The List of Advertising Offenses

An oldie from 1998.

Here at Commercials I Hate, we have astutely noticed that America's most hated commercials have many factors in common.
With this in mind, we have compiled a checklist of crimes committed in advertisements that we call
The List of Advertising Offenses

Spouse hiding the product in purse
Husband has a terrible cough and has been hacking loudly through dinner.
He uses his own cough drops, but continues to bark like a dying seal.
ONLY THEN does the wife reveal HER cough drops,
which have been cleverly hidden in her purse the whole time.
What the hell was she waiting for?

I have never understood why commercials show spouses
using competing products, as if they have a bet or something.


#72, the Numbered Series
Usually shown as two 15-second clips back to back.
The first one is number 34 in a series of helpful tips.
The next commercial is number 18.
What's up with the random numbers in random order?
It's not as if there are REALLY 34 commercials and you've only seen these two.
There are always just two.
Ad execs only think this is a good idea because they saw someone else do it.
It's a cop-out and we can tell.

Not showing the product
You'd think it would be obvious.
The television has a screen for viewing things.
Why not show your product?

Not saying what the product is or does
Another brain-stumping error in the world of TV advertising.
Most common with medication
(you'd think it's an important detail, knowing what the medicine is for).

Liquid pouring and splashing up into the air
This is shown most often in commercials for cereal,
where the milk pours into the cereal from a stupefying height,
cresting and splashing up and out of the bowl.

This is also shown in ads for Kool-Aid and Nestea.
This is supposed to represent what exactly?
Who pours liquid from way up high and splashes it everywhere?

They also do this in commercials for liquid bleach!
Who would be so careless with liquid bleach?

Car spinning out of control
The commercial is for a car, and they ALWAYS show the car fish-tailing to a screeching halt.

This is supposed to demonstrate what exactly?
I suppose this stunt is to appeal to my alpha-male side.
Yeah, give me a car that spins. Preferrably spraying a fine mist from a wet road, or spewing dust in a giant cloud as I rip through the desert, destroying my clear-coat.

You know what? I just don't get it.
When you see a car spinning like that on the real road, you know someone is about to die, and that car is about to become a Coke can.

Totally unreal situations
These ads show people in situations they would never really be in,
like two grown women grocery shopping together with one cart,
or a girls soccer team eating cheerios
with bowls and spoons on the soccer field.
I saw an ad where a guy eats cereal at an outdoor cafe,
with the cereal box on the table.
People eat cereal at home and that's it.
Nobody goes out and pays to eat cereal in a cafe.
And on the soccer field? Give me a break!
I'd like to see an ad that shows single people eating right over the sink.
Now that's a real situation.

Michael Jordan
Here is a man who can play basketball,
but who absolutely can not talk.
It amazes me that MCI, a communications company,
used a spokesperson who can barely communicate.
You can barely understand the man.
He slurs his words together like a drunk stockbroker
or a teenage girl smacking on bubblegum.
Or maybe he still has hot dog bun stuck to the roof of his mouth
from that delicious Ball Park hot dog!

If someone was paying me millions of dollars to say something asinine like,
"Now I can talk with all my space jam buddies",
I would make damn sure that what I said clearly sounded like
"Now I can talk with all my space jam buddies".
What did they do, shoot one take and go home?

In recent years it seems Nike, Hanes and others have gotten the message.
Nowadays the Michael Jordan of commercials only stands there silently, makes a face, or shoots hoops.

People using the word "brand" in casual conversation
Prime example is the newly revised,
"I am stuck on Band-Aid BRAND, 'cause Band-Aid's stuck on me"

And who could forget the natural-sounding delivery of...
"New Lean Pockets! From Hot Pockets BRAND!"

People do not use the word BRAND when speaking about
or requesting a product. It doesn't happen.

The Interview
This is when the ordinary Joe/ headache sufferer/ dentist's wife
responds as if being interviewed, and they NEVER EVER
look in the direction of the camera.

The camera keeps switching angles for no reason-
she's talking to the left, she's talking to the right,
You want to yell "Hey! Over here, Sugar!"

People finishing each other's sentences
Here we show people from all walks of life,
each speaking a fragment of a sentence,
edited together into a big annoying mess.

The worst part comes at the end, when each person in turn says the last part of the sentence. We get to hear the same three or four words spoken by 5 or 6 people. Somebody somewhere thought this was cute.
I'd like to put cactus quills in that guy's scrambled eggs.

The Stupid Man
I know why they do it.

They do it because the woman is the consumer of the household.

But men make buying decisions too, ya know.
And we don't LIKE to see ourselves portrayed as glazed-eyed, mouth-ajar helpless MORONS.

Daddy can't cook. Daddy can't clean. Daddy can't discipline the child.
Daddy can't control himself in Circuit City.
Daddy runs in circles holding a baby at arm's length.
He has absolutely no idea what it is or why it makes that noise.
Daddy takes the kids to McDonalds because Mom's Not Home.

And the single woman watching at home laughs heartily "Ha! It's so true!"

Actor tries to sound unrehearsed
This is when the actor goes "uh.." and hesitates and talks all slow, in order to sound more natural.
All this does is piss me off. I'm like "SPIT IT OUT!"

It's really lame actually. It doesn't sound more natural,
it just sounds like the person can't remember what they were just talking about.

"Simply the Best"
The commercial uses the Tina Turner song "Simply the Best."
A brilliant song, using the innovative rhyme,
"You're the best / better than the rest",
Tina Turner's dopey "Simply the Best" has been used by
cruise lines and roofers alike, all claiming to be the best.
Give it a rest.

SHOUTING AT ME
Shouting at me doesn't inspire me to do business with you.
People talking like the product description
My favorite example is V8 Splash, where the Mom says,
"My guy loves his V8 Splash Fruit Juice Drink."
The Posthumous Endorsement
It should be illegal to use Marylin Monroe to sell Tommy perfume,
Fred Astaire to sell vacuums, and Steve McQueen to sell khakis.
The Blue Liquid
The ad is for pads or tampons or diapers
or any product that absorbs pee, and they prove the product's
spongeworthiness by pouring blue liquid on it.

Bastardization of a popular song
This is when they take a popular song and CHANGE THE LYRICS so the song is about the product.

Remember "Toyota's Hot Hot Hot" and Budget Gourmet's "Things That Make You Go Mmmm" ?

This is not the same as when they use a song you used to love, and play it until you hate it - like what Cadillac did to Led Zeppelin (as if any Cadillac driver can STAND Led Zeppelin). Now I have to skip past the song when I pop in the cd because I've gotten so sick of hearing it.

Person who Doesn't Get It
These commercials feature some thick-headed guy who just doesn't get it.
Even though someone is talking right to his face,
the guy can't hear or can't understand,
leaving their exasperated friend to repeatedly shout,
"It's not delivery, it's DiGiorno" or "AFLAC"

I should point out that repeatedly shouting ANYTHING within a 30-second period
is a great way to annoy people really quick.

Commercial is an Old Navy commercial
Even if they started making good commercials, we would still hate them.

We would hate them for what they've done to us.

We would hate them for the big-glasses lady
and for Magic the dog and for the TV rerun parodies
and for Lisa Ling and Morgan Fairchild and for the guy
who can only be known as The Old Navy Guy.
Annoying, annoying annoying.