Financial services
Even if you don’t live in the Pacific Northwest, you probably have some stereotypes about us lurking in your head. Well, here’s a dirty little secret -- for all our talk of individualism, all of your stereotypes about us are true.
We are a region of smug hybrid owners, recycling fanatics and recumbent bicycle commuters. We love to broadcast our beliefs via bumper stickers. Before we moved here we may have been more fashionable, but now we see nothing wrong with wearing socks with our sandals, preferably paired with those pants that can unzip to become a pair of shorts should the weather improve. If we want to get fancy, we might throw a fleece vest over the whole ensemble.
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| Pemco |
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If you’re a has-been celebrity looking for work - and what has-been celebrity isn’t looking for work, by definition? - the good news is that there are other job prospects out there besides lame reality television shows. There’s also Geico.
The insurance company has for some time now been employing the likes of Little Richard, Joan Rivers and even Charo to “interpret” real people’s stories of how well Geico dealt with their insurance claims.
Maybe the well of real D-list celebrities is running dry, because now the company is turning to … a syrup bottle.
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By now, every bit comedian (and every slightly drunk guy who fancies himself a bit funny) has done a sendup of MasterCard’s “Priceless” ad campaign. (“There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s MasterCard.”) But chances are, no one has thought to introduce a creepy wandering eye into the act. For that, well, there’s MasterCard.
The credit company’s latest spot, which debuted during Sunday’s Academy Awards show, features a slightly retro, downtrodden guy whose “The Office”-ish life takes an unusual turn when one of his eyes starts wandering.
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We’re on record as loving Careerbuilder.com’s “Heart” Super Bowl ad, and are willing to go on record that the later one “Spider” wasn’t nearly as good.
Still given that most of the ads during the game stunk on ice, batting .500 is pretty good for any company not named Anheuser-Busch.
So when we heard that the company had a new viral-advergame-thingee we figured it’d at least be worth it to do some research. What a disappointment.
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| Careerbuilder |
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What a difference a week makes. As the New Year rang in we were writing about a mess that had way too many moving parts to work.
This week: Something that is even more over the top – including a barking cat.
Thing is, this one for Farmer’s Insurance actually works.
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| Farmer's Insurance |
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We liked the ads, Geico. We really did. Even though some of them at this point probably don’t need another repeat airing.
But when we heard that ABC was going to create a series based on the Geico cavemen, we had mixed emotions. On one hand, stretching out a funny joke for 30 minutes was probably a bad idea ("Saturday Night Live" has problems doing it for five minutes at a time). On the other hand, … OK, so the emotions weren’t exactly mixed.
Then came the news that the show's producers wouldn’t be showing the first episode in advance to critics. That’s not always a bad thing. Usually critics will declare a show must be terrible if it doesn’t get screened for critics. This is only partly true. A movie can be truly bad, yet studios don’t need to screen it because it has a huge built-in audience that doesn’t care what middle-aged print media writers think – just think of every teen slasher movie that’s been made in the past five years.
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| ABC |
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We here at Ads of the Weird like Bob Mould a lot, and as business writers and editors we also are partial to financial news. But we know better than to mix the two.
Apparently the folks at TIAA-CREF don’t agree. The financial services company has decided to use punk music icon Mould’s “See A Little Light” as the cornerstone of an ad campaign touting the benefits “dot-orgs” over “dot-coms.”
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| TIAA-CREF |
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