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surviva · A God among Trolls

surviva Watches the Super Bowl Ads, Then Does His Best Impersonation of a Crotchety Old Man [02/08]

surviva · A God among Trolls

surviva Does His Best Impersonation of a Crotchety Old Man Whilst Watching Super Bowl Ads

surviva · A God among Trolls

On all of the car commercials:

Can I say that I am NOOOOOO sort of car aficionado, but god damned there are some sweet new cars coming out that look awesome. The new VW looks like something I’d actually want to drive, the new Optima is pretty sweet for a Kia and holy **** did you see that Acura?! Of course, this isn’t a blog about products; it’s a blog about commercials, and car commercials seem to be set on continuing the trend of sucking.

I believe I first noticed this trend (that is, the trend of car commercials sucking) about 10 years ago. There was an ad for an SUV (I don’t remember what car; of course I don’t remember what car; car commercials are god awful at branding; that’s kind of my point) that showed the car trudging through difficult terrain—running over rocks and fallen trees and driving through bushes and all of this crazy sh*t—with native Amazonians in the back seat playing drums along with the whole excursion. Finally, the car stops and lets the natives out in the middle of the jungle at what you can presume to be their home. The slogan was probably something along the lines of “it gets you wherever you’re trying to go.” Basically, for all of those who have a good chance of running into some brand of Native Americans who need a ride to the heart of the Amazon pronto, this is the car for you—for all others, you may find our featured abilities of being able to blast through bushes and run over boulders to be quite worthless.

The 2012 Super Bowl continued this trend of self-defeating logic. You have some pickup truck commercial showing some pickup truck towing like 35 jet skis, 4 boats, a Thanksgiving Day float, a continent and ANOTHER PICKUP TRUCK! So for all of those who just cannot settle for anything less than 35 jet skis, you better not settle for the second best in towing.

You have some other commercial showing the car bungee jumping and sky diving and jumping giant skateboards. I was exaggerating talking about the pickup truck commercial, but believe it or not, I am actual being completely literal when I describe this one.

Honda’s commercial with Matthew Broderick playing hooky would make more sense if their tagline were “Our cars are kinda sorta like Ferraris,” but that tagline doesn’t make any sense, so I guess this commercial’s premise is just doomed to make zero sense regardless.

Speaking of taglines, I guess Toyota’s commercial showing the baby reinvented to be a poopless time machine is meant to be accompanied by the slogan, “There is stuff we haven’t invented.” So yeah, now that you know some things that Toyotahasn’t invented, I guess you have no choice but to buy a Toyota. It all makes perfectly good sense.

In fact, it’s quite a statement when the car commercial most in tune with reality is a Silverado ad that touts how it can survive the apocalypse just in case a misinterpreted, several-millennia-old prophesy holds up and you do in fact have to make your purchasing decisions with the end of the world in mind. I mean, I’m more likely to want to prepare for the end of the world than I am to jump over a 100-foot-long skateboard or to confuse a Honda with a Ferrari, so Silverado wins by default!

Actually, I lied. My favorite car ad was the one introducing the new VW bug. It had a cute dog, an 80s-style montage and featured as its climax the unveiling of an original, pretty-damned-good-looking car. There weren’t any explosions or celebrity cameos or abortions —just a cute dog, a simple, well-executed premise and the unveiling of a good product at the climax. So it’s a win. I actually thought that the Star Wars stuff at the end was meh, and—guess what?—it detracted from the product which I just said looked pretty sweet and was much more memorable when it was at the climax/forefront of the commercial instead of being sandwiched between an entertaining montage and a meh reference.

Watering down the advertising of a sweet product with stuff like flying squirrel suits actually segues perfectly into my next bit . . .

surviva · A God among Trolls

On Samsung:

Okay, so now that I’ve rewatched the commercial, I remember what I was thinking in the first 30 seconds. It was something along the lines of, “Woah, that **** is awesome; cool. Woah look at what that phone does. Oh man, that’s actually really cool,” etc.

Of course, I say that I only remember this now because I’d forgotten all about the product because the only thing I think of when remembering this commercial is that it’s that one with The Darkness in it playing that song that makes people chuckle with skateboard tricks and guys shooting out of cannons and all that crap. /deep breath

Hell, even if the commercial ended at the 30-second mark—before going into the whole OMG WE’RE ON DURING THE SUPER BOWL SO WE HAVE TO MAKE THIS SONG FART SPARKLE SAUCE!—the whole cliché setup of being trapped and so not free until now because now we can draw with a pen on our phones is some kind of transparently dumb juxtaposition with reality. To put it in simpler terms: I’m an iPhone user, and I can say that I don’t feel trapped by my inability to write on it with a pen.

Again, I thought this product was pretty dazzling (even if silly), but setting it up in some kind of statement of IF YOU CAN’T HAVE THIS FEATURE THEN YOU’RE DOOMED only points out how silly I should feel for having felt dazzled in the first place. Maybe it’s just me, and I’m just not quite part of that privileged, white person class who can have really cool stuff, but if I’m not, then they must really be marketing toward an infinitesimally small group.

Though I’m not one of those insane-o-Apple-philes, I can say that they are extremely good at marketing (duh), so it’s funny that Samsung would fight against Apple by going in the complete opposite direction of those simple, clean commercials Apple has of showing us really wowing (yet, in the grand scheme of things, pretty dumb) apps and features. And they just let those really wowing (yet, in the grand scheme of things, pretty dumb) apps and features speak for themselves. By piling on stupid superfluousness (even if you’re clearly trying to be ironic about adding stupid superfluousnesses to your commercial) just makes me think at the end of the commercial, “oh, it’s another Super Bowl ad for some thing.”