Gimme a Break

Caution! Upcoming rant on: TV Commercials

ING Direct, community college, McDonald's, Saturn, Wal-Mart, Mars. What do all of these different things have in common? If you watch any television, you will know that they all have terrible commercials.

The majority of ads on television today are complete garbage. ING's foreign man preaching at the audience about service charges, Wal-Mart's "heartfelt stories", and mostly everything in between leaves much to be desired during our many commercial breaks. Since the volume of advertisements which are included in daily watching are increasing, the calibur of them should be raised as well. However, that's simply not the case.

What happened to the days when cats held their breath to step into the litterbox to promote scented cat litter, or when Dave Thomas reassured us that Wendy's truly was the place to be? Ronald used to tell us about the money he was giving his charities in thanks for buying his disgusting burgers, and chocolate bars had jingles.

Today, Dave Thomas is clawing his way out of his grave to attack that damn unofficial spokesman, who annoys us all and makes it seem so effortless. Ronald died in the loss in revenues of 2003 and was replaced with Justin Timberlake's "ba da ba ba ba, I'm lovin' it" jingle. Trust us Ronald. We are not loving anything except the chicken nuggets. And what happened to those chocolate bar jingles? Kit Kat's "Gimme a Break" was shoved aside by Mars Bar's "Lick the screen" campaign. Frankly, I don't want to lick the screen, nor do I want to go to Mars to get my energy.

I also wonder what types of subliminal messaging these awful ad campaigns have in them, and ponder whether or not they are working. Best Buy, a store I enjoy to shop in, currently has a shocking ad on television. It has a tall woman and a short man dancing at a staff party, talking about Best Buy, and eventually has the Best Buy tag doing the Robot. Seems "normal" enough. However, the two people, flirting back and forth, seems a lot more sexual than it should. Why is that? Because there are two other people going into an office in the near background and closing the blinds! Can we say blatant sexual innuendo? Or can we say unbelieveable. I can say both.

Fortunately, there are some entertaining commercials left on television. Sola and Nero, two wines, have a visually appealing cell-shaded cartoon commercial. Twix had a hilarious commercial with a woman yelling "give it to me" on a guy desk, trying to get her Twix back. Swiffer has random people showing other random people what types of food it picks up (I'm happy to know that it picks up cheese puffs if it's going to be that entertaining). The Gap, which I used to hate the ads for, now seems very visually and aurally stimulating. I mean, who can resist Sarah Jessica Parker? The best of all, Ikea, has some amazing commercials out, and must have the best marketing team money can buy. I mean, I did feel sorry for that lamp.

I could go on and on about commercials, because there are so many areas to tackle. At least it's giving me more individual topics for more rants. I'm lovin' it.

--Holiday Jam