Tag: Commercials

Meat Ads that Use Anthropomorphized Animals / “Turkey Day”

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I absolutely despise it when commercials that are advertising meat use talking animals to promote their product. It is bad enough that the poor animals being murdered so that people can not only eat to survive, but rather to enjoy a treat. It is bad enough that the commercials glorify killing and eating animals (I can’t stand the ones that show sizzling chunks of dead animal flesh, trying to make it look appealing), but to actually use them in the commercials is just wrong. It is immoral and indecent and often encroaches on cannibalism.

The steak-sauce commercial that has a cow singing to lure you into eating it is sick. The commercial showing cows and chickens trying to convince humans to eat the other is disgusting. And the rest…

In a similar vein, I really hate it when people call Thanksgiving “Turkey Day”. First of all, it masks and dismisses the whole point of Thanksgiving which is to recognize the good in your life and that others are not so lucky, and to be grateful for what you have and to help others. Second, it is even more disrespectful to the turkeys who die on the day. It is bad enough they are dying, but to give the day a “cutesy” name like that makes light of and demeans their deaths.

Apple Doesn’t Know When to Quit

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Apple’s use of indie music in their television spots has been quite successful. They present their products (iPods and Macs) as being young, hip, and trendy, while giving some artist (usually a relatively unheard of one) some much needed exposure and thus a “big break”. Most of the indie artists whose songs have been featured in an Apple commercial have done pretty well, particularly that song, getting very high sales, especially on Apple’s own iTunes.

Unfortunately what Apple does not seem to understand is that familiarity breeds contempt. This is especially true with music. While the more you hear a new song, the more you start to like it (voluntarily or not), there comes a point when the more you hear it, the more you hate it. Apple does not get that and has played many of their commercials so many times that you blow past liking the song and get quite sick of hearing it because the novelty wears way off.

Feist got a lot of attention from the Nano video that her song “1,2,3,4” was featured in, but seriously, how many people were sick and tired of hearing it by the time it was finally done? Yael Naim “New Soul” is currently getting the Apple treatment in the new MacBook campaign and like the others is already getting quite irritating.

As a fan of the Fratelli’s album Costello Music, I was quite upset that I was actually getting sick of hearing “Flathead” over and over and over and over and over again.

Apple needs to learn that too much of anything is bad, especially music. They need to make sure to cut the commercial before the song gets annoying and replace it either with a new commercial if possible, or if they don’t have a new product, then at least a new song.

Don’t Beg the Poor To Be Sponsers

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I can’t stand that commercial for the Christian Children’s fund with that old guy with the beard. I despise his accusatory tone that implies that we are bad people unless we sponsor a kid. Worse still, I despise that the commercial runs on basic cable. Why don’t they air it on a premium channel like ShowTime, HBO, or PlayBoy instead? It is like a bum hanging around the unemployment line begging for money. Get lost! If I had money, I wouldn’t be here; go beg at the Mercedes dealership.

Make A Living At McDonald’s?

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I just saw the stupidest commercial in a long time. It was a McDonald’s commercial where some guy—I mean some idiot—is talking about how he has since childhood dreamed of being a sandwich-board guy for McDonald’s. As if that is not bad enough, he has placed a sandwich-board on his infant in the crib saying that he intends the same path for his child.

?!?!

Isn’t it bad enough that this guy aspires to being some dolt who stands around in the street wearing a couple of pieces of sheet wood advertising for McDonald’s? Did they really need to make the commercial so that he dooms his child to the same fate? I mean come on! What kind of person would want that for their child. Normal people dream of their child being a doctor, astronaut, president, this guy wants his kid to be an ad-monkey.

This isn’t the first stupid McDonald’s commercial, besides the lame R&B; campaign that McDonald’s has been running for the past year in an attempt to get at the “ghetto” market—you know the ones, where people are rapping and stuff with that annoying “I’m Loving It” jingle—they have done similar stupid ads. There was one where they were showing a bunch of employees talking about how happy they are working at McDonald’s. One woman says that she has been working at McDonald’s for over 30 years. Thirty years!

What kind of moron thinks up these ads? Nobody wants to think that they may have to end up working at McDonald’s flipping burgers, getting burned by oil, earning minimum wage, and hating their lives for 30 years. Jobs at McDonald’s are transitory, they are supposed to be temporary; if you stay at McDonald’s for an extended period then there is something wrong and you should take stock of your life and try to figure out what went wrong.