, yeah, yeahs" out of tune. I watched a LOT of kids TV back then. I was used to much worse.
Do you know what bad commercial I liked? McDonald's "I'm hittin' that." That ad campaign must have lasted all of ten minutes until McDonald's got the memo. It is hilarious and embarrassing that they rolled out a multi-million dollar ad campaign over misinterpreting a hip-hop slang saying. It is literally a commercial that endorses f***ing sandwiches. SO dumb.
Sunny Delight, Honey Bunches of Oats, Bubble Tape, Apple Jacks, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, I HATED all of those. The kids cereal and gum commercials were especially annoying because they were specifically teaching children to be rude and disrespectful to adults, and the world had enough ahole children in it already, and didn't need to breed any more. They were how-to guides on how to be insolent jerks.
But the worst commercial from the 1980's was easily the Duracell Battery family. And this was an ad campaign that must have run for like ten years. I have never met a single person who didn't hate those commercials, and feel creeped out by them, but Duracell stuck with them as if they were popular.
Now we get to today. I recently saw two commercials so bad I thought it was the 1980's again. The first is that new horrible KFC ad campaign with the Colonel straight out of Hee Haw, who sings in that whiny voice with the George W. Bush laugh. So obnoxious and I changed the channel every time it is on. I'm not sure the other sponsors of the program I was previously watching would appreciate that.
The second commercial I actually saw in a movie theater (before The Avengers). I was shocked at how bad it was. Everyone in the theater was rolling, but beneath the derisive laughter there seemed to be a bit of embarrassment shared between everybody in realizing this is what certain admen thought appealed to women.
The commercial was a tie-in to Pitch Perfect 2 for lady razors and featured a huge, appalling musical number of women wearing nothing but towels singing about leg hair (there was an actual line about cactus spines). Usually when you see a bad commercial, you're annoyed on your own. But seeing it with a group of people feels especially humiliating for some reason.
I was never going to buy lady razors anyways, but now I am definitely not seeing Pitch Perfect or its sequel. If that is how it chooses to advertise itself, it must suck beyond belief.
For the record, as bad as the old 90's Mentos commercials were, they didn't offend me quite as badly as they seemed to other people. They sucked, but they weren't kids high-fiving themselves over orange juice, or a kid with headphones singing random "Yeah, yeah, yeahs" out of tune. I watched a LOT of kids TV back then. I was used to much worse.
Do you know what bad commercial I liked? McDonald's "I'm hittin' that." That ad campaign must have lasted all of ten minutes until McDonald's got the memo. It is hilarious and embarrassing that they rolled out a multi-million dollar ad campaign over misinterpreting a hip-hop slang saying. It is literally a commercial that endorses f***ing sandwiches. SO dumb.
