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?