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Say What?: Commercials That Made Us Scratch Our Heads


Lola16
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The AU Rob Lowe spots were mildly amusing at first - it was nice to see he didn't take himself to seriously. But after the first 2 spots they've exceeded my attention span and bottomed out the entertainment factor.

After weeks of exposure, I'm still amused by the spot with Salt-n-Pepa/Push It, but I have no idea what the product they are supposed to be pushing.

Edited by DeLurker
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After weeks of exposure, I'm still amused by the spot with Salt-n-Pepa/Push It, but I have no idea what the product they are supposed to be pushing.

 

Geico; it's part of the "It's what you do" series of commercials (along with the camel, the scapegoat, and, my favorite, the horror movie characters).

Edited by Bastet
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The AU Rob Lowe spots were mildly amusing at first - it was nice to see he didn't take himself to seriously. But after the first 2 spots they've exceeded my attention span and bottomed out the entertainment factor.

After weeks of exposure, I'm still amused by the spot with Salt-n-Pepa/Push It, but I have no idea what the product they are supposed to be pushing.

I'm a Rob Lowe fan, so I honestly have no problem with the ad campaign. It's kind of fun, wondering what kind of "alter ego" they'll give him next. My family doesn't have DirecTV, nor will we probably ever switch to it.

What bugs me is, after about the first 6, or something, ads in the campaign, all of a sudden they started playing the Love Theme From St. Elmo's Fire in the background of the "real" Rob Lowe parts (the parts where he explains why people should get DirecTV if they don't already have it). Did the ad agency or DirecTV suddenly decide, despite his past notoriety--"The Brat Pack", the sex tape, singing embarrassingly with Snow White at the Oscars, the lawsuits & cross-complaints involving his family & the former nannies to his sons; his movie career (including St. Elmo's Fire); & his TV shows, most notably The West Wing (for which he was Emmy-nominated), & his 2 best-selling memoirs--that nobody knew/would know who he was without that song helping identify him?

It's not like he was offscreen for years before that ad campaign; as I said he's done a lot of TV--at least 3 series since leaving The West Wing, & he's doing another Pilot for Fox for this coming season. He's also done TV movies, mostly for Lifetime & HBO, & theatrical movies. And written those 2 best-selling memoirs. In my opinion, the music identifier is totally unnecessary.

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The Deadbeat Rob Lowe commercial is bugging me.   First when he is gambling away what is presumed to be the child support money, that is okay.   But then he says "I saved 200 bucks by having hotel room surgery."   That's not being a deadbeat, that's being a cheapskate.   A deadbeat doesn't pay anything.   It's just one of the more stupid versions of that campaign.

I found that puzzling as well but noticed they play a version of a song from Saint Elmo's Fire at the end. At least I think it is.
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What bugs me is, after about the first 6, or something, ads in the campaign, all of a sudden they started playing the Love Theme From St. Elmo's Fire in the background of the "real" Rob Lowe parts (the parts where he explains why people should get DirecTV if they don't already have it). Did the ad agency or DirecTV suddenly decide, despite his past notoriety--"The Brat Pack", the sex tape, singing embarrassingly with Snow White at the Oscars, the lawsuits & cross-complaints involving his family & the former nannies to his sons; his movie career (including St. Elmo's Fire); & his TV shows, most notably The West Wing (for which he was Emmy-nominated), & his 2 best-selling memoirs--that nobody knew/would know who he was without that song helping identify him?

I couldn't pick the music from St. Elmo's fire out of a lineup. This is just a theory, but I don't think they chose that music as a clue, like, if you don't know who this guy is, don't you remember: Rob Lowe from that movie with this music you recognize, but maybe just more so as adding more Rob Loweyness to the ad, by adding more things some people with associate with him?
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I love the Salt-n-Pepa commercial. Especially the part at the end when the guy pushing the lawnmower says "I'm pushing. I'm pushing it real good."

I'm a little puzzled by the start of that ad. Since when do you push on a glass door to go into a building? Fire laws generally require doors like that to open outwards so that nobody gets crushed against them as part of a fleeing crowd.

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I found that puzzling as well but noticed they play a version of a song from Saint Elmo's Fire at the end. At least I think it is.

It is from St. Elmo's Fire, which was 1 of Rob's bigger movies. Not sure if it's considered a "Brat Pack" film, but it's still 1 of his bigger films.

As I said upthread, the song is Love Theme From St. Elmo's Fire. It was a big hit for David Foster, who's best known for his work behind the scenes--especially in the 80s & 90s--as a Music Producer, working with acts like Chicago (during the era when Peter Cetera was Lead Singer & they had what seems like 9 zillion hit songs).

He's best known as a Music Producer & Instrumentalist. But, as a vocalist Foster also had a pretty dang big hit duet, in the 1980s (I think), with Olivia Newton-John; if you remember her singing the song The Best of Me back then, his was the male voice singing with her on that song. It's actually from his self-titled David Foster album, so it was really his hit (slightly more than hers) & she was the guest artist on it, not him. But I think most people think of it as Olivia's song, as opposed to David's, since she was probably the best known vocalist of the 2 at the time.

Edited by BW Manilowe
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Shouldn't Trop 50 be telling me it has 50 percent FEWER calories, not 50 percent LESS?

Oh wait...this is a case of bad ad copy. The label on the bottle says it has 50 percent less calories than orange juice, which I suppose is correct, but the actors do not finish the sentence in their speaking roles, so they (to my ears) say it wrong.

Edited by mojoween
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The label is wrong, too. If you can quantify, the correct usage is "fewer" and if the comparison is more vague, "less" is the correct term. My dad has less hair than my husband (overall comparison- Hubby has a thick  head of hair, Dad does not); he has fewer active hair follicles (if we wanted to count the individual hairs, we could).

 

I do have to confess that the less/fewer distinction is one of my grammar peeves.

Edited by St. Claire
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Trop 50 irritates me as a thing that exists. It's just orange juice mixed with water. I can't believe people actually pay more for it when they could just buy regular orange juice and put water in it. It makes me want to blow something up.

 

Agreed!  And it doesn't help that I have an irrational hatred of Jane Krakowski.

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Trop 50 irritates me as a thing that exists. It's just orange juice mixed with water. I can't believe people actually pay more for it when they could just buy regular orange juice and put water in it. It makes me want to blow something up.

Yeah, next thing you know they'll be trying to sell us a plastic bottle with just plain water in it!

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I'm a little puzzled by the start of that ad. Since when do you push on a glass door to go into a building? Fire laws generally require doors like that to open outwards so that nobody gets crushed against them as part of a fleeing crowd.

I am more puzzled by the man totally not seeing "PUSH" on the door handle.

 

The label is wrong, too. If you can quantify, the correct usage is "fewer" and if the comparison is more vague, "less" is the correct term. My dad has less hair than my husband (overall comparison- Hubby has a thick  head of hair, Dad does not); he has fewer active hair follicles (if we wanted to count the individual hairs, we could).

 

I do have to confess that the less/fewer distinction is one of my grammar peeves.

It annoys me a little, but does "fewer" only apply with integers? Does one say "some with with half an apple has fewer apples"?

 

Trop 50 irritates me as a thing that exists. It's just orange juice mixed with water. I can't believe people actually pay more for it when they could just buy regular orange juice and put water in it. It makes me want to blow something up.

That never occurred to me! I assumed there was less sugar added.

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Yeah, regular Tropicana, last I checked, had no added sugar. Just the sugar that's in it from being fruit-containing. Whereas they have to add sugar substitute to Trop50 because it's watered down and would otherwise taste like it.

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(edited)

Dear Taco Bell, Perhaps you aren't aware of the infomercial standard in which the truly incompetent and clueless are shown in black and white.  You know these people.  They cannot crack an egg or strain spaghetti or hit a nail with a hammer.  They are people in need of products and services to simplify those things that do not confound regular humans.  

 

And yet you've chosen to show in black and white the people who prefer your breakfast monstrosity.  So I can only assume that these poor souls are incapable of handling a normal breakfast.  Cereal ends up in their laps.  Scrambled eggs fly off their forks, potentially harming others.  They repeatedly poke themselves in the eye with bacon.  

 

So they need the Taco Bell breakfast.  Somehow the food-like product is so firmly rooted in its biscuit taco case that it cannot be dropped or haphazardly flung.  They are saved from their own ineptitude by your breakfast foodstuffs.  Thank you for protecting them from their own inabilities.

 

Fortunately I am capable of eating a regular breakfast without incident.  I will be avoiding your new breakfast like the plague upon humanity and the colon that I believe it to be.

Edited by Muffyn
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Dear Taco Bell, Perhaps you aren't aware of the infomercial standard in which the truly incompetent and clueless are shown in black and white.  You know these people.  They cannot crack an egg or strain spaghetti or hit a nail with a hammer.

 

Or stick a Q-tip into their ear.

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Oh my word, that's one of the ones that drives me crazy!!  Who just SHOVES a q-tip into his ear as far as it will go?

I take it you haven't watched Girls.  Hannah ends up at the ER with a Q-tip stuck in her ear.  Oh wait, you meant it real life.  Yeah, you'd have to be too stupid to live if you couldn't master a Q-tip. Now where's my special spaghetti strainer?  Did I leave it by the microwave boiled egg maker? 

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I didn't think regular orange juice had sugar added. I DO know that Trop50 has Stevia added, as well as it being watered down.

I remember ads for some orange juice company announcing they added no sugar to their orange juice.

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The Subaru commercial where the mom recalls moments of her daughter growing up end with: "Subaru, where my daughter grew up."

All I think after that is: "She lost her virginity to the quarterback at prom."

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It's that she specifies the back seat that creates the inevitable implication in so many minds (and I don't believe for a moment that no one involved caught that, so while I don't think it was intentional from the outset, I think it was knowingly left in).

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(edited)

I don't think that's any weirder than those ads from the 50s, "I dreamed I ___(whatever)____ in my Maidenform bra."  The one I remember most vividly is she went to the opera in her bra.

Edited by Prevailing Wind
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Depend has decided to inflict more "awareness" ads :

http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7i3l/depend-silhouette-active-fit-for-women

 

During the ad, I had questions regarding the first woman.  Such as, who would embarrass their kid at school like that just to make some statement about undergarments?  Also, wouldn't coming to a school dressed like that have her arrested or escorted off the school grounds?

The day before, the poor girl's father dropped her off at school and showed everyone there how Cottonelle has allowed him to go commando.

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(edited)

Depend has decided to inflict more "awareness" ads :

http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7i3l/depend-silhouette-active-fit-for-women

 

During the ad, I had questions regarding the first woman.  Such as, who would embarrass their kid at school like that just to make some statement about undergarments?  Also, wouldn't coming to a school dressed like that have her arrested or escorted off the school grounds?

I would hope that in these cases people would pull the person aside and let them know they left the house without their pants on.  I cannot say I haven't seen people walking around in just their underwear.  I live in one of the more interesting neighborhoods in San Francisco.   But if someone is going about their normal day-to-day business with their business on display, I would be concerned for them.  Early onset Alzheimer's?  So tired they somehow didn't notice they weren't wearing pants?  Got confused about the term going commando?  Lost a really bad bet?  Perhaps a moderate to severe case of something as yet to be named?  

Edited by Muffyn
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(edited)

OK, I really like this song (I'm going to have to look it up), but what does it mean?  Living like renegades?  Are we supposed to live like a car?

 

 

OK, I found the song.  The band is "X Ambassadors"

 

Edited by Rick Kitchen
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One of the dating sites, Match.con, I think this woman says; "I'm looking for a man for myself and my son."  Now I assume she means good step-father material, but it just sounds wa, wa, what?

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Just saw a commercial for a "not-shampoo" hair care product called Wen. They advertise that it has "a new approach" to making hair clean and manageable, but it looks to me like it just uses the same old "put it in your hair, and then wash it off" technique. Maybe you need to apply a blow torch afterward, or something.

Also; when naming a hair care product, it might be a good idea to avoid using the term for cysts that sometimes become skin tumors. Just sayin'.

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