From USA Today

The news that Orville Redenbacher (the company) was digitally reviving Orville Redenbacher (the ex-human) escaped my notice, so seeing their flagship commercial during the Golden Globes was the first I knew about this. And even then, I wasn’t sure if they had just hired a look-alike, or gone all out and recreated him using dark sorcery.

This story in USA Today gives some good background information on the process and decision to do this. The accompanying video link is somewhat crappy, and unfortunately I don’t have the video to post yet. You can find the ad and some other original Redenbacher spots on the YouTube.

Unlike what companies like The Gap have done to disgrace dead celebrities, I don’t have a moral problem with what this new Redencacher ad does. Whether or not it gets good results, it’s not really grave-robbing to bring the man back to sell the product. After all, he did it while he was alive.

My only real question is, why not just find a look-alike? It seems like a (financially) painful process to go through to recreate a human being every time you need a new ad. In any event it looks rather nice, though from a content point of view it’s nothing mind-blowing.

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Let’s edit her dancing with a vacuum cleaner now

Once in a while, a commercial comes along that’s so gay, it’s too gay for even any gay man to stomach. It’s off the gaydometer.

In this commercial for The Gap, a company struggling with its has-been status, we see a ressurected Audrey Hepburn dancing around in a fit of blasé split-screenery. Not only is the idea of animating actors from old movies done to death, there’s nothing new and original here. It looks like a poor imitation of an iPod commercial.

This concept, parsing an actor a major shareholder had a hard-on for, and inserting him or her into what the decision makers understands to be a “hip” setting, is old and done to death, just like The Gap. Even the idea of being disgusted by a dead celebrity being resurrected to hawk popular culture garbage is old and done. Let me travel back to the days when I could see a second-circuit showing of Forest Gump in the dollar theater and maybe I’ll be impressed / disgusted by this commercial.

In a way it does embody the slumping, once great clothing store outlet. Instead of “dead man walking,” it’s “dead hipster dancing.”

I’m ready to face Monday now, girlfriend!

And in a rare, double-whammy post, I’d like to drag down this ad for Starbucks’ Diabetes in a Can into dancer’s hell.

First of all: shut up. Stop dancing. It’s too early for dancing.

Coffee and sugar only get a normal person back to normal. This is because we’re all addicted to it. If you feel like dancing after drinking coffee at seven in the morning, you’re a newbie, you’re a Sunday driver, you’re a day player, the only night you go to the bars is St. Patrick’s Day and when you do you pretend like you know what you’re doing.

Drink your coffee and shut the hell up. God get away from me. Don’t even talk to me until after noon. I heard you and the crowd following you from a block on your way to the office, just dancing it up.

This ad is very similar, but still a far cry from the “Glen” commercial for the same drinks, which I actually did like. The Glen spot is a little more tongue-in-cheek, and it doesn’t overstate the influence of a small amount of coffee into a normal human system. For Glen, a Doubleshot tells him he might one day be supervisor. Ok, fair enough. In this new dancefest, a Doubleshot means you will be successful TODAY. Bam. No questions asked.

It’s really too much responsibility for one commercial to lay on us after we woke up so late we didn’t have time for a shower, and the drink we grab in lieu of breakfast is maybe as nutritious as two bowls of Count Chocula cereal. No one likes to feel inadequate, and also no one but Drew Carey thinks this kind of dancing belongs on TV. And we all know what happened to him.

Well, he became a big success. I guess that wasn’t a good example. Man I’m so inadequate at this.

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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.

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Click for the :30 Tacoma #1 spot @1 MB, Quicktime

Ever notice how an advertising campaign will sometimes start with one really good commercial, and the rest seem like poor imitations of the first one or two? Yeah, I notice things too. We should hang out.

I have three spots from the same Toyota Tacoma campaign, in descending order of goodness. The first one is at the top because it has a moment in it that is actually funny, unlike the other spots. If you watch the video, it’s the part with the dog almost biting the guy in the head.

Otherwise it’s kind of bland. They are attempting to spoof a bad testimonial spot, but they don’t imitate any of the bad cinematography. Also the acting may be too good. Whatever the specific problems are, they didn’t do a good job imitating the bad production. They miss a big chance for something resembling humor in doing so.

This spot is ok, but with a lot of unrealized potential.

Click for the :30 Tacoma spot #2 @1 MB, Quicktime

This second spot gets the editing and shots a little more correct for the spoof, but they miss the punchy writing and delivery of the first spot.

I like the bad split screen, but I don’t think they go far enough with the camp. It seems like they were afraid to go too far into the realm of bad production, and they end up missing the mark. It’s not quite bad enough to be funny, so it remains just a little bad and not entertaining.

Inserting the narrator onscreen, and following through with the bad production (maybe using the seventh-and-a-half-floor industrial video from the movie Being John Malkovich as reference) would make this more effective.

Click for the :30 Tacoma #3 spot @1 MB, Quicktime

In this last spot..well, good enough. If I saw it on its own I’d probably think it was not good, but in comparison to the other two spots it’s a little more on the mark. It’s just bad enough to be somewhat entertaining, and they have some cornball acting that is appropriate for the spoof.

Still I don’t think it goes far enough to be perfect. It’s missing a lot of small details that would give it that official “bad production” feel. The camera work is a little too good, the acting is still a little too good, but it still works, though just barely.

If you’re going to make a commercial awful on purpose, make it really awful! Use older materials you know in your heart to be bad for reference. These seem like they spoofed the script from other bad spots, but used the best production available to them to produce their commercials. The production should be just as bad as the writing and premise.

Better luck next time!

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Salvador Dali’s lost experimental film

I like a lot of the Target ads currently out. A few of them are a little too weird. This is one of them.

Target did a great job repositioning themselves with their stylish, color-coordinated marketing campaign. It might have single-handedly saved them from the ninth ring of hell fate that befell Kmart. But this seems like campaign-fatigue, a sort of hideous distortion of the original vision that is so off base it scarcely resembles the original tone and style.

This spot, like a few others, drifts too far into the weird, or just too far into the color-coordination theme, and becomes a pile of monotonal, non-sequitur vomit.

The color scheme here makes me nauseous, and I have conferred with several completely real eye doctors who say it can cause blindness if watched more then 3 times in a row. The dancing costumes are the kind of retro advertising that was banished to hell for very specific reasons. Basically I submit to you that Target was messing with the forces of hell when they made this television spot.

Stop stalling, get in the blender

This spot strays too far from the chic of the more successful spots. It verges on the hipness levels of an Old Navy spot, which are exactly zero.

Some other Target spots are even weirder, making me wonder if they signed on David Lynch to help them out. He makes great film and TV, but his style might not be the most fit for a thirty second commercial..unless Target is trying to sell an alternate dream dimension where your mom is a midget biker and your dad is a protagonist who keeps changing appearance while he’s trying to chase you down to swap your feet with dogs’ heads.

This commercial looks like a GAP ad campaign ran out of gas on the train tracks and a Mexican variety show train carrying cars full of LSD smashed into the stranded vehicle. There were no survivors.

Once again I am out of filler run-on sentences. Watch the link and enjoy!

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