Stupid, Stupid Ads! — Me Are College Sutdent!

“Stupid, Stupid Ads!” dissects ads that try to do something underhanded or just plain stupid.

I honestly can’t tell what these ads for City University are trying to get across?  Remedial spelling classes seem a bit below what you expect from adult education programs at a “university”.

The flip side of that, however, is that they are pushing graphic design skills with the idea that using all uppercase text turns words into rectangular blocks, making them harder to differentiate based on shape (and thus uppercase text is harder to proofread).  But that doesn’t seem like an easy message to get across in ads, nor does it seem to actually be the point of these ads.

So maybe they are doing an ironic push for Marketing classes: attend City University and you’ll be able to make ads that do a better job of getting your message across than these do.
 

Stupid, Stupid Ads! — Non-Olympic Sponsors

“Stupid, Stupid Ads!” dissects ads that try to do something underhanded or just plain stupid.

This ad is a window sticker about three feet high from a local Subway shop.

Look, it’s the official sandwich of the 2010 Winter Olympics!  Er, well, maybe not.  "Winter Sports".  "Coverage from Vancouver".  A logo with a bowl of mountains and a stretched banner (the NBC coverage logo).  No linked rings.  Sure as heck meant to evoke the 2010 Winter Olympics, but without paying the hefty license fees attached to that.  Just the fees needed to have the NBC Sports logo and presumably logo design.

Maybe this is just a case of “Olympics?  What Olympics?  There are Olympics going on?  Really?  We’re just promoting hot food for people who, you know, like to snowboard and stuff.”

I’ve heard that the Olympics licensing fees are stupid high.  This looks to be a bit of backlash about that to me.

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Updated on March 3, 2010

I turns out that there’s a term for these fake tie-ins: “Ambush Marketing”.  And for this years Winter Olympics, the top ambush marketers were Verizon, Subway, and Pepsi.

Here’s an article from The Global Language Monitor.  I found it from Schott’s Vocab blog.

Stupid, Stupid Ads! — Where am I?

“Stupid, Stupid Ads!” dissects ads that try to do something underhanded or just plain stupid.

This ad showed up on the Seattle Times website today.

Note that it advertises auto insurance rates in Seattle (and has the zip code where I’m at), but the animated traffic map in the background — Oakland Army Base, Fruitvale Ave. — is of Oakland and Alameda, California.
 

Stupid, Stupid Ads! — Don’t Read the Label

“Stupid, Stupid Ads!” dissects ads that try to do something underhanded or just plain stupid.

This commercial for Claritin showed up during the Superbowl:



Let’s just review that line of dialogue:

“Don’t buy any allergy medicine until you read the label…
Or do what I do and stay Claritin Clear with non-drowsy Claritin.”

Got it.  Always read the label unless it’s our product; in that case, just use it because a race car driver does.

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Updated on May 12, 2010

Old video gone, embedded new one from YouTube.

Stupid, Stupid Ads! — When is Christmas?

“Stupid, Stupid Ads!” dissects ads that try to do something underhanded or just plain stupid.

On the way home from work tonight, I heard an ad for the latest promotion from Sleep Country USA, a Pacific Northwest mattress store.  The ad proclaimed how the savings were almost like Christmas… in July.  And the savings only last until Monday!

Um, okay, but it’s not July.  It’s August.  Shouldn't the promotion have ended last weekend, when the ads wouldn’t sound, um, stupid?

To add to the poor implementation on their part, when I accessed the website, I found the attached image.  And clicked on the arrow… which did nothing.  Only clicking on the linked text actually went to the promotion page.  (You may also note that the box below the ad is a few pixels narrower than the ad.  Again: poor implementation.)

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Updated on December 18, 2009

Okay, admittedly the web ad does show an August ending date, but the radio ad didn’t.  And that still doesn't excuse an ad that stresses July running in August.

Stupid, Stupid Ads! — Will Work for Whiteout

“Stupid, Stupid Ads!” dissects ads that try to do something underhanded or just plain stupid.

And less than one in five can use proper grammar, it appears.  (Er, make that “fewer than one in five” — don’t want to get got with my grammar pants down!)

This is from a United Way bus shelter ad out around Christmas 2004, maybe a couple weeks later.

Remedial English Lesson

In this sentence, the subject is “One in five homeless people” and the predicate is “are employed”.  The subject is composed of a pronoun, “One” (standing in for “A homeless person”), and a prepositional phrase, “in five homeless people.”  The plurality of the subject’s noun and the predicate’s verb must match; this sentence is incorrect because “One” is singular while “are” is plural.  (The prepositional phrase is excess gravy.  It modifies and describes the noun/pronoun, but it does not affect the plurality of the subject.  That is controlled solely by the noun or pronoun.)  Ergo, the correct sentence should read “One in five homeless people is employed.”

I might forgive a homeless person who used bad grammar on his sign, but I certainly won’t forgive the United Way for producing a poorly designed ad.  Bad charity, no donation.

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Updated on October 10, 2011
 

Stupid, Stupid Ads! — It’s Got a What?!

“Stupid, Stupid Ads!” dissects ads that try to do something underhanded or just plain stupid.

Needless to say, stupid advertising annoys the fuck out of me.  See this item.

The latest one to get under my skin is for the Dodge Ram.  The billboard is about 2/3 black with the truck’s logo, and 1/3 an image of the truck’s rear bumper, with a bumper sticker reading “Yes, it’s got a Hemi!”

So what the Hell is a “Hemi”?  Beats the heck out of me.  I guess it must be something good for trucks to have.  Hmm.

They are showing the bumper, and I’ve seen that those big chrome rear bumpers are not being included on some trucks these days, so maybe this means that this truck has a nice bumper?  Or maybe a “half-bumper” (whatever that might be), since “hemi” means “half”?  (Nope, it’s not the bumper.)

I’ve seen a lot of trucks in past years where there’s no tailgate.  (How can you have a tailgate party without a tailgate?)  They are replaced by a nylon web.  Some people claim that this is to cut wind resistance and thus boost gas mileage, but I’m sure it’s mostly to add another option to the truck which the companies can charge more for by having to do special.  So since they are showing the rear part of the truck, maybe a “Hemi” is some kind of a new half-tailgate?  That could be cool.  (Nope, it’s not the tailgate.)

So called “King Cabs” — space behind the front seat sufficient for people to sit in with only minor discomfort — have been around for years.  As people buy pickup trucks more as around-town vehicles than purely as work vehicles (“metro rednecks”), there’s increasing demand for more in-cab space and the ability to comfortably sit a family of four.  I see now that there are even four-door pickups out there — from Dodge, in fact, and I think they look stupid— so maybe a “Hemi” is one of these super-extended cabs?  (Nope, it’s not the passenger space.)

I finally looked up the ad phrase online.  Turns out that it refers to the HEMI® Magnum engine inside.  (And studies apparently say that 50% of purchasers will pay a premium for the most powerful such engine they can get.  Probably mostly people who never use the truck for more than hauling lumber from Home Depot, I suspect.)

Is advertising successful if it doesn’t tell you what it is advertising, annoys you every time you see it, and eventually builds up enough bile to force you to go to the web to find out what the heck it refers to?  On some level, maybe: it got me to look it up.  But I have no interest in what is being advertised, and I’m annoyed enough to bitch about it in public.  I’d say that qualifies as failure.

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Updated on July 12, 2004

Updated on January 11, 2011
 

F*ck*ng C*ns*rs

“Stupid, Stupid Ads!” dissects ads that try to do something underhanded or just plain stupid.

I buy most of my comic books online, preordering them 2–3 months ahead of time from Westfield Comics.  I get a small discount (more for higher dollar orders) which more than offsets the postage charges, with a net effect of maybe 5-10% discount on titles ordered ahead of time.

For April 2004, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is offering a shirt with art by Erik Larsen, featuring his Savage Dragon character and your choice of “Fuck Censorship” or “Fight Censorship” slogans.  To the right is the image on the Westfield site for the first of those designs; the second design blots out only the finger, not the word.

In other words, an anti-censorship product is being censored in order to sell it.  (I assume it is Westfield adding the black boxes, but it could be wherever they get their images from.)

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Updated on December 2, 2010