Pictured above: Bojangles’ crossing the cultural divide :30 Bojangles Puppet spot #1, @ 1 MB

I think the jury is still out on whether or not puppets are effective marketing tools. Do consumers like being talked to through a non-threatening medium, as if they were going through intensive emotional therapy?

All I can do is think about how juicy and delicious this puppet must be. He is a chicken, after all. Hey isn’t he advocating cannibalism?

Sadly, the genius that is a sock with some eyes glued on it isn’t enough to overcome the other shortcomings of these two spots. The first commercial’s biggest problem can be summed up with the sentence, “Nice hair man!”. It pretty much has to be seen to be believed. The link to the video is below the first still shot.

I wasn’t thinking about eating you. I wasn’t. What? I wasn’t.

This Bojangles’ puppet incident reopens old, painful wounds in the advertising world. We all know the Pets.com / Bar None Sock puppet slept his way to the top. The Bojangles’ puppet chicken is a fool for trying to get anywhere without learning to put out first.

I don’t find this attractive..I don’t find this attractive.. I don’t- :30 Bojangles Puppet spot #2, @ 1 MB

I am posting both of the Bojangles’ puppet spots I have archived in this post because I can’t think of a scenario where I will ever mention them again.

This second spot has the puppet dressed up like a Supreme to promote Bojangles’ Supremes. He is angry with his agent. I wish the two big monsters from the Muppet Show would burst in and rape the puppet. Alas they do not. This represents the biggest failing of this commercial.

This second spot just builds my case this failed advertising gimmick was poorly written with no clear direction. The only thing they knew is that they were sticking a puppet in it. It’s more than a little ironic that the puppet (now named “Little Guy”) says that the food doesn’t need gimmicks to sell.

Don’t give me that look

If the individual spots had a little more oomph behind them the concept as a whole might have been sellable. There is somewhere between zero and no concept for each of these commercials, and the puppet thing is just old and tired. I had a puppet butler living with me for a season and I just had to fire him. I don’t care how many snappy comebacks you have, if you can’t darn socks it’s your own fault if you get let go. Then a puppet alien moved in with me and my family. I put up with him until he tried to eat our cat and I shot and buried him in the backyard. That night I had a long emotional talk with the kids about a place called “alien heaven.” I rented Beetlejuice and ordered a pizza and they were back to their old selves in no time.

There goes my dream of grandchildren

This is a banner ad for the McDonald’s Dollar Menu that circulated the Internet in a few places. In case you are like the marketing department at McDonald’s and don’t see why this is funny, I’ve isolated the trouble frame below.

Pictured above: true love

“I’d hit it” means “I’d have sex with it” to the Internet generation. I’d ask how this slipped by the stuffed shirts at McDonald’s, but after seeing this I’d say they are asleep, and perhaps dead, at the swtich.

The interesting thing is that both marketing devices -the banner ad and the “i am asian” site- became popular exactly because they were so bad. Is McDonald’s actually much more shrewd than we give them credit? Is this actually a very successful viral marketing attempt?

Is it worth it if everyone is laughing at you?

What a big fat ugly butterfly

Here is a commercial for Golden Corral, a buffet that specializes in breaded and fried diabetic comas. The biggest problem I see here is the little flying man with wings physically assaulting people with a big pan. Is this a poor attempt to create a mascot for the restaurant chain? Because it certainly is a poor attempt at special effects.

Oh shit he sees us, just keep walking he’s going to ask for spare change

Having a guy in a shrimp suit on the street isn’t bad in and of itself since he is advertising for an imaginary competitor. But paring him with an even cornier form of advertising -the little flying pan man- just multiplies the obnoxiousness.

This commercial isn’t so bad it would, say, make horses charge to their deaths over a high sea wall cliff or, I don’t know, make me book a holiday celebrity cruise with Cirque de Soleil, but it is bad in that completely trite and mediocre sense. And in the end isn’t that worse? The answer to this quiz is upside-down in the comments.

I set up the tripod then I ran around and got on the bike

These two fifteen-second ads barely qualify as TV commercials! The most glaring defect is the lack of music. And the spots don’t just seem half-assed. They seem like quarter-assed. Maybe one-eighth assed.

They actually did go shoot a guy on a kid’s bike for these commercials. Everything else is just stock footage and one “whoosh” sound effect.

If I’m doing all this work they’d better spring for a high-quality “whoosh” sound effect, I tell you what

How could someone care so little? If I were a better detective, I could find out. I just don’t give a damn unless some dame with legs down to the floor walks in. That’s just the kind of detective I am. Watch the video or get out of my boiler room office!

Is this a commercial for a leather catcher’s mit?

Trimspa has developed a magic ray that turns you into a crack whore! Buy it now!

A person might not even need to watch the video of this ad to know that Anna Nicola Smith would be a terrible spokesperson for any product, of any kind. Except for maybe delicious crack! Mm mm, crack.