Pepsi Max, a diet cola marketed toward men, drew both cheers and jeers for its Super Bowl ad featuring guys getting involved in various violent accidents before proclaiming bravely, "I’m good."
To those in favor, the ad was classic slapstick. To those opposed, it was just stereotypical violence for violence’s sake.
Both those who liked and hated the Super Bowl ad might find more humor in another series of Pepsi Max ads, which feature American actors but are currently only running in Europe.
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A recent commercial for Del Taco shows your typical office drone standing in line staring at the woman behind the counter in a kind of creepy way.
It turns out he’s angry because Del Taco’s prices are so cheap he realizes that everyone else is ripping him off.
Del Taco’s solution? Send another hapless worker over and let the office drone give him a wedgie.
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| Del Taco |
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We’ve found plenty not to like about fast food commercials lately, so it was a pleasant surprise to see a new ad for McDonald’s that actually didn’t leave us feeling kind of queasy.
The commercial for Chicken McNuggets looks at first like a standard-issue video for your typical R&B song -- until you start listening closely to the lyrics.
Yes, the singer has that overly emotive, heartbroken look on his face, and yes, he’s making those goofy hand gestures as he sings about desperate, unrequited love. But is he craving a lover … or a piece of fried, breaded chicken?
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| McDonald's |
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When Burger King decided to run a campaign called "Whopper Virgins," with the premise of doing a Whopper versus Big Mac taste test in rural international outposts, you can imagine what they were thinking: Controversy!
People will love it! People will hate it! People will debate it incessantly! It’ll be great!
Perhaps they should have found a way to make a little more interesting.
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We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again: Sex does not sell everything. And one thing it really doesn’t sell very well is fast food.
The latest entrant in the surprisingly crowded "fast food as erotica" genre comes from Arby’s.
The chains’ recent ad for the chicken cordon bleu sandwich begins with a pudgy guy wearing sweats and white socks sitting on a bed, surrounded by pillows and candles.
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Wal-Mart commercials have definitely improved since the days of the tacky flying smiley face and uniformed employees, but let’s face it: The retailer’s ads are not usually the stuff of creative wonderment.
That’s one reason we were pleasantly surprised by a new holiday commercial from Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola.
The ad, currently playing in movie theaters and online, features a young, geeky guy wandering through his own holiday party with a reusable Wal-Mart tote bag, handing out bottles of Coke while singing a little ditty about his guests.
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With the presidential election just one week away, nothing seems to be getting Americans’ hearts racing like a new opinion poll. Perhaps wanting to get in on the action, Dunkin’ Donuts decided to commission a poll about its own high-stakes race: Dunkin’ Donuts coffee versus Starbucks coffee.
According to a commercial the donut chain made to go with its poll, the results show that: "In a national taste test, more hard-working Americans preferred the taste of Dunkin' Donuts over Starbucks."
The first question that springs to mind, of course, is: what criteria did they use, exactly, to find out whether these people were "hard-working"? And why do they have to be "hard-working" in order to judge coffee?
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| Dunkin' Donuts |
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In this era of instant electronic communication, do you really ever actually need to talk with, much less actually see, your friends? Isn’t it much easier just to text them, trade voice mails or check their status updates on Facebook?
Dentyne takes that attitude to task in a new series of print and television ads that poke fun at technology terms by showing their real-person equivalent.
Two friends whispering to each other? That’s "voicemail."
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| Dentyne |
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The makers of Snickers are pulling an ad after it failed to get laughs among gay rights activists who called it homophobic, according to an Associated Press report.
In the commercial, a man is speed-walking down the street when 1980s icon Mr. T comes barreling around the corner, firing candy bars at him and calling him a "disgrace to the man race."
The ad, which aired in the United Kingdom, ends with the tagline "get some nuts."
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| snickers.com |
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We’ve heard a lot of talk lately about how young people in this country want to feel inspired. The makers of Cheetos apparently think that they want to be inspired to do mean things to other people.
The company’s ad campaign, dubbed Orange Underground, consists of a series of commercials in which a cartoon Cheetos mascot goads people to use the orange squiggly snack for evil.
In one commercial, an office worker passes by the desk of a "neat freak," and smashes Cheetos into his computer and ear phones. In another, a woman upset by another patron at a Laundromat drops some Cheetos into her load of whites. In yet another, a woman sticks Cheetos up the nose of a snoring seatmate on an airplane.
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