Must..poop out..Toyota..

My dislike for this :30 Toyota spot is probably more personal taste than rational criticism. That’s why I’m dumping this article onto the web site over the weekend where no one will notice.

The beginning of this spot, with the guy chained to his car and pulling it, is so dramatic it just makes me want to change the channel. Also the two junk cars shown in this ad are a little too junky. You aren’t going to be able to keep driving a smoking pile of rust for very long anyway.

After the guy breaks his chain the music breaks into some kind of weird techno and I think it is a bad shift. I think shifting to a more upbeat orchestral / movie score song might have marginally helped. I must point out that after the guy breaks his chain it looks like in his new car he also has a new woman. We’ve all been there, right guys? Eh? Ehhh? Uh, anyway, my point is the shift in the commercial is from intolerably slow to just sort of slow, and there isn’t much of an emotional reaction.

During the dance-techno-whatever song there is some kind of intermittent beep that sounds like my cell phone when I have an unchecked message. Most of all I hate this commercial for making me check my phone every time it came on the air.

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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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