Nomen Est Omen

After These Messages

Some ad execs need to be smacked. While there are some commercials that are quite funny, (like that Iams commercial where the guy is showing his cat how to play with all its toys and the cat just gives him a look...hilarious), most commercials are boring, don't make sense or are just plain wrong.

For example, Nike has an ad that is a black and white cartoon showing a child walking down the street. He stops, removes his head, uses it as a balloon and then continues on his way. What does that have to do with shoes or clothing?

Then there are the commercials with female voice overs where the female tries to talk in a sexy soothing voice as if to hypnotize me into buying the product. Failure. All it does is irritate the crap out of me and make me not want to purchase the product. There's nothing sexy about water or garbage bags or children's dirty diapers. Talk to me in a normal voice and I'll pay attention. Anymore I will mute the t.v. or change the channel after the first syllable is uttered because it's so insulting I swear it brings me almost physical pain.

Some commercials though are so very, very wrong that the person who presented the idea should be immediately fired and never allowed to work in the business again.

Let's talk first about the Mucus guy. Oh my gawd that is a disgusting commercial. The Mucus guy walks around and leaves a trail of mucus where footprints should be and they show him inside the guys lungs, lounging around, mucus flung all over the walls. That is so fucking sick it makes me want to puke every time I see it. It doesn't matter if it's a cartoon or computer graphic image, there's mucus everywhere! Totally GROSS!

I also get the willies whenever I see people putting eyedrops in their eyes or the camera "goes into" the person's eyeball and spits us out into another world. I don't care if this makes me sound weird but I will slam my eyes shut so that I don't have to "enter" the eyeball world along with the rest of you. I get to stay in my own world, free of eyeball juices. There's just something about sticking things in people's eyes or close ups of eyes that gives me troubled sleep. I wish they would stop doing it.

And what about these drug ads? What is up with those? I clearly do not understand because all I can think the entire time the piece is airing is, "Don't the doctors already know this drug exists? Why should I have to point it out to them?" I can only imagine the conversation:

Doc: I'm sorry but there's nothing we can do for you. You're going to die.

Me: But I saw an advertisement for this drug on t.v. last night. Can't we try that?

Doc: Well it's a good thing you brought that drug to my attention. You will live after all.

As if! I'm not about to go into the doctor's office and prescribe myself some drug because I'm not a doctor and I'm pretty sure that if a certain drug would save me, they would tell me about it. It's not like doctors are in the business to see how many people they can knock off by keeping certain drugs and medication a secret from us.

And what is with the toenail commercial! Criminy! I don't even know what the hell they are selling because I can't watch more than 3 seconds of the thing. They show this cartoon foot, (as if that wasn't bad enough....close ups on feet is another "no go" as far as I'm concerned because most people, (although not me), have really ugly feet and I have this thing about people and their nasty feet), and some fungus guy comes sauntering on up to it and lifts the fucking big toenail and climbs in!!! That's worse than Mucus guy! The first time I saw it I spent the next half an hour cringing and rubbing my feet because it gave me the same affect that some people get when they hear nails down a chalkboard. AAAGH! That is so wrong! You don't do that to people! Gawd, to think that someone sat at a table with other co-workers brainstorming and stated:

"I have an idea! Let's have Fungus Guy open the toe nail on a foot like a door" and they all thought it was great! They made poster board drawings and presented it! It passed! It got the green light! What are these people smoking?

I could just get up and walk away during commercial breaks but good God people, we are bombarded with these things every 5 minutes during a program and I just do not have that much I have to do. I guess I now know my lot in life. I need to be president of an advertising company so that I can tell these people to knock it off! That is, right after I become a driving tester at the DMV and flunk half the population. But that's a post for another day.

Posted by S. Faolan Wolf at May 3, 2005 12:38 AM