Some More Annoying Ad Campaigns
April 1, 2003
Compiled by Mike Spinney

What’s happened to television advertising? Maybe my memory has conveniently clouded the details, but in the black-and-white image of my mind’s eye, I tend to recall advertising as an art form. Sixty seconds of clever escapism. Images from that era endure to this day as cultural phenomena. My own earliest memories include a naïve fascination with a bikini-clad honey who had drawn the amorous interest of a nervous suitor in a particular antiperspirant commercial.

More than three decades after that particular campaign has faded into obscurity, I can hear the jingle as if my nose were still inches from the old Zenith’s screen, eyes straining to focus on the woman’s ample cleavage.

“Every time she says ‘Keith,’ I start to shake like a leaf; but I’m calm, yes I’m calm – under the arm!”

Blame it on sensory overload, but while scantily clad females remain a staple on Madison Avenue, commercials today don’t evoke the same positive and lasting reactions they used to. That doesn’t mean we don’t still have strong feelings about broadcast marketing; it’s just that today’s ads tend to annoy – even provoke our ire.

Here are a few examples of annoying commercials as related by members of the 2Walls staff:

IBM: “Tech Guys”
I’ve had about enough of the current IBM campaign – the one that shows these reoccurring characters that live, breathe and talk about “technology” and “business servers” everywhere they go: a restaurant, a diner, a café in Paris, etc. Maybe it’s because these IBM characters resemble some of the IT business people I work with, triggering a negative reaction to words like “infrastructure” and “architecture.” Who are these ads targeting anyway? Network administrators? IT Directors? CIOs? How small is that demographic? IBM’s services or networking products must cost thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why am I seeing these commercials during an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond sandwiched between an ad for McDonalds and Celebrex? “Hmm…I could really go for a Big Mac, some arthritis medication and…an IBM Server.”

Quiznos: “Baby Bob”
First they had a set of ads that featured singing, cut paper animated characters that looked like dead chinchillas, which were bad enough that I both wrote the company a letter of complaint and haven't eaten in one of their restaurants since I saw it. Now, they revive the smooth talking Baby Bob. Nobody likes talking babies – it's completely creepy – and in particular nobody liked this same concept in any of its earlier inceptions, including that stupid CBS sitcom with Adam Arkin. Seriously, Quizno's has the worst advertising group in the history of corporate America.

Department of Homeland Security: “Preparedness PSA ”
This features three redheaded children addressing the camera as though it's their parents and asking what they should do in case of a terrorist attack. I would be 100% behind this commercial if they just said "emergency" instead of "terrorist attack." The odds of these kids needing the exact same information for a tornado, hurricane, earthquake or some other disaster are far greater than for a terrorist attack but God forbid we should undersell Homeland Security's mission. Every time I see it I have flashbacks of being six and wondering how sitting under my school desk with my head covered would keep me from being blown up by a (nuclear) bomb.

Jack in the Box
Almost no ad can supersede the horror of the ads from Jack in the Box. Every last one of them is a perfect study in bad advertising. Perhaps you're not familiar with these ads, on the East Coast. The Jack in the Box ads always feature a "mascot." This mascot is not a clown or a gecko or even a pudgy and loveable burger-eater. Rather, the star of these ads is a Suit-wearing, Smug Corporate Asshole wearing a spherical jack-in-the-box head. (Henceforth referred to as the SSCA.) The SSCA doesn't eat hamburgers. The SSCA doesn't eat anything at all. Instead, the SSCA lords it up over his unfortunate co-workers while they dash madly about pitching him different ideas for how they could do a better job marketing Jack in the Box. I guess the ad campaign is meant to capture the "Dilbert" vibe. It doesn't. And even if it did, when was the last time reading a Dilbert cartoon made you hungry for a burger? At no point in the ad do we see, say, a juicy burger. The closest we come to seeing anything resembling food is at the end of the ad, when a large Jack-in-the-Box sack plunks down onto a table like a bag of wet diapers. The entire ad campaign is wholly off-putting. The only explanation for this abhorrent exercise in marketing waste is that a bunch of really bored, yoga-obsessed vegetarian Los Angeles metrosexual ad guys got together with the overpaid corporate jerks who run the Jack-in-the-Box chain and probably haven't paid less than $20 for a meal in years and came up with a campaign that allowed them to privately exercise their hate for Jack-in-the-Box hamburgers and the customers who eat them.

LendingTree.com
LendingTree.com: Am I the only one who feels like his intelligence is being insulted with each campaign these cretins foist upon an unwitting public? The idea that posting a mortgage application through a Web site is going to result in a horde of bankers sniveling at my doorstep seemingly giving away money for the privilege of processing my loan is just stupid. And where’s the responsibility in encouraging people who have already demonstrated a proclivity for financial irresponsibility to take out a loan by leveraging the equity in their home? But I guess it’s all okay since it has been made possible through the magic of the Internet.

Vehix.com
Perhaps I’ve got it in for dotcom ads, or perhaps there’s a secret pact between dotcommers and the Securities Exchange Commission that, as punishment for dragging the economy down the toilet in 1999 they must now make penance for by only contracting with remedial advertisers. Vehix.com ads are absolutely dreadful and always have been. But now they’ve exceeded even their own epic dreadfulness by employing actors whose resumes have stagnated since being cast in the role of “Third Shepherd” in their 4th Grade Christmas pageant. Once again, the premise seems to be to goad consumers into action by insulting viewer’s intelligence. Then again, maybe there’s something to H.L. Mencken’s famous statement: “No one in this world, so far as I know... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”