(click ad for closer look) Sure for a single ad, you make a memorable impression. But what's remembered? The brand? Or the icon? And what's the next ad in the campaign? While this Marilyn impersonator may have legs, the idea doesn't. And by using such an unoriginal visual, Leo Burnett Venezuela, you run the great risk of producing a wholly unoriginal ad. Also: what the hell's up with that Marilyn model? Is that the best MM drag queen (I'm assuming, look at the face/feet.) you could find? Sad.
(click ad to read copy) At first glance, I thought this might be a viral ad for Cavemen, the new, and apparently awful, ABC sitcom. No—Weatherproof Garment, a division of David Peyser Sportswear, is a real company, though their website is currently dead. Maybe it's a sneaky tie-in? Available evidence says unh-unh. So, there's no cleverness here. It's just bald, blatant, shameless appropriation. Bravo? Geico attorneys get busy! (scanned from yesterday's New York Times Style magazine.) previously in unoriginal ideas: 1. Dressing up Lady Liberty. 2. The way $tarbuck$ $ee$ it. 4. The Bank of Opportunistic Stock Photo Use. 5. law firms look to animal kingdom for ad help.
Today’s Tech Ads Are All Made By Men And Are All Terrible.
That Silicon Valley & Alley are both massively
dick-heavy is not news—if you’ve ever been to a tech trade show, well, you know.
Therefore, it makes sense that tech company ad agencies would put their best
men on the job, and only men. How’s that working out? Take a
look.
AT&T’s “Network
Guys”
This newish campaign manages to insult both IT people and all
the rest of us. That’s because the “guys” are both unfunny condescending
assholes and complete fucking losers. “You wouldn’t understand what we’re
doing, honey, just go post your cat photos, and hey, can I fuck your homely
ass?” A second spot, set at a rock concert, is just as
bad—“enjoy the show” (you unemployed fucking dumbass stoner loser).
“Rethink Possible” is AT&T’s current tagline. They
should turn that slogan around to face themselves.
“…The boldest email has yet
to be opened. The boldest app has yet to be bought. The boldest file has yet to
be downloaded…”
But the worst ever internet security commercial
has now been written, so close your laptops, young ad scribes.
“Well
guys, our ad bites, so let’s at least shoot in black & white to add bogus
gravitas. And get some pretentious girl who sounds like she goes to Hogwarts to
do the V/O.”
The
creative team on this awful new spot by Grey San Francisco? Six
men.
LG G Flex “the most human
phone ever”
LG
loved this creepy-ass ad so much, released earlier this year, that they’ve removed
it from their official
YouTube page.
I’m all for super surreal shit, if the writing’s funny and I’m sold on the
product. Yeah—no and no.
(What do you think Danny’s hand phone looks more like—a heavily bearded clam or a very
hairy asshole? Also, logically, the mouth should be in the fingers, and the ear
in the palm.)
I
don’t have the credits for this spot, but you can bet all your shiny “gold” ad awards
that the creative team was XY.
Toshiba “Field testing with
Matt & Jamie”
Oh goodie: another unfunny pair of
spokes-jerkoffs. The “field testing” concept is sometimes a good if unoriginal
idea—at least I’ll maybe see some product benefits for my time. But again: the
writing here is just epically bad. Fat macho Matt calls Toshiba’s tech people
“dorks” and us “nerds.” He’s an ironic character. Maybe.
They
made nine of these terrible field test spots. If you’d like to waste eight more
minutes of your life like I did, you can watch the rest of them here. Their laptop fails a monster truck
test and
passes a jumper
cables test
that makes zero sense. Their tablet screen cracks when it’s thrown like a
discus.
Like Matt, these “tests” are “ironic,” irony being, ostensibly, a formula for
humor.
Still,
these ads are an improvement over their “get unstressed with Lucy” (and her
exposed tits) Toshiba commercials from 2012 (all balls
creative team, btw). Toshiba thinks they’ve scrubbed the Internet of all traces
of this amazingly crass and sexist campaign. Sorry,
guys.
Then, there are the endless Apple-bashing
commercials of Samsung.
Now I’m all for bashing Apple, but Samsung has no continuity, no Big Idea. It’s
just a bunch of one-off reactionary
spots
that make the Korean company look childish, and much smaller and less important
than they are.
And,
of course, the creative teams on almost every Samsung tech spot you’ve seen—via
Cheil & Partners (their worldwide agency), the UK’s CHI & Partners, and
RG/A and 72andSunny in America—are all dudes. I’m not linking to all the spots,
but you can look up the credits on Adfreak and Ads of the World.
The best tech ads from the last five years have been by Google. And many of Google's spots are created in-house, like this Cannes Lion-winning Google Instant ad from 2011.
The copywriter? Yes, a man. And a man wrote this playful campaign for Google Play, another favorite of mine. But Google has at least, occasionally, let women into the "ideation" process. Google is not a stupid company.
Besides the bro-culture, another problem with tech ads
is that they’re made with one eye on Silicon Valley, one eye on NASDAQ, and one
eye on the company's own fucking navel, which doesn’t leave very many eyes for the
people who might be interested in buying their overpriced nonessential
products. So what you end up with is tech companies figuratively rubbing one
out on camera. Right
Apple?
It wasn’t always this way. During the dot-com bubble of the
late 1990s, tech advertising was wonderful. There was the inspiring Apple “Think Different” campaign; the
hilarious Pets.com sock puppet commercials; and the
brilliant Monster.com spots. The period was
punctuated by the amazingly bombastic “we just wasted 2 million dollars” 2000 e-trade Super Bowl commercial.
I am
flummoxed that the supposed best analytical minds in the world can’t
make/approve better ads. But—just maybe, guys?—if more women were involved
in creating and approving tech ads, the ads would be more creative and more
effective and less masturbatory bullshit? Tech CEOs? It's probably worth giving some female creatives a shot. Remember: Frankenstein's monster, one of history's most innovative high tech ideas, was created by a woman.
It's been well documented (if not well researched): At some point in the 1990s, Ad Dads very suddenly became moronic punchlines. I don't know who was more responsible for this—ad agencies or brands or Homer Simpson—but the tipping point was reached quickly. It was an anti-Mad Men ad movement. It was anti-creative. And it was just as sexist as all the Women As Sex Objects ads (though not as insidious).
The OG "Swagger" Dad
But in the last few years, there has been a shift in Dadvertising to Dad as Hero. That's fine. But, unfortunately, a subset of this new "Super Dad" ad concept has been the "Swagger Dad", popularized by comedian Brian Huskey in a lazy, hackneyed though widely applauded 2010 Toyota minivan ad. Like all such awkward-white-people-co-opting-black-culture ideas, it was insulting to the entire human race.
Swagger Dad #2
Now four years later Toyota, via their agency Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles, has finally released a "sequel" featuring "The Neuberts" (Christ). And since many criticized the first spot as racist, the world's leading auto manufacturer brought in Brooklyn boy Busta Rhymes to embarrass the fuck out of himself, hopefully for a very fat stack.
This video has all of the cringe and none of entertainment of the first Sienna ad. Four fucking years, and this is the best they could do. And I'm unemployed.
American Greetings—"Dad Life" (2010)
The world's largest greeting card company (That's one of the Whitest phrases I've ever typed.) apparently scoped the success of the Toyota video, and dropped their own awful anthem less than two months later, pre-Father's Day. Theirs featured four Swagger Dads, including a black dad to mute racism criticism. Dockers® and St. John's Bay shirts and John Deere riding mowers and Roundup weed killer get shout-outs, though it's not clear if any of that was prearranged. Note the douchey bluetooth.
"I gotta clip for my piece..." (cellphone holder)
Cheerios and their digital ad agency Tribal Worldwide also certainly noticed the 12 million views the original Swagger Dad ad racked up. They smartly avoided the shitty studio rap track, but this dude is still just another Swagger Dad telling you#HowToDad—which includes eating and feeding your children bowl after motherfuckin' bowl of peanut butter Cheerios for "breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight snacks". #HowToAngioplasty
Health concerns aside, this ad was just merely bad and unoriginal, until, yep: had to throw in those slo-mo fake gang signs at the end...ahh YEAH.
What recent Dad Ad do I like?
This one, for Jell-O pudding, by cp+b.
It's real. Yo.
(click ad for closer look at the unoriginal Svedkafembot, a direct ripoff of the Björkbot created by director Chris Cunningham) It's well known in marketing circles that Absolut became the cool hooch of the 80s by first becoming the cool hooch of the gay community. But Absolut did this with the aid of cool ads, not badly-written, pandering ads (previous examples 1,2,3,4). Yes Svedka sales are up up up, but that's mainly because it's new new new and cheap cheap cheap. Let's see where they are in ten years. (ad via MultiCultClassics)
(click ads) The South African edition of Marie Claireasked ad agencies to create layouts for their current "body" issue. These are the noteworthy executions. Top Left—That's depressing. Ad agency: M&C Saatchi. Top Right—That's better, I guess. Ad agency: King James RSVP. Bottom Left: Unoriginal (Barbie again?), and some of the call-outs are cliches (chocolate, twice?). Ad agency: Canvas Lifestyle. Bottom Right: Well, her hair, eyes, mouth, boobs, and hoo-ha are left, so... I don't know. Ad agency: Jupiter Drawing Room.
I'm not a woman. Women: what do you think? Related: a round-up of insulting marketing to women.
(click ad) My disdain for Svedka's uninteresting, unoriginal (shamelessly stolen from Björk) fembot campaign is very (very) welldocumented (even showing up in the Guardian). So, I feel forced to take some precious time out of my day to briefly eviscerate their terrible ad from last week's ESPN magazine. First, purchase cheap rights-free football field stock photo for background. Secondly, find previously-used fembot shot that fits layout. Lastly, insert first stupid sports cliche headline that pops into stupid head.
(click ads, huge files, sorry) Using "dead" models to sell fashion is of course nothing nouveau. It's been done artistically, like in this Kate Spade shoes ad. It's been done sleazily, like with this Duncan Quinn ad. And it's been done realistically, like in this Jimmy Choo ad. Here, via DDB New Zealand, we get Gory for Superette, an Auckland boutique. "Be caught dead in it" is the tagline. The campaign will be running in newspapers and fashion mags, as well as on billboards, according to the agency press note. Fashion is death, it's been said—by about a million unoriginal pretentious fashion photog pricks (images via).
(click ads, via) It's for CNN Turkey and it won a Bronze Outdoor Lion last month. It's such a goofy first-thought idea. And, it's an unoriginal idea. And Obama would never ever agree to endorse pathetic CNN. Add that ad to the illicit Barackvertising archive. Ad agency: DDB Istanbul.
Previous CNN Turkey ads attacked America and Vladimir Putin.
The 5 Worst American Iraqi War Operation Brand Names.
(not an official logo)
In July, Israel launched "Operation Protective Edge" against Hamas in Gaza. What does that mean, do you think? Why doesn't the press ask what it means? Because you know days were spent around conference room tables committee-ing that name to death. Why not "Operation Protect Israel"? Or, "Operation Protective Force"? "Edge", I guess, says that Israel wanted to convey that they are superior, both militarily and morally, to their foes. Fine.
America doesn't have a brand name yet, at least not publicly, for its new tactical bombing campaign against ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria. (How about "Operation IslamaBomb?) But my search for the name sent me to Wikipedia and the brand names of past American actions, incursions, and whatnots in Iraq.
Here are the five worst.
(probably not the official logo)
1. "Operation Desert Fox"—Bombing of Iraq (1998).
This name probably caused German WWII Afrika Korps field marshal Erwin Rommel —nicknamed by the British "The Desert Fox"—to punch his coffin lid until he broke all his bony knuckles. And for good reason. How dare the American army brass besmirch Rommel's good name—he refused high command orders to round up Jews, treated POWs humanely, and committed suicide with a cyanide pill after being implicated in a late war plot to kill Hitler—in the name of a pathetic four-day air-bombing operation aimed at destroying Iraq's nonexistent WMDs? Fuck you, Secretary of Defense William Cohen, and fuck you President Clinton for not making him change the unoriginal, tacky name.
3. "Operation Slim Shady"—Counterinsurgency operation designed to cripple the resources of Muqtada al-Sadr's militia (2004). The press release gives no reason why Eminem's alter ego was used as the code name, nor if Marshall Mathers gave legal permission to use the name.
4. "Operation William Wallace"—Counterinsurgency mission to destroy al-Qaeda elements in the Abu Tina area (2006). The Americans, rather disrespectfully, chose not to wear kilts and Scottish face paint during the operation. Kilts, combined with a hockey goalie iron cup jockstrap, would be an ideal desert battle outfit.
NOTE: The Allied invasion of Normandy, France, D-Day, was dubbed—Operation Overlord. Now THAT was a war brand name. Majestic, with a can't-fail overtone. WE ARE THE SUPREME POWER, krauts. Bravo.
Drinking skim milk instantly Photoshops the fat right off your face.
(click ads) Hey Fatty Face, suck in those chipmunk cheeks. Print ads for Al Maraei Trim skim milk by Leo Burnett Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. If that already unhealthy-looking woman takes one more sip, she's gonna turn into a wraith. Mildly clever retouching concept that's unfortunately unoriginal (via). previously in scary Photoshop: Statutory Rape awareness ads with d-cupped 13-year-olds. The most sexist beer ads ever produced. Faces smooshed by breasts in Japanese bra ads. Axl Jesus Christ Rose. And the GPS finger of death.
The Nutcracker Sweetie? (sorry)
New spot for Orange Fitness in Moscow, the place to go, apparently, for a rock hard ass. Very crude, kinda funny. 100% unoriginal. Below is a spot for Leo's Sports Club in Munich from 2003. Previously in: NSFW Russian Ad Watch.
(click ad, via) Beach season is here, ladies. So, you should be well on your way to getting your bod slimmed down to fit into your new BCBG anatomy shirt. Gym ads universally suck. The trend continues. Decent digital work, but an unoriginal visual trick. Silence of the Lambs, anyone?
Ad agency: DCS, Brazil. Previous sucky gym ads:
• Crunch (stupid).
• Passage Fitness (eww).
• Equinox (pretentiously awful).
• Gold's (uncreatively mocks fatties).
• Gold's again (WHAT?!?).
(click images, via) And there have been some big ones previously. To the above: a fun, but ultimately pretty useless stunt for Big Bloom bubblegum (unless it goes Internet "viral"). Created mostly to win ad awards, which it probably will. Ad agency: McCann Group, Bangkok. Related: In 2009, Hubba Bubba in Israel did a pretty funny big bubble bubblegum ad without actually showing a bubble. update: unsurprisingly, it's unoriginal.
Yes, that was me back then. Why am I embarrassing myself? Because I've just gotten sick and fucking tired of all the mania over the Ontarian's unoriginal derivative bangs (and songs). Even criminals are copying him. You should have seen me the day before this yearbook portrait was snapped: my look was bass player for Uriah Heep. If you don't know who Uriah Heep is (was): fuck you. Yes, that is in fact a powder blue leisure suit. Thanks to copyranter commenter 1-track-mind for the inspiration. Previous copyranter pics: front. back.
(click ad for closer look)
