Ads of the Weird : Entertainment

JCPenney can’t forget about "The Breakfast Club"

Allison Linn — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:00:00 GMT

At a time when retailers, and especially department stores, are struggling with a weak economy and fickle shoppers, JCPenney has lately been pulling out all the stops with pretty, musically interesting and eye-catching ads for its American Living line.

Now, it’s switching gears -- in the wrong direction -- with a back-to-school campaign that plays off the 1985 cult classic movie "The Breakfast Club."

JCPenney

Here’s the first problem with the campaign: "The Breakfast Club" came out 23 years ago, several years before this season’s back-to-school shoppers were even born. While it can be fun to go retro, we have to wonder whether some people who see the ad simply won’t get the reference.

Second, JCPenney apparently doesn’t truly get the reference, either. The core message of "The Breakfast Club" -- that it’s OK to be weird and different, and that, in fact, most people are weird and different at heart -- goes squarely against the idea of going to a big department store and buying mass-produced clothes that make you look just like every other kid in America.

We recognize that it's often an advertiser's job to co-opt popular culture for their own sales pitch, but seriously, is nothing sacred?

Of course, in JCPenney’s version of "The Breakfast Club," the characters are not weird, quirky and strange-looking at all. Instead, they are normal, trendy and strikingly beautiful, no Ally Sheedy-type makeover required. (Actually, the ad does include one such makeover, but the model was cute to begin with and doesn’t look very different after it’s done.)

Another major theme of the "The Breakfast Club" -- feeling alienated from one’s parents --also is apparently lost on the marketers at JCPenney. Instead, a corporate marketing executive, Mike Boylson, said one reason the company used the 1980s-era movie is because "we recognize the importance of delivering a marketing campaign that's relevant to today's teens, yet approachable to Mom."

On the surface, that makes sense -- Mom does have the credit card, or at least pay the credit card bill, and perhaps kids these days can find common ground with their parents in celebrating the bygone era.

But still, the idea of using "The Breakfast Club" to bond with your parents, rather than your peers? Cue the Molly Ringwald eye roll.

The ad does have one thing going for it, however: It resurrects one of the great pop songs of our time, Simple Minds’ "Don’t You Forget About Me." While we’d rather have seen the song used in a better ad, at least it gives us something catchy to hum along with.

Click here to watch the ad, and click here to see an elaborate Internet campaign. Or if, like us, the ad just really made you want to see the original movie again, click here to watch the real trailer.

The war against the wedgie

Allison Linn — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 07:00:00 GMT

It’s not easy selling underwear.

Companies aiming to get customers into their underthings have to walk the fine line between becoming too sexy for themselves - a misstep Victoria’s Secret recently acknowledged - and getting too deep into the decidedly unsexy engineering behind undergarments (how much do we really want to think about bra fittings, after all?)

Hanes is aiming to find a happy - and humorous - medium with a new series of ads that tries, in a silly but sexy way, to sell a pair of underwear guaranteed not to give you a wedgie.

Hanes

The first of two commercials, featuring actress Sarah Chalke of “Scrubs” fame and directed by her co-star Zach Braff, show Chalke trying all sorts of goofball tricks to secretly get rid of her wedgie while two fans look on. When one more adventurous move lands her flat on her back, Chalke notices a display of Hanes' new No Ride-Up Panty and quickly heads for the dressing room.

In the next, Chalke – now sporting her new, wedgie-free underwear – watches other women trying to rid themselves of a wedgie while walking down the street. Then, in a print ad, a glamorous Chalke is walking the red carpet but worrying that a problem will “creep up.”

The potty-humor element of the ad campaign could have quickly devolved into tasteless oblivion if Hanes hadn’t been able to recruit an actress like Chalke, who exudes a goofy, “I’m your best girlfriend” charm. The ad also manages to address the topic in a relatively oblique way, resisting the urge to subject us to any close-up shots from behind.

The campaign is, in fact, entertaining enough that people might forget to question the entire premise of the product: really, a pair of underwear that promises to rid women of wedgies? Is that something the world has really been clamoring for?

The new commercials are set to debut on television Tuesday night. Click here to see the campaign on the Web.

Rock like an Egyptian

Rob Neill — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 07:00:00 GMT

As if there needed to be more proof that despite the internet, the world is actually a pretty big place with a lot going on you’ve never even thought about, much less heard about, seems Egypt has its own English-language music video channel.

(Seem to remember the U.S. did too at one time. Wonder what happened to them? We guess there are these guys, but only if John Mayer is your idea of “out there”.)

The network is “Melody Tunes” and, for all we know, may even be a hoax. Really all we have to go on is a bunch of Weblog entries and a listing here (yes, we were distressed to finally find something that could not just be lazily Googled or Wikipediaed).

Melody Tunes

The ads have been bouncing all over the Web. Basically they begin with a “average” Egyptian (well, that's what we think anyhow since we really have very little idea what life in Egypt is normally like) singing a western pop song in English before cutting to the actual clip, then a quick tag reminding that, this can not be repeated enough, Egypt has an English language music video channel.

Our personal fave … these group of women rock out to “Don’t Cha” and are far more entertaining than the Pussycat Dolls (and no, that has nothing to do with a postfeminist discourse on the power of er whatever … the song just sucks).

Next up, a beggar runs a scam using Britney (hey wasn’t that an actual story this month?).

And this is pretty good too. Though after hearing these songs together we’re starting to question our undeniable love of America.

Nice work to all involved. We will be calling our cable company.

'Cavemen' can't do it

Rob Neill — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 07:00:00 GMT

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.

ABC

However, because “Cavemen” (possibly the most appropriate name since “Snakes on a Plane”) didn’t seem to have a ready-made audience – people who like to watch commercials? advertising executives focusing on car insurance accounts? – it had to be bad. Real bad.

In short, we were pretty sure this thing was gonna stink on ice. But we get paid to do this, so we DVR’d last Tuesday’s debut episode.

Yep. Bad. Not just bad bad. But bad with a message bad. Because after not letting anyone know what the show was going to be about, it turns out to be about (or at least the first episode was) … race relations?

The trio of metrosexual caveguys hang out in San Diego. (Point! San Diego is always unintentionally funny – there’s a reason Ron Burgundy lives there.) Joel, the leader, works at an Ikea-like store. (Point! Assembling furniture with an allen wrench while saying, “It’s 2007, right?” is funny.) Joel falls for a non-cavewoman, and gets the derision of the other two. Get it?!?!

This leads to some painful lines, such as, “Stick to your kind – crave the cave.”

And possibly one of the most disturbing things we’ve heard on TV since, well, ever: “Keep your penis in your genus.”

The rest of it is all stupid jokes about a couple misunderstanding each other and how complicated ordering coffee is in modern America. Yawn.

Perhaps the funniest thing about this show is the fact that it won’t be canceled after one episode (nice headline by the way) despite being resoundingly panned (too many links, but you could go here, here, here, or here – pardon us for a moment as we go take some medicine for pun overdose.)

We figure the show's opening-night ratings benefited from the "train wreck" effect as a lot of people probably tuned in to see just how bad it could be. We wonder how many of them (who weren’t being paid to watch) made it past the first commercial. Our guess: Not many.

By the way, the Gekko isn’t even funny in 15-second increments. No more shows.

You can view the episode here as long as ABC is willing to be associated with the thing.

When good music happens to bad ads

Allison Linn — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 07:30:00 GMT

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 alt-rock icon Mould’s “See A Little Light” as the cornerstone of an ad campaign touting the benefits “dot-orgs” over “dot-coms.”

TIAA-CREF

The problem here isn’t that good musicians are selling out by deciding to let their music be featured in an ad. It’s increasingly hard to begrudge a musician trying to eke out another paycheck in an era when album sales are faltering and radio play is harder to come by. And let’s face it, if you excluded all the musicians who have sold out commercially or had other shortcomings of character, your record/CD/MP3 collection would be pretty thin.

The issue is that advertisers think co-opting our favorite songs will get us to buy their products instead of just ruining the songs for us.

Listening to Mould, of Husker Du and Sugar fame, should evoke memories of that guitarist you had a crush on in high school, or the concert where you were crammed up against the stage, singing along as loud as you could and still unable to hear your own voice. It should not make you think of potential investment vehicles.

Advertisers claim to revel in being creative and original. How does repackaging someone else’s artistic efforts for their own sales pitches accomplish either of those goals?

Beyond the music, the other problem with TIAA-CREF’s new campaign is the insipid implication that using a “dot-org” Web address makes for a stand-up group of people who are, to quote the ad, “serving the greater good.”

For starters, although such Web addresses are often used by nonprofits, in reality anyone can create register as a “dot-org.”

Also, although, there’s unquestionably plenty of good in the nonprofit world, there are also more than enough people using their nonprofit status less responsibly. (You only have to deal with one fast-talking, contribution-soliciting telemarketer to know that.) Implying that a “dot-org” Web address makes an organization somehow more morally pure than a “dot-com” is simplistic at best, and irresponsible at worst.

Click here to see the TIAA-CREF ad.

Update! Need more ad fun? MSNBC.com's television editor, Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, has posted the results of her best and worst ads contest. Click here to see the results.

“Mad Men” revels in 1960, and Jack Daniel’s

Allison Linn — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 04:30:00 GMT

“Mad Men,” a new TV show about an advertising firm from cable network AMC, is set in 1960 amid a haze of smoke and booze that’s meant to reinforce the authenticity of the series.

The retro atmosphere also provides a convenient foil for pitching Jack Daniel’s, whose sponsorship of the 13-episode first season includes plans to feature the brand by name in three forthcoming episodes.

Yet you won’t hear the words “Jack Daniel’s” in the first episode, which premieres Thursday. Instead, unlabeled bottles of brown liquid adorn every office credenza, and when the characters are done drinking in their offices they head out to a favorite watering hole to order more of the same.

AMCTV

Arlene Manos, president of national advertising sales for AMC parent Rainbow Media, said the Jack Daniel’s sponsorship was a natural because drinking whiskey was so common in the early 1960s era. But while the show actively pursued the sponsorship, they didn’t want the product placement to overwhelm it.

“If we had one in every episode, that would be too much,” she said.

In an age when more and more people are using digital video recorders to skip those pesky commercials, it’s not surprising that a company like Jack Daniel’s would want to build its brand into the actual show. Elsewhere, everything from car brands to soda cans are popping up in television shows with increasing frequency.

The surprising part is that a company would want to promote itself through the characters in “Mad Men.”

Great television is filled with men and women who are morally questionable yet charismatic – you may not want to live Tony Soprano’s life, but you might well copy his drink order.

In “Mad Men,” the character who is supposed to be most sympathetic can ask a prospective client why she didn’t choose an ad firm with more people like herself (read: Jews), and then storm out of a meeting after telling her that he won’t let a woman talk to him like she did. Later, by way of apology, he’ll take her out for a drink and ask her why she doesn’t do something really fulfilling: get married and make babies. Apparently, in 1960, none of this was enough to lose the possible account.

The show’s characters are so one-dimensionally distasteful, and so eager to embrace the sexism and bigotry of the era at the expense, even, of an engrossing plot, that it’s hard to find anything alluring about them.

Click here for show details.