Is your bathroom dirty? Time to sell!

It might be hard, but try to spot five things that are wrong with this TV commercial.

If you said all of the following things, you are right!

1) Instead of speaking in iambic pentameter, the woman instead cracks and strains her voice in an annoying manner.

2) The ripple transition should not be used to simulate a time lapse UNLESS the time lapse is because of time travel. Otherwise it should be used to simulate going down a drain.

3) The woman mentions children but clearly has none and compensates for this by putting unitards on her dog and taking it to ballet class.

4) You may not sell your home to avoid civil damages incurred in a classic ‘dog dug up neighbor’s yard’ lawsuit (see Township of Old Cape v. Cupcake, 1983)

5) The commercial cuts off at the end which is clearly a dated reference to the last episode of the Sopranos.

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I love this substitute teacher

The advertising for Carl’s Jr. has always been about style. Grace. Finesse. Pert Plus.

This ad is a sad departure from Carl’s Jr.’s usual display of artistic integrity. Instead of relying on the avant gaurde display of showing someone eating in a loud and disgusting fashion, they have to stoop to using dancing women to sell unrelated products. When will we learn commercials aren’t about selling things, they are about listening to people chew their food and watching them spill chili on their shirts and then lick it off.

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Plenty of old school rock songs have been played to death by commercials to the point where you forget they were even original artist recordings. This Top 9 List is devoted to the Indie and Alternative Rock songs that have been ruined or marred in one way or another by television advertising.

Click the picture for the commercial Pops in a new window

Number Nine: Punkrocker by the Teddybears by Cadillac

This one ranks not too highly because it didn’t get overplayed quite as much or over such a long period of time as some others on the list. But when this commercial made it to the small screen, the track was just reaching popularity, meaning this spot came out right at that magical sweet spot in the life of a popular music track to taint its listenability.

(Oh there is more…)

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Now I’ve forgotten how to read

Commercials that gain a fan base are rare. Sonic’s style of under produced ‘candid’ dash camera commercials has garnered a small but loyal audience. This spot isn’t as good as the ‘Rejected’ spot, though we do get a glimpse of a new character: the bald guy’s wife.

McDonald’s touts its recent bounce back in sales to its similarly under produced ‘I’m Lovin’ It’ campaign. It might be because its refreshing to see a fast food commercial that isn’t grating and unnerving in every respect.

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Live from the Tri-State Penitentiary

In elementary school there was sometimes this kid who would run around literally asking other kids to beat him up, to give him some kind of weird form of attention. This commercial is just like that kid I used to beat up out of pity; it’s just asking for everyone to make fun of it.

FINE commercial, I’ll beat you up. This spot is actually part of a small and self-admittedly low budget campaign. You can try to view them all on the company website, though there’s no download progress bar so you just have to sit around waiting for the video to magically start.

It’s low budget and weird, seemingly the stuff dreams are made of. But raking it over the coals seems too easy, like aggravating the clerk at the post office, or pushing a grandmother down the stairs. Sure it’s a cinch to do, but it just feels vaguely wrong.

I’ll let history judge the rest of the content, but the tagline (”..you don’t know!”) is an advertising victory.

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