More like "blow-cus group"

If there's one thing we know about the people who make ads, it's that they think nothing is more interesting than the process of making ads.  You know how Hollywood loves to give Oscars to movies about Hollywood?  It's like that, but much dumber.

 

Virtually everything that annoys me about this now-ubiquitous ad format is here.

Ad: "The Snapshot app from Progressive rewards you for driving safe and driving less."

Flo: "Okay, what message did you hear this time?"

[No one says anything.  Beth shrugs.]

Flo: "Safe drivers can save using Snapshot?"

At least they make sure to get the message out up front.  Minor points there.  Too many ads these days hide what they're for behind 20 seconds of annoyance, such that by the time they arrive at the pitch, anyone sane has already changed the channel or walked away.  This is the last compliment I'm going to give this ad.

Kirk: "What's Snapshot?"

Flo: "...what the commercial was about."

Rashad: "I tune commercials out."

Beth: "Me too.  They're always like 'blah, blah, blah.'"

You can pretty much see the room where the ad creatives came up with this.  "Oh man, we are gonna make people THINK with this one."  Guys, if you don't pay attention to our brilliant Progressive ads, how will you ever learn about our Snapshot app, which big-brothers your driving for a modest discount and unless you are especially careful can actually cause your rates to increase?  (Also, who are these obnoxious people who signed up for a focus group and then refused to pay attention to a 30-second ad that they're being paid to pay attention to?)

So: editorializing.  That's one thing I hate.  We're not done though.

Meredith: "Tell me about it.  I'm going to a silent retreat next weekend."

What are you talking about?

Guy Whose Name Card is Not Visible: "My niece got kicked out of one of those."

Meredith: "For talking?"

GWNCINV: "Grand larceny."

[long, *hilarious* pause]

Oh, we needed Meredith to change the subject entirely so we could set up this hysterically funny joke.  Do you think the pause was there to give the audience enough time to pick themselves up off the floor?  Personally, I think it needed to be a good 30 seconds longer so I would have time to wipe the 7-Up off my TV screen after I heard the funniest thing in the world and did an enormous spit take.

That's the second thing I hate: bad jokes, and in particular bad jokes that put a gap in like "Whoa, can you believe someone just said this crazy thing???"  It's a fake crazy thing.  That didn't really happen, you just had a guy say that.  If it were real, maybe it would be a little funny.  As a written joke it sucks shit.  Sorry.

I know - believe me, I know - that the people who write ads are not professional comedy writers.  But why even bother trying to put in jokes when the attempts are this feeble?  If you're incapable of making a normal commercial, you need to at least go a lot crazier in an attempt to be memorable. I can't imagine anyone finding this post because they Googled "hilarious Progressive grand larceny ad."

(On the other hand, I just scrolled through the first dozen comments on that YouTube video and... yikes.  There really is no accounting for taste.)

Flo: "How about we get back to the savings?"

[Overlapping dialogue of everyone agreeing]

Okay, so do they care or do they not care?  If you're telling me that people care about the savings they can get with Progressive, but absolutely zone out whenever a Progressive ad comes on TV, you're writing an ad that argues against the existence of your own job.  Brilliant?

Just to annoy me further, in the YouTube version of this ad, Flo appears at the end and thanks you for "sticking around" to see more "great content," which turns out to be an additional nine seconds of very much not funny outtakes.  Oh yeah, if you thought the stuff they were willing to put on TV was mediocre, wait until you see what they WEREN'T.

Stars: they're just like us (annoying)

I'm not entirely clear on what's supposed to be happening in this commercial.

 

Patrick Mahomes: "Jake from State Farm! What's good?"

Jake: "Patrick?"

Patrick: "Nah, fam - just your typical sneakerhead working here for the employee discount..." [makes uninterpretable hand motion for some reason] "...but speaking of deals, I heard regular guys like me are getting the 'Patrick price' - that can't be real, right?"

Jake: "Listen, State Farm offers rates that fit any budget, even yours, 'typical sneakerhead.'"
Patrick: "Wow, just anyone now?"

Jake: "Yeah."

Patrick: [grabbing shoes Jake is looking at] "Man.  These just sold out, then!"

When I first saw this ad, it seemed like the idea was that Patrick was learning he was able to get great rates from State Farm, and thus the shoes "sold out" because Patrick, with all his newfound disposable income, was going to buy them himself.  I was ready to rip the ad for its poor internal logic since, after all, if this is really Patrick (which Jake's sarcastic tone on "typical sneakerhead" makes clear), he's already got State Farm with the "Patrick price" and thus already has access to the deal that ostensibly makes him able to buy the shoes.

But then I thought about it some more and realized that there was an alternate interpretation: namely, that Patrick is approaching Jake in disguise to confront him about the possibility that Jake has been giving away what he thought was his special "Patrick price" to just anyone, and then taking the shoes away out of nothing more than mere spite.  The existence of this other ad in the series, in which Patrick gets all up in his feelings upon learning that other people have gotten the same rate that he has, seems to confirm that this is the actual angle:

 

Why Patrick Mahomes, who has a nine-figure net worth, needs to be worrying much about his own insurance premiums let alone anyone else's, is anybody's guess.  But I must say I'm still confused about the "Sneakerhead" ad.  Am I supposed to believe that Mahomes does in fact work at this sneaker place for an employee discount (when, as mentioned, he is extremely wealthy), and just happened to bump into Jake there?  Or is the idea that he is just posing as a service worker to confront Jake (whom he has presumably been stalking all day) about the rumors he's heard regarding State Farm's rates?

The "Gym" ad does a much better job of getting across the same message - State Farm has rates so good, you'll think we personalized them for you, and also Patrick Mahomes is for some reason a little baby who is very upset to find out they weren't actually personalized - without being extremely difficult to parse.  Indeed, I think the concept of this series of State Farm ads (you'll think you're getting a secret personal deal) is reasonably clever, even if the execution is often fairly grating.  Like this one that debuted in mid-2020:

 

How many times do you think Nick Offerman turned them down before they realized they could just get another guy with a beard and have him do that voice?

Russell: "Jake from State Farm, I would like to formally extend my gratitude for the 'Russell rate' on my insurance."

Jake: "Do you mean, surprisingly great rates from State Farm?"

Russell: "I don't believe in accepting help, but I'll make an exception."

I don't even know what that's supposed to mean.  Freedom-loving libertarians still love our insurance rates?  Hey, can you name an actor who famously played a libertarian and also sounds exactly like this guy?

By the way, I love how many of these ads show people hanging out with their insurance agent.  In real life, if you see your insurance agent more than once or twice a year, things are probably not going very well for you.

Jake: "Here's the deal, Russell: there's no special rate.  These prices are for everyone!"

Russell: "With the oak and the eagle as witness, consider us square."

Shut the fuck up.

[presents Jake with a wood carving of himself]

Hey, can you name anyone with this exact voice and a beard who also does wood carving?  Can you?  Honestly, Offerman probably has a legal argument that they deliberately traded on his image.

Russell: "I made that from memory.  I know your face that well."

Just for good measure, how about we go out on a Groundhog Day ripoff... joke?  I guess it's supposed to be a joke.  It's more just weird.

To some extent, I guess this shows you that making ads isn't easy.  You come up with a decent premise, but it's hard to produce ads using that premise that don't feature annoying weirdos (especially since part of the conceit is that they refuse to listen as Jake explains that they didn't get a personalized rate - except for Mahomes, who accepts that he didn't get a personalized rate and then pisses his pants about it).  Do you try to think of something else or just run with the concept that requires your pitchman to play straight man to some of the world's most annoying people?  Given that we've seen at least nine different ads in this series, it's pretty clear what they went with.

Grizzly Ass-Dumbs

One thing I must say I missed about doing this blog is that while there is rarely a shortage of commercials to write something about, it's only periodically that you see an ad so ridiculous that you feel like you have to write something about it.  I don't plan on revisiting too many old ads from our fallow period unless they're still airing, but this one... requires comment.

Oh boy.

Dad Bear: "I'm not picking it up.  You pick it up."
Mom Bear: "I'm not picking it up!"
Dad Bear: "Somebody's gotta pick it up!"

Given that these are the Charmin bears, I'm sort of alarmed by what I'm supposed to think is happening in the first five seconds of this commercial, with the forced underneath perspective.  "I can't believe Junior just did a massive shit on the rug!  I mean, we are bears, so it totally figures, but why did we even pay for that animal trainer to teach us all to use human toilets if it wasn't going to take?" 

[cut to reveal it's a pair of underwear on the floor]
Son Bear: "I'll pick it up: they're clean!  Because, my hiney's clean!  Oh yeah, I'm Charmin clean!"

I really don't even know where to begin with this one.  First off, I don't need to hear the word "hiney" in a television commercial or, frankly, anywhere.  I also don't need to see a child character shaking his ass at me, even if he's just an animated bear.  And why is this a SONG?  (And barely a song at that.  I too can start the "hip-hop demo" on a Casio and then awkwardly talk over it, Charmin.)  Also, in a world where it's absolutely fine to casually talk about the condition of children's feces-encrusted asses on television, it's hard to take seriously the idea of parents being terrified to pick up a pair of their child's underwear just because it might have a few skidmarks.  Isn't "getting your kid's shit on you while changing a diaper so many times that you become inured to it" basically a critical component of the parenting experience?  Admittedly, I don't have kids, but that's what I've always been led to believe.

But the kicker to this ad is that it also just DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.  You know why?  Because of course that pair of underwear is sparkling clean: THE BEARS DON'T WEAR UNDERWEAR AND THEY NEVER HAVE!!!!!!!!  WHAT THE FUCK????  There was a whole commercial years ago where one bear sees pieces of toilet paper stuck to another bear's ass because THE ASS IS JUST OUT IN THE OPEN BECAUSE BEARS DON'T WEAR CLOTHES, TO INCLUDE UNDERWEAR.

I don't remember if there's never ever been a single piece of Charmin advertising in which any of the bears had underwear on, but in the vast majority of cases, anyway, they simply don't.  No one ELSE in this ad is wearing underwear!  The kid isn't wearing underwear when he fucking Joel Goodsons it into the bathroom!  Maybe the parents were so horrified by the idea of picking up the underwear not because they thought it was going to be full of skidmarks but because they had literally never seen this kind of object before, and were confused and scared about how it got into their house.  They actually never had to change their kid's diapers because he's a FUCKING BEAR and never wore diapers.  He just shit in the woods, like bears do.  This bear family probably lived in the woods until just a couple years ago, when they took over one of those empty houses in the Vegas suburbs or whatever.  Kind of remarkable that using toilet paper was the first hallmark of the bears adopting human customs before putting on clothes, but then it's gotta be hard to find briefs that are going to fit a grizzly's hindquarters.  Probably had to special order those things.

I'm not even going to deal with the rest of this ad in which the kid keeps "singing" and the dad starts dancing, yet more flagrant editorializing of how great a ridiculously terrible "song" is.  But my word.  Sure, it's ridiculous to treat the lore of Charmin commercials seriously, but did nobody really think it mattered if they made an ad revolving around the use of an item that the characters in the ad don't use?

Daisy: I Put That Sh*t on EVERYTHING

Considering my stated annoyance with products that weirdly undersell themselves in the last post, you'd think that I'd appreciate a company going all the way in the other direction.  You'd be wrong.

 

To be fair, I do kind of appreciate the earnestness on display here.  But it is possible to go too far.

Song: "With Daisy Sour Cream, every bite gets better / every dollop, every dip, every moment together"

Building an entire ad campaign around the word "dollop," which I can't say I necessarily associate with appetizing food amounts, is certainly a choice.  I'm also baffled by the choice to make this song - which is really just nauseatingly committed - diegetic.  I would probably be at least ten percent less annoyed if I didn't have to see these ridiculous people lip-syncing to the fucking Daisy Sour Cream song like it's their favorite pop hit.  Just have them dancing around the kitchen!  It's fine!  Why do we also need to pretend this song is good?

Song: "Top it off, take a dip, tastes so good, it's a hit when you do / Do a dollop of Daaaaaaaisy"

The amount of sour cream these people have in their fridge (along with bowls of loose produce, the way everyone definitely does in real life) is pretty alarming, although kudos for not having one of those commercial fridges that contains nothing but the product being pitched.  But I guess you need that much sour cream when you are putting one to two tablespoons' worth on absolutely everything you're eating.  Maybe this family simply is to sour cream what the Stotler family is to milk.

Frankly, I'm more concerned about the amount of food.  I was watching this ad expecting a party to break out - there are tacos, baked potatoes, a vegetable plate, multiple bowls of chips and dip, steaks... and this is all apparently for four people, one of whom is what, six years old?

Song: "Good food tastes better with a dollop of Daisy / Do a dollop, do, do, a dollop, yeah"

Wait, only good food?

Song: "Everything tastes better with a dollop of Daisy!"

Oh, okay.  That's a relief.

Having watched this more times than I care to admit, I guess this is actually two different families, so I'm forced to withdraw my concern regarding the amount of food to some extent, although the table at the end still features an awful lot of food - baked potatoes and green beans and a salad and a crudites platter AND a bread basket?  Also, while the (I'm assuming they're supposed to be) father and daughter in the beginning actually seem to be putting sour cream on everything they're eating, the family at the end is really using surprisingly little given the song.  Let's see some sour cream on that salad!  Why do you even have two containers out on the table if you've already added a sedate amount to your baked potatoes and seem to be set?  I guess you never know when the mood might strike and you might want to ladle some into your lemonade.

As silly as having a song like that about sour cream is, it could be worse.  This one is a couple years old at this point, but insane jingles never go out of style:

 

Berries are literally sold in plastic containers, right?  Why did you need to dirty multiple bowls solely for storage purposes?  Okay whatever.

Song: "Only Daisy cottage cheese will do / only Daisy cottage cheese will do"

Can we be really honest about something?  When was the last time you purchased cottage cheese?  When was the last time anyone under the age of 60 did?  Obviously they wouldn't still make it if someone weren't buying it, but while I can recall cottage cheese in the house when I was a kid, I have never purchased it even once as an adult as far as I remember.  There's a reason for that, by the way, which is that it's kind of weird and gross and I don't see a single use of it in this commercial where I wouldn't rather use yogurt (that parfait) or crème fraîche (that avocado/tomato toast thing which to be fair I would never eat in a million years anyway) or even Daisy sour cream!

Song: "Satisfying and fresh / So creamy and delish"

Fuck you.  Also, I love that the food being shown during this line is a massive pile of diced vegetable chunks with some cottage cheese dumped on top, aka History's Most Depressing Lunch.  This is probably a pretty big clue as to who the commercial is actually trying to appeal to - you can tell me it's "satisfying" and "creamy" all you want, but that pile of rabbit food screams "Hey dieters!  Cottage cheese!  You need some calories if you don't want to faint in the office at 3 pm!"

Song: "Only Daisy cottage cheese will do / only Daisy cottage cheese will do / so tasty, so pure / can I have a little more / only Daisy cottage cheeeese..."

The implication in this last part is that people are having chips with a cottage cheese dip and eating lasagna made with cottage cheese, both of which are absolutely horrifying concepts.  I'm actually a little surprised this commercial doesn't make it a lot clearer that cottage cheese is supposed to be a "light option," because there's no way in a million years that I would even consider making cottage cheese lasagna normally.  This is the kind of ad that should have one of those voiceovers that's like "Daisy cottage cheese has half the calories of [whatever it's replacing] and tasted better in a national survey!"  But I guess when you have a solid gold hit pouring out of the speakers, there's just no room for anything else.  Only "Only Daisy Cottage Cheese Will Do" will do!

Get the Zelle out of here

There are a lot of advertising tropes that I really cannot stand (obviously).  But then there are the ones that just baffle me.

 

Yes. Like that.

Dad: "Let's finish that smile.  There we go.  That's perfect!"

Neighbor [walking up]: "Wow!  That's incredible!"

Mom: "Incredible?  Yeah.  Using Zelle to send money to friends and family right from your banking app is incredible."

Neighbor: "Oh.  No, I was talking about the snowmen."

Dad: "I know, right?  This one's saying that with Zelle, he can send money to other snowmen pretty much wherever they bank."

[Neighbor stares blankly, then walks away]

Dad: "I like that guy."

That's the whole ad.  I know that 30 seconds isn't a lot of time in which to do, really, anything, and I guess you are getting across the basic message here - Zelle is some sort of money-sending program that works from the banking app you were already using.  But one thing I will never understand is making ads in which your protagonists, the ones who are clearly using your product and are tasked with evangelizing on its behalf, are not just weird obsessives BUT ARE CLEARLY ACKNOWLEDGED IN THE WORLD OF THE AD TO BE WEIRD OBSESSIVES.  I always found stuff like "the bar that only serves DiSaronno" to be amusing for its patently absurd unreality, but wouldn't it be an even stranger sell if the commercial featured someone walking into the bar, ordering a gin and tonic, and then doing a Jim Halpert take to the camera when told that his order is required to contain a specific brand of amaretto?

Now, using weirdos who no one else in the world of the ad likes to sell your product is nothing new -

- but it remains baffling.  And usually the ads that do this are at least going for a laugh, which I suppose is an excuse for the tactic, albeit not a very good one.  But is this ad even trying to be funny?  The "I like that guy" line is framed like a punchline, but well, you could have fooled me.

This isn't the only ad in this series featuring this family, and you'd better believe it doesn't improve.

 

Same couple, same reactions from everyone else - in fact even worse, because here you get blank stares from some of their friends and visible embarrassment from the children.  "God, it was bad enough when he started working Zelle into our bedtime stories. I just can't deal with this anymore!"

(By the way: bargain-basement Will Ferrell knockoff.  Tell me I'm wrong.)

And this second ad does the same nonsense at the end, where it feels like it's trying to go out on a joke but just does not know what jokes are.  "Brussels sprouts came out perfect?"  Oh man, my sides!  It is really hilarious just to name a vegetable, right, guys?  I don't claim to be the world's funniest person or some grand high arbiter of what's funny, but I defy you to make a case for this being in any way amusing.

There are several more of these, but I won't torture you.  Okay, one more.

 

(By the way, the gaps they need to leave in the dialogue of these ads to get them to 30 seconds, you could drive a fucking truck through.)

This one, I think, makes it pretty clear that they are trying to go out on jokes.  It's almost funny, so some points there, but this is also by far the most obnoxious that these parents have been.  "What's that?  Sorry I wasn't listening to the start or end of what you were saying.  My brain can store exactly one fact at a time and right now it's this Zelle thing!  Check back in six months, maybe I'll have room to learn about mighty gonorrhea or whatever."  And again, having the daughter be so annoyed (justifiably!) by hearing a pitch for this product... in an ad that is a pitch for the product... whose side am I supposed to be on?  The way it's filmed, I don't see how I'm supposed to be on the side of the couple.  So you are telling me, in an ad for Zelle, that people who use Zelle and love it are annoying and hated by everyone they know.  Nailed it!  How can I possibly resist a sales pitch like that, fellas?

Welcome Back

In the spring of 2007, I decided to start a blog complaining about and making fun of commercials I thought were stupid.  For a couple years, I and my fellow contributors posted pretty regularly.  We actually developed a bit of a readership, which shocked the hell out of me.  Then we posted less regularly from 2009 to 2012.  Then we didn't post at all for a couple years.  Then I did a bit more in 2015.  And then eventually I lost access to the Google account I posted from, so I couldn't get back into that blog even if I wanted to.

As luck would have it, the blog name that I originally wanted when I started the blog - theadwizards, as opposed to "advertisingwizards," which I was forced to go with in 2007 - was available.  So here we are.  Here I am, anyway; we'll see if anyone else shows up.

The "archives" remain up at http://advertisingwizards.blogspot.com/ although I will offer a couple caveats.  One, very few of the embedded videos are still active.  Two, although I broadly stand by the writing overall, there are definitely a few uses of language that haven't aged well and that I wouldn't use now.