Ads of the Weird : Financial services

In dark days for job seekers, Monster makes light

Allison Linn — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:00:00 GMT

In these hard times for job seekers, when unemployment is at its highest level in 16 years and the economy is mired in recession, many of us feel lucky just to have a job.

The online job search site Monster is arguing that there still might be room for improvement.

A new series of light-hearted Monster ads show people who are extremely ill-suited to their line of work, and might benefit from finding a career change -- one that Monster can help with.

Monster

In one ad, a paramedic passes out upon arriving at the scene of an accident. In another, a construction worker clings to a metal beam, as if fearing for his life -- although he is just a few feet from the ground. In a third, a group of musicians gathering to record the score for an epic battle scene are interrupted when one of the musicians decides to do a little solo, in a completely different genre.

The ads are witty, if somewhat predictable. Still, they’d be easier to laugh at in the type of economy where people actually felt like they had the luxury to take a risk on a new career they might enjoy more.

Instead, watching these ads against the backdrop of this very serious recession and mounting jobless woes, one can’t help but think that you could do a lot worse than having a job you don’t particularly like. At least these workers are drawing a paycheck (although perhaps not for long if they keep up that sort of behavior).

The ad showing someone working construction, a field that is bleeding jobs at the moment, seems particularly off target.

It would have been riskier, but perhaps more rewarding, to speak frankly to those millions of people who are reeling from having actually lost their job, and frightened about what the future might hold.

Click here, here and here to watch the ads.

Update: Some readers noticed that earlier versions of the ads we posted were no longer available. The links have been updated now.

The season of getting

Rob Neill — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:00:00 GMT

We uncharacteristically dropped our head and strode past the bell ringer in front of the supermarket the other day. Too busy. Too beaten down by this unforgiving, apprehensive year. Too eager that, if by rushing through it, we could make time hurry too and just be done with it. And, we have to admit, a little too tired of giving.

Season of giving? This was the year of giving. Although, unlike the giving the patient bell ringer who dealt with the slow but constant snowfall was seeking, it was less the charitable sort than the bailout sort. Banks (ridiculous). Investment banks (worse). Automakers (yet to be seen how bad a move). Airlines (lining up in the wings we hear). Contractors eager for a chunk of the billions Obama wants to (wisely) spend on infrastructure – and maybe can convince the government that retrofitting is so tired and public schools need the McMansion treatment that has served the real estate market so … never mind. And of course homeowners (oops, our mistake, that’d be socialism after all).

You’d think that in this supposedly resolute and independent country, there’d be a business not seeking a handout, and customers eager to subsidize that virtue. Well, one bank in rural Oregon makes that case.

Evergreen Bank

We’ve spent our time in rural Oregon. We won’t be back. Love the scenery, though. To be kind, the people observe a sort of steadfast conviction that just because it has been done that way for 50-or-more years, it must be right (while most of our graduating college classmates wasted hours on the Internet post-matriculation, we were greeted with blank stares in our new Klamath County digs when broaching the subject to our new neighbors).

Evergreen Bank appears to be one of those businesses. In two newspaper (not online, we’d make the joke here but we think we already did) advertisements, the regional financial institution makes the case that it is not seeking, and will not seek any federal bailout money, and, potentially, “raise your taxes.” (As if recent history hasn’t proven that Republican executive conventional wisdom and Congressional Democratic conventional wisdom joined hands to open the barn door to let that horse quickly skedaddle.)

While we can certainly appreciate Evergreen’s for its virtue and making that virtue central to its sales pitch, we’re not sure it’ll work. For one thing if being independent and regional was a virtue to most consumers, Washington Mutual wouldn’t have had roughly a bazillion branches in Western Oregon to Evergreen’s seven. And we all know how WaMu worked out.

After all, if Americans really cared about supporting regional, ethical businesses, Evergreen – and businesses like it – would have locked up their customer base leaving the big banks out in the cold. And if our fellow citizens really cared about community-based sustainable businesses that weren’t being constantly dragged into court to prove they forced their employees to work off the clock, maybe Wal-Mart wouldn’t be a) the biggest retailer in the country and b) having a good year despite how the rest of the country’s year has been.

We wish Evergreen, and every local business that is seemingly too small and smart to fail, well. They deserve our money. That said, we worry that if all they can offer is slow, sustainable growth and pragmatic management, they’ll lose out to the no-money-down, zero-interest-balance-transfer, double airline miles and option-payment-arm strategies of their larger competitors – regardless of how that ends up being paid for through a bailout.

It’s the holidays, after all. We Americans love our shiny toys above everything else – especially at no interest for the first-year.

BTW, we did circle back on the way out and drop a dollar with the ringer. A feeling of responsibility, after all, moves money. Just not very often.

Evergreen's site is here. You can view its two ads as a .pdf file here (you will have to scroll to the bottom of the page).

I'm a lumberjack, and I'm OK ...

Allison Linn — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:00:00 GMT

It’s rare that you can praise an ad and also say that it is hard to watch, but that’s perhaps the only way to accurately describe a recent commercial for the financial institution HSBC.

The ad, featuring haunting music by harpist and vocalist Joanna Newsom, recounts a vicious confrontation between police and anti-logging protesters. As the police drag the protesters away, a group of loggers walk by, saws in hand.

The twist -- and symbolic message of the commercial -- is that one of the loggers is in a relationship with one of the protesters, which you don’t realize until he bails her out of jail and they ride off together on a motorcycle.

HSBC (Click image to play ad.)

It’s difficult to watch the snarling police dogs, violent face-offs and apprehensive young people shown in a longer version of the ad available on the Web, no matter what side of the debate you are on. A 30-second version being shown on television is also violent and startling, if not nearly as graphic.

That’s not to say the commercial is bad. There are plenty of movies, plays and even television shows that are hard to sit through and yet ultimately rewarding, and this commercial is not unlike one of those.

The difference is, this is a commercial. While it’s laudable to create an advertisement that gets you thinking, there’s also no escaping that the ultimate goal of a commercial is to sell things, and it’s not clear that this does the job.

Depending on your perspective, it is either heartening or maddening to see the logger and the protester drive off into the sunset, and it is definitely likely to leave television watchers thinking, talking or even arguing. Faced with such highly charged emotions, it may be difficult to make the leap to -- or even notice -- the ad’s intended message, which is that HSBC values its customers’ differences.

We appreciate the artistry of the ad, as well as the message of accepting each other’s differences, and we like that the company is taking a risk. Still, we’re not sure it left us feeling the urge to open a bank account.

Thanks to John Swansburg at Slate for alerting us to the commercial.

Click here to watch the shorter version of the commercial, or click here to watch the longer version.

Financial crisis? Never heard of it.

Allison Linn — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:00:00 GMT

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down something like 8 million points, the economy is in the tank and the federal government is spending hundreds of billions to bail out the financial system. So you’d think those in the financial services industry would be bending over backward to reassure jittery customers that their money is in better hands with a brokerage firm than, say, under a mattress.

Well, that would be wrong. Several weeks into one of the worst financial crises in modern history, few companies that help ordinary Americans invest their money appear to be doing something -- from a straight advertising perspective -- to try to convince us that we should do business with them.

Take, for example, the last few issues of The New Yorker, a magazine that is always rife with financial services ads. Flipping through the pages, we did find a number of witty cartoons on the subject -- "A banker, eh? Can you make a living at that?" one opined -- but we were sorely disappointed that almost none of the advertisers had updated their campaigns to address the current financial crisis.

Fidelity

Barclays Capital, which recently bought up some assets from bankrupt Lehman Brothers, boasted that it is sponsoring an art exhibit. Lincoln Financial Group trotted out the usual feel-good images of happy children basking in the glory of their parents great investment choices.

Vanguard’s ad featured two boats, one more weighed down than the other, in an attempt to argue that its cost structure is lower. T. Rowe Price urged investors to roll over their 401(k)s into its accounts.

Ameritrade’s ad featured its usual pitch that it wants your business even if you don’t make a million bucks. Merrill Lynch -- wait, weren’t they recently bought by Bank of America as part of this financial unraveling? You wouldn’t know from an ad focusing on one of its wealthy clients.

Fidelity Investments gets credit for alluding to the crisis. A New Yorker ad carried the tagline "Looking for more investment stability?" and a Newsweek ad argued: "In markets like these, put Fidelity’s 60 years of experience to work for you." Still, Fidelity loses points for missing the opportunity to get more creative. The New Yorker ad, for example, was otherwise just a boring page of text dominated by a list of yields on certain investment vehicles.

However, we also give Fidelity credit for bulking up its Web site with lots of plainly written pieces explaining the crisis and how it affects ordinary Americans. Charles Schwab’s site also sought to respond aggressively, prominently arguing, "During times like these, count on us for the help you need."

Vanguard’s site, by contrast, on a recent day featured yet again a comparison on costs -- an important issue, but surely not the first thing on investors’ minds these days.

Barclays was promoting its environmental goals -- again, laudable but not exactly on point -- while Merrill Lynch was touting its part in a $13.9 billion mining deal.

T. Rowe Price urged people who went to its Web site to "Invest with Confidence." In times like these, we’re guessing there isn’t a lot of that going around.

Update: Some readers have told us they are starting to see more financial services ads addressing the crisis. If you have a good (or bad) example, please post a comment to let us know about it.

We're a lot like Pemco says we are

Allison Linn — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:00:00 GMT

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.

Pemco

Our region is home to many long-haired, caffeine-addicted, socially challenged software geeks. Far too many Pacific Northwesterners are still sporting the bad hair and flannel shirts of the elsewhere long-forgotten grunge era. The only thing we love more than using our rain barrels and compost bins is boasting to our friends about them.

The regional insurance company Pemco Insurance knows all this, and it’s created a brilliant ad campaign around it. Using the tagline “We’re a lot like you,” Pemco manages to poke fun at residents of the Pacific Northwest without offending us. (Of course, if you live in the Pacific Northwest, you know most of us would be far too passive-aggressive to say anything even if we were offended).

People who don’t live in Seattle or its environs may not get all of the company’s spot-on “Northwest profiles.” But chances are anyone can laugh at “The Super-Long Coffee Orderer,” “Gluten-Free-No-Refined-Sugar Lady,” “Accidental Tech Millionaire” and, most notably, “Confused East Coast Transplant.”

Also, you don’t have to live in the Northwest to see your friends -- or yourself -- in “Your Friend Who Won’t Stop Talking About Real Estate,” “Art Gallery Crawler” and “Walla Walla Wine Wine Woman Woman.”

(By the way, the editor of this blog has self-identified as “Too-Late-For-The-Grunge-Party,” while yours truly admits to being “Obsessive Compulsive Recycler.”)

In an age of when mergers have folded so many regional stores into national behemoths, and every mall seems to carry the same clothes from the same stores, it’s refreshing to see an ad campaign -- and, by extension, a company -- that’s focused on one part of the country. Better yet, it’s nice to see a local company making ads that are any good.

Click here to watch the television ads, listen to the radio spots, peruse the profiles and even submit your own.

Thick, buttery … insurance?

Allison Linn — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 07:00:00 GMT

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.

In a new commercial, Mrs. Butterworth editorializes as a Geico customer recounts her tale of woe - or, actually, her tale of getting a nick in her windshield repaired. It’s not very compelling stuff, but Mrs. Butterworth makes the best of it, intoning, “Oh, dear, broken glass sends shivers down my bottle!

Mrs. Butterworth isn’t as funny as Little Richard or as annoying as Joan Rivers , and she likely won’t be as provocative as Charo, whose ad got the company in hot water when the Connecticut attorney general charged that it could have left the false impression that the insurance company can fix cars directly.

Still, the talking syrup bottle gets points for nostalgia. But what’s funny about the ad – and all the others in the celebrity spokesperson series – is that the “real” customers all but completely ignore their celebrities’ wacko antics.

Also, whereas Little Richard et al appeared comfortable sticking to the insurance pitch, Mrs. Butterworth can’t resist the opportunity to hawk herself.

“It was a piece of cake. Or maybe more like hot pancakes,” she says of the claim process.

And when all is said and done, she declares, “Now I feel rich. Thick and buttery, too.”

Not surprisingly, the Geico ad comes as The Blackstone Group, which purchased Mrs. Butterworth’s and other brands last year, is working to revive the syrup brand with an ad of its own that offers a trip down memory lane.

It’s interesting to see a montage of cute kids through the decades, but when it comes to pancakes, we’re still sticking with real maple syrup.

Click here to watch’s Geico’s ad.

For creepy eye tricks, there's MasterCard

Allison Linn — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:03:00 GMT

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.

“Curious, how curious my right eye had become,” the spot’s hero reflects, as he goes about his life - bowling, flying a kite, flummoxing a waitress - with “not a lazy eye, but rather a more energetic, restless, altogether more interested eye, seeking, searching…”

Fittingly for the Oscars, the cinematography and script of the ad are above average, and it’s clever to see the creators come up with a truly fresh take on the now-shopworn “priceless” slogan. Also, the way the ad is created leaves you wondering until the very end what exactly it is selling, a trick that might be more likely to keep TiVo users’ eyes from wandering.

Still, while watching the ad it’s hard to do anything but stare at the creepy eye and wonder how exactly they made it move. One wonders whether that’s the kind of attention that is going to motivate people to pull out their credit card and start racking up some consumer debt.

Click here to watch the ad.

Careerbuilder's nasty side

Rob Neill — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:00:00 GMT

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 waste some time with it do some research. What a disappointment.

Careerbuilder

First off, who knew that gruntled was actually a word? We didn’t. In any event, the company’s “National Gruntledness Index” attempts to show where in the country people are most- and least-happy with their job. We’re a little dubious about their methodology (which they snarkily quasi-spell out in their FAQ – more about the snarkiness in a bit) for two reasons which we will list in ascending order:

Seems most people are happy with their job.
Seems people in Modesto, Calif., are happy.

The application gives you the opportunity to determine your “Personal Gruntledness Index.” It runs you through more-than-a-few questions about your life, job and perceptions (unfortunately, it assumes you like cats). We ran through it three times, and thanks to a few variations in the questions, got three different scores. Though all showed us to be fairly gruntled (love our job, boss!), it did counsel us to immediately begin checking out job listings on Careerbuilder.

We can understand that. Their job is to get you to view their listings. And the whole experience might have been a good idea except for a few major flaws.

The background music is ‘70s-porn quality (not that we’d know, really) light jazz, regardless of how snappily they want to name it, i.e. “Brutal Flut,” “Smoove Grov,” etc.

There are too many questions.
Every instruction and result is delivered in this stilted, quasi-snarky, almost condescending tone. It could be funny, but it just never really is. It’s almost like an exact approximation of someone being funny, yet not.
We can’t say this enough: It assumes the test-taker likes cats.

Bad idea, bad execution, bad time. Please, Careerbuilder, bring back the monkeys.

Farmer's in wonderland

Rob Neill — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 23:15:00 GMT

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.

Farmer's Insurance

This one caught our eye while we were not watching the Spurs run a layup line on the Clippers the other day. Honest, boss, we were working really really hard at something.

A man finds the remains of a car window where his car once was. He looks a bit disoriented. Then a rabbit hole opens up, complete with rabbit in tux. Then anvils start raining out of the sky. And then a whole bunch of fun, confusing visuals (including the aforementioned kitten).

The only thing missing is a Ron Paul-Dennis Kucinich ticket (which we might back if only because it would be the only thing that could ever make SNL funny again).

Then the tagline: “It’s a strange feeling when your car gets stolen.”

We wouldn’t, thankfully, know. But we have been in a wreck or two. The creators do a terrific job of mining humor from a subject that doesn’t lend itself to it -- and making an insurance company seem interesting.

You can watch the ad here.

'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.