Three Awful TV Commercials and Why

Hi guys, we've talked about what makes a good advertisement, so I think it's only fair to cover some stinkers too. It's human nature to seek out and relish the awful; so without further adieu, lets get to it.

Rather than just take the easy way out and make pot shots at old 50s ads advocating led based cocaine pills to cure athletes foot or something, we're going to focus on three modern ads.  Modern ads being within the decade of this post. So the 2010's and maybe a little earlier. (Or whatever we ended up calling that future readers):

First up I'd like to go after Quiznos, that 'other' sub shop.  They've had a lot of pretty awful commercials like this one that used an old web cartoon by the guys over at Rather Good in a hilariously desperate attempt to latch onto internet culture to drive up sales to take some of the market share from their closest competitor, Subway (and probably Sbarro to some extent)...


#1: Quiznos

BRILLIANT!

BUT we're not going to talk about that... we're going to talk about this. Yet ANOTHER attempt cash in on internet humor and culture (if you can even call it that), but this time using cats. I can only imagine the conversation leading up to it was something like: "The internet loves cats right? YES THEY DO! Oh how they do... so that means those young people must like silly cats too and therefor if we put silly cats doing silly things in our commercials, those whipper snappers HAVE to go to our restaurants!"
They tried so desperately to tap into and use internet stylings as a marketing tool for their product that they lost sight of the primary goal of moving product and ended up with an annoying commercial that fails on every level of its set goals. Needless to say whenever this commercial would air it did not make me want to drive out for a sub, instead it earned a loud annoyed groan and usually a channel change.


#2: GEICO

Pretty much my expression too for this one...

I'll be honest, I kind of like GEICO's commercials as of late. While they don't really focus much on the product and instead focus on the time and money you could save, they at least manage to be entertaining. This little treat fills me with a burning rage however. While it's in the same vein, it completely overstays its welcome... pretty much as soon as it cuts away from the spokesmen. It honestly boggles my mind how anyone could have thought 20 seconds of a high pitched screaming pig monster would make anyone want to buy insurance, let alone from the company responsible for afflicting them with such a curse.


#3: Heineken

"Who's amazing? This guy!"

Last up is a commercial from Heineken. Now I admit that I've never been a fan of beer advertisements, mostly because they tend to be nonsensical and annoying, but this one just flabbergasts me.  I'll do a quick play by play: It starts off with their buyer persona (20s guy with bead. Probably in college).  He's wearing a suit and is being dropped off in a limousine.  He enters the building and turns down another drink for the featured product. So far so good.  Then he immediately starts making an *** of himself to everyone in the party.
One could argue "Oh he's just having a good time, because BEER!" And that's fine to an extent, but this commercial just takes it to a whole new level of jack***ery. After he's finished walking the line everyone dances, because hey, life's a party especially with Heineken right? Or are they saying that our drinkers are prestigious, yet manage to be complete tools? The messages here are mixed, but mostly they just seem to say that Heineken drinkers are annoying pricks, tolerated only for the money they line their pockets with.
One of the worst things about is how long the whole ordeal is, it just drags on... I get the message they where going for and the commercial has its merits, but I have to say that the execution of the concept is very far from ideal in my eyes.  I admit this one might just be on the list because it's impossible for me to turn on my TV and not see this during every single commercial break.

And that's it for now... don't worry though I've got a couple of big posts in mind for after the 'holidays' to slate your thirst for pages upon pages of my textual abuse including one detailing the future of advertising among other things.