No still frame of this spot was remotely safe for work or even an Amsterdam street corner window

This spot is a parody of the Paris Hilton Carl’s Jr. ad in which Paris bends over and shows us her burger. In this video a fat nasty man dressed like Paris Hilton reenacts her cavorts and capers. The hook? Getting the right person for the job is important, that’s why you need Accolo to do your recruiting, or else you might end up with a hairy pervert in your garage doing a seductive dance under soap suds.

It’s a pretty good attention-getter and should be an instant meme for at least a day or so.

My problem is one I’ve brought up before: just because something is so nasty it gets passed around the Internet doesn’t mean it will magically result in good advertising. It could even open the door up for bad branding. Crusty old company presidents may not find this kind of advertising as appealing as a hip young web-savy intern in the HR department. If the intent was to create an Internet meme for marketing purposes, it seems unlikely they will hit the kind of people to whom they need to get their message.

As far as parodies go, when you get over the fact that this is a fat man in women’s underwear acting sexy, it’s not very good. It’s pretty much the entire Carl’s Jr. ad shot-for-shot, which isn’t that original. It does make a pretty good statement about the absence of any actual content in the Paris Hilton ad; take away Paris Hilton and there is no content at all in the commercial.

Taking a more critical look at this parody, I don’t see any irony or wit about their approach. The original spot could provide a wealth of mockery and this nasty parody barely shows any effort.

The best litmus test is: do you want to watch it again? After ten or twenty viewings, my answer is no, probably not.

Darrr

Who were all these people trying to make collect calls? History books gloss over this dark period of American history with flowery tales of the Clinton sex-scandal impeachment, but for those who remember the truth we must never forget: collect call commercials were on the air for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, ten to eleven months out of the year.

For those of you who just can’t get enough Carrot Top, here he is pretending to forget his wallet in a fancy-pants restaurant. The rich irony the writers heaped into this commercial: Carrot Top in real life could not afford to go to a restaurant where they show you the bottle of wine before they serve it to you! Classic.

The woman sat down in the restaurant like a person who sits down wanting food nothing was out of the ordinary and it was a nice spring day and the birds sang and no one suspected they were up to anything

Olive Garden continues to produce commercials with scripts written only seconds before the cameras are turned on. “Ok, we got some people in a restaurant, they are sitting down, the lights are on..now..uh oh.” Yep that’s right, you got no script. Let’s hack something together.

The delivery is just terrible -probably because the reactions they have don’t make sense for what they are saying- and this commercial is held together with masking tape and bailing wire. Hey Olive Garden, what high school playwright did you get to author this masterpiece?

The “punch lines” in the dialogue make one wonder if the script was poorly translated into English from Japanese and read verbatim. The woman laughs when her husband suggests they switch dishes. Then after the interlude her punch line is that they shouldn’t switch..they should share! I don’t think there’s a difference. Maybe that was the joke. Like: “I don’t want a Diet Coke..I’d LOVE a Diet Coke.”

Well guess I’ll go get a Diet Coke, this commercial has sold me.

Pictured above: Japanese mind control

Today’s special is audio-only. It was originally a thirty-second television ad for the first 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (which your parents must help you setup) and The Legend of Zelda video game.

I try to focus on more contemporary advertisements, but when I found this it was just too horrible to pass up. It has the off the cuff rap designed to get the attention of the kiddies, a favorite advertising convention of mine.

I am pretty sure I recognize the male voice over talent in this ad from several other commercials from this era, including several advertisements for Tandy computers.

If you have trouble hearing the audio, visit the plugin page. If problems persist, make yourself a nice cold gin and tonic.

Public transportation is my Anti-Drug

There is a forgotten period of American history when the television powers-that-be were convinced that rap was the way into the hearts and minds of youngsters everywhere. We were not won over, and were about as embarrassed as the time your grandfather took you to see Nine Inch Nails live in concert and he didn’t have socks on.

This is just poetry, which is really just a lot worse. I saw another of these ads featuring more intense from-the-heart poetry but it’s just more of the same so there’s no real reason to post it. I do find it odd that they chose to do a mini-campaign around poetry, instead of maybe just one spot.

Ok here’s the big problem with this ad. The guy is totally getting a poem off his chest -which I understand, I have to do that more than twice daily- and he is talking about his friend who could have been a great poet if only he had stayed off the weed, a.k.a. Herb.

Uh, I’m pretty sure I could have been a successful poet if only I HAD smoked weed in high school. “Billy was on his way to becoming a successful TA in the Philosophy Department when he started smoking weed. His dreams were never realized.” Something just doesn’t add up here. How stressful is the world of writing poetry in high school? Please those of you in high school toiling away on your poetry do not respond to this with a poem about how you live in an existential hell where Bush is the devil, it is just a rhetorical question.

Pot I’m sure could stop someone from doing a lot of things, but obsessively writing poetry or building a chair out of bottle caps aren’t some of those things.