Some profanity (but I assure you, it’s done tastefully).
I always did want to have a coctail made from a fighter jet that I knocked out of the sky with a crossbow. Is it true that you can spin an electric eel so fast it rips the space time continuum and take you to the future?
Wouldn’t it be awesome if all commercials were made like this? It would totally make me want to watch commercials again. And also, to buy a TrackChair:
Link via Sylvain.
I heard a commercial on the radio the other day for Dr. Pepper 10. This is a new product from Dr. Pepper that’s not exactly diet (0 calories) and not exactly regular (7,000,000 calories). The ad campaign has sparked some controversy, since it caters exclusively to “manly men”. The commercial I heard basically lists all the most manly things, and implies that Dr. Pepper 10 should be added to that list.
This really surprised me. Here they are using super manly He-men to try to sell diet soda to a group that traditionally considers diet soda outside of their domain. It’s certainly a good thing that men, who are traditionally allowed to be as fat as they can while simultaneously putting pressure on women to watch their weight, are now starting to realize that weight is something they need to pay attention to and be responsible for. On the other hand, the whole commercial is dripping with stereotypes and starts by saying how Dr. Pepper 10 is “not for women”. How do you manage to be both extremely sexist and gender-barrier-breaking at the same time? Or maybe they really are only being extremely sexist, because they’re really overcompensating a little bit there, aren’t they? “We know that diet drinks are inherently girly, but maybe if we surround them with pure manliness, we can trick someone into drinking it without realizing the 10 calories are from the added estrogen.”
Not only did they manage to offend women with the ad campaign, but they also managed to offend me. As a male who loves Dr. Pepper, I expected to be firmly in their wheelhouse. I began to be dismayed a little bit as every “manly” thing didn’t apply to me. Am I not man enough for Dr. Pepper? Does this mean I can’t like it anymore? (well, technically I like Diet Dr. Pepper, so maybe I was already in the “woman category” anyway)
Luckily, the last item on the list was, “If you have ever blogged about bacon…” Whew! Qualified at the last minute. I feel like they threw that one in just to include me. They might as well have added, “If you have ever answered to the name Shane Halbach…”
Anyway, here’s another ad from the same campaign. You can decide for yourself what it means:
We’re all done with Superbowl commercials, right?
It seems like every year they just get lamer and lamer. At this point, they’re just primarily regular commercials, the same as we’d see on any regular day. Even the “highlight” commercials really aren’t that fantastic, and they certainly aren’t worth watching, much less rehashing in the morning.
I watch football after the kids have gone to bed, which means I’m usually sacrificing sleep to watch it. I normally fast-forward as much as possible. For the Superbowl, however, I don’t want to fast-forward through any of the commercials, so I’m stuck with the whole 4 hours.
Was it worth it? For what? Aside from seeing a lot of ads, what did I gain? Were any of the commercials worth losing sleep over?
The smart thing to do would be just to watch the rehash of the “best” commercials in the morning. I saw a list of the “best” ones from this year…even the rehash is stupid. There simply wasn’t anything worth watching.
Maybe the commercials got worse, and maybe regular commercials got better, so the “special” ones don’t stand out anymore. Maybe in a post-wardrobe-malfunction world, it’s just too risky for the companies to do anything too crazy, and risk reprisal. Maybe in this economy people can’t afford to be frivolous with their ridiculously expensive air time. Maybe the companies figured out that a regular commercial gets about the same amount of publicity/revenue as a clever one, so it’s not worth the effort. Maybe the tolerance for commercials is lower, now that we generally fast-forward through them.
At least in the past, people would be buzzing about them the next morning. As far as I can tell, nobody is really talking about them anymore.
In retrospect, the whole thing was stupid anyway – were we really that amazed that commercials were entertaining? How did this get started in the first place? The first time I really remember it being a thing was during the dotcom boom. But I wonder if I went back and watched those commercials now, if they would still seem interesting.
Anyway, it’s done now. I’m declaring it over. Next year, feel free to skip them. Once we stop paying attention, the media will stop too.
Shane Halbach 