Funny Strange is Lori Culwell's blog.

The One Where I Deconstruct Commercials for Their Funny Potential

Wow!  It's been quite a week.  The Zeno Hot Spot launch, the Huffington Post blog, and a LOT of work.  Also, did I mention that we're staying at a house with no DVR so I've been watching commercials?  I've been taking notes, and I would now like to share them with you.  Here are a few that I've noticed over the past week or two, in no particular order.  Each of them struck me as strange enough to write down.  These, of course, are in addition to the totally awkward Black Friday ads that I pointed out a few weeks back. 

1.     The Kay Jewelers commercial where the guy comes in and is all “is the baby sleeping?” and the tired-looking mom is like “he finally fell asleep, and it’s 2:00 am,” and the dad is like “no, it’s 2 am Christmas morning,” and he gives her a Citizen watch, which is nice enough, but you know what that mom wants even more?  She wants you to sit up with the baby so she can go get some sleep.  So, thanks for the treacly sentiment, Kay Jewelers, but I guarantee every mom of a newborn who saw that commercial was like “Shhhhh—don’t wake that baby!  Let your wife go to bed!  Give her the watch later!”  I’m just saying.

2.    The Fresh Step commercial where the cat hires a bloodhound to find her litter box for her, because the Fresh Step cat litter is working so well, she can no longer find her own litter box.  Several critical flaws to the logic of this narrative, my friends.  For one, cats and dogs living in harmony?   That’s just crazy talk!  The other, perhaps more salient point is that if your cat can’t find its litter box, you know where it’s going to pee?

 

That’s right.  On your sofa.   That cat doesn’t care where it pees, and if it sticks to the litter box, it’s just doing you a favor.   Besides, this story includes a cat hand-making signs to hire the bloodhound, which implies a whole level of manual dexterity and cognitive comprehension on behalf of the cat.  Plus, where is the cat getting the money to hire the dog?  Will this dog be receiving a 1099 at the end of the year?  How did the dog learn to read, and why is he wandering the neighborhood loose, looking for a job?  There is just so much wrong with this whole concept, I can’t believe it progressed past the storyboard phase.

 

3.    Regional advertising, in general.   There is nothing like non-union voiceover talent and people singing your theme song to really reinforce the fact that you had to cut your advertising budget by outsourcing your advertising agency.   Yiiiikes.

4.    The Kentucky Fried Chicken ad where they are talking about “Kentucky Grilled Chicken.”  Listen, I don’t want to be a nay-sayer here, because KFC, we SUPER appreciate your attempt to contribute to the whole “healthy living of America” thing, but let’s just get this thing clear:  if I set foot inside a KFC, it’s going to be because I want some crispy fried chicken skin, some of those delicious mashed potatoes, and one of those giant biscuits.  Oh, and maybe one of those Lil’ Bucket Parfaits that I don’t even know if they have anymore.  My point?  KFC, no one is expecting you to get a rotisserie and start grilling chicken.  I’m guessing this product is going to go away faster than you can say “grease on a plate.”  On the other end of the food spectrum, what is going on with McDonald’s now offering “sweet tea?”  Did this idea finally make it here from the south?  Does America really need the option of yet another sugar-filled beverage?  Besides, everyone knows that sweet tea is only good when you let it sit out in a vat of sugar for days at a time, and I don’t believe McDonald’s is prepared to do it the proper Southern way.  So, I’m going to just go ahead and veto both of these fast-food offerings. 

So, that's it.  Have a great weekend, get all your Christmas shopping done, and report back next week with more weird and funny things. 

Happy Black Friday, or "Stop Accosting Me When I Come Out of Whole Foods, You Hippie"

First of all, no—I did not go to Walmart, or Best Buy, or any of the other places offering huge deals for Black Friday.  Even though I do love saving money, the thought of getting up at 3:00 in the morning and standing in line for three hours in a huge crowd of people is so odious to me, I would rather pay full retail price than go out in that, frankly.  The “sleeping in after Thanksgiving” is so much more worth it to me, I am happy to look for deals at other times of the year.   Although, on a side note, it would be delightful if everyone else in America would go ahead and go out shopping, as this would be a positive indicator that the economy is rebounding, right?   I hope you are reading this right now after having gotten up early and purchased a large quantity of electronics at Walmart.  So there.

Speaking of shopping, I have been meaning to address this topic for awhile—I am tired of those Greenpeace types outside of Whole Foods and/ or every other big store, waiting for me with a clipboard to lay some guilt trip on me about “Do you want to help abused women?” or “Do you have a second to save the environment?”  Don’t get me wrong—it’s not that I object to them being there—they can do what they want and I respect that they’re out there working and trying to do something they believe in—I just really object to the way the questions themselves are posed, because the implication is that if I don’t stop and give them money, then in fact I AM A BAD PERSON, A PERSON WHO DOES NOT WANT TO HELP ABUSED WOMEN and/ or SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT.   I simply don’t like it when people force sales on me, and the end result of this is that when I say "No thanks," it makes me sound like Adolph Hitler, eating an endangered Bald Eagle for breakfast while I beat my wife, you know what I’m saying?

Here’s how that goes:

Hippie kid outside of Whole Foods:  “Hey, do you have a second to help stop human trafficking of innocent children?”

Me:  “No.”

See?  Now I am guilty.  It’s such a loaded question, because it’s actually a sales pitch/ guilt trip in two parts.  The answer is “no, I don’t have a second, because I don’t like strangers cold pitching me and asking me to sign up for things,” NOT “no, I don’t want to help this good cause,” because of course I am a good person and given a different set of circumstances, I totally would donate to whatever they’re representing. 

This makes me wonder why Greenpeace and these other organizations still employ what to me is a dying-out marketing and sales technique—the “person soliciting outside of stores” method.  I would love to see the statistics on how many people sign up and then STAY signed up, or simply quit because they don’t want to say no to the person on the spot, but don’t really want to make that monthly commitment.  It would be interesting to see the overall cost per conversion of that sales method so you could determine whether that strategy was still viable, is all I’m saying.  There must be a better way to get people to care about the environment without making them feel like a-holes when you put them on the spot, right?  

And with that, I go back to working on my Thanksgiving holiday freelance writing project, which launches next month and I will tell you all about when it is live.  Happy weekend! 

Negative Advertising Grosses Me Out. Discuss

Here's another post I had saved in my Blackberry.  You thought I was kidding about all of these!

So, the New York Department of Public Health is at it again, this time with an ad that's supposed to remind us that when we're counting calories, we should also include things like soda.  It's a fair enough concept and obviously one that needs to be driven home considering the obesity epidemic in our country, but I'm just on the fence as to whether ads like this really work, or if they send the viewer into a spiral of "oh my God, that's so gross, I have to get away and put that out of my mind....that reminds me, I'm thirsty, where can I get an icy-cold Coke?"  The NYC public health department is actually famous for these ads (amputees and people with no larynx, anyone?), and you can go right over to Gothamist if you want to see some more.  

Maybe it's just because I value cleverness more than shock value in advertising, and so the whole "gross out" factor is not that impressive to me.  Often when I see an ad like this, I kind of just fixate on the thing they DON'T want me to have, because it's weird or intriguing in some way, and then I forget about the product or underlying message in favor of the disgusting image.  I think this means the ad itself is "sticky," but that the overall message isn't converting, which is problematic.  Then again, I am not the target audience for this ad, so maybe it's wrong for me to even weigh in.

Here's another example:  this weird commercial here in Los Angeles for a local mattress store, where this guy is talking about how your mattress DOUBLES in weight every eight years or something like that, because of skin and dust and dust mites, and whatever, and by the end of the commercial I'm like DAMN, THAT'S ALOT OF SKIN, and I can't even remember the name of the guy who told me this weird fact or what his company's name is for when I actually need a new mattress (which I currently do not, as it is only two years old and only 13% heavier than it was at origination. )

Too much going on here....

I took this photo over the weekend, and because you know that sometimes I like to deconstruct advertising right here on Funny Strange, I am just going to open by saying--- WHOA, SUBWAY.  TOO MUCH GOING ON!

First of all "Dinner Two Night" sounds like it should make sense, but it kind of doesn't.  I think the point is that you can get two full sandwich dinners at Subway for $8.99, which I guess is a good deal, except who PLANS to eat Subway for dinner?  Dinner at Subway is something you do if you're going somewhere else, or you're out and it's 7:00 and you're totally hungry.  It's not something you'd really go the extra mile to get two of, then take them home and put them on the table on your fine china. 

Also, the sentence "All Day Sunday Two" makes me die inside a little.  The "Two Night" pun at the top obviously wasn't enough, now they have to really hammer it home with ANOTHER play on words, the "two" instead of "too," which I'm sure isn't going to confuse people at all who are already staring, eyes aglaze, at this poster that has so much going on. 

I'm just saying, that sounds like a pretty good deal on sandwiches and I'm sure the purpose of it is to try to get people (in my neighborhood, at least) to start thinking about Subway sandwiches for dinner, but this poster is too much information at once, and someone needs to tell someone at an ad agency that two puns in one poster-- just, oh my God. 

Speaking of stink....

                                
I found this during Operation Stink and thought it was so funny, I couldn't resist taking a photo.   You can barely see the word "small" on here, so it just looks like "All Mighty" on the bottle.  God Soap!  Who knew?  I don't think this is just a test-market product, as I saw it in several stores.  This leads me to my common-sense question I always ask-- did no one, from the design/ concept phase all the way through to production and packaging, ever look at it and think "All Mighty"-- that's what some people call God, and maybe it would be confusing to put that name on a bottle of detergent.  Nope.  Apparently not.

Really, though, "All small and mighty" is a hilarious name for a product as well.  "Don't get all small and mighty with me, detergent!  Who do you think you are??"