Category: Advertising

Here's another post I had saved in my Blackberry.  You thought I was kidding about all of these!

So, the New York Department of Public Health is at it again, this time with an ad that's supposed to remind us that when we're counting calories, we should also include things like soda.  It's a fair enough concept and obviously one that needs to be driven home considering the obesity epidemic in our country, but I'm just on the fence as to whether ads like this really work, or if they send the viewer into a spiral of "oh my God, that's so gross, I have to get away and put that out of my mind….that reminds me, I'm thirsty, where can I get an icy-cold Coke?"  The NYC public health department is actually famous for these ads (amputees and people with no larynx, anyone?), and you can go right over to Gothamist if you want to see some more.  

Maybe it's just because I value cleverness more than shock value in advertising, and so the whole "gross out" factor is not that impressive to me.  Often when I see an ad like this, I kind of just fixate
on the thing they DON'T want me to have, because it's weird or intriguing in
some way, and then I forget about the product or underlying message in favor of the disgusting image.  I think this means the ad itself is "sticky," but that the overall message isn't converting, which is problematic.  Then again, I am not the target audience for this ad, so maybe it's wrong for me to even weigh in.

Here's another example:  this weird commercial here in Los Angeles for a local mattress
store, where this guy is talking about how your mattress DOUBLES in weight every
eight years or something like that, because of skin and dust and dust mites, and
whatever, and by the end of the commercial I'm like DAMN, THAT'S ALOT OF SKIN,
and I can't even remember the name of the guy who told me this weird fact or
what his company's name is for when I actually need a new mattress (which I
currently do not, as it is only two years old and only 13% heavier than it was
at origination. )

I took this photo over the weekend, and because you know that sometimes I like to deconstruct advertising right here on Funny Strange, I am just going to open by saying— WHOA, SUBWAY.  TOO MUCH GOING ON!

First of all "Dinner Two Night" sounds like it should make sense, but it kind of doesn't.  I think the point is that you can get two full sandwich dinners at Subway for $8.99, which I guess is a good deal, except who PLANS to eat Subway for dinner?  Dinner at Subway is something you do if you're going somewhere else, or you're out and it's 7:00 and you're totally hungry.  It's not something you'd really go the extra mile to get two of, then take them home and put them on the table on your fine china. 

Also, the sentence "All Day Sunday Two" makes me die inside a little.  The "Two Night" pun at the top obviously wasn't enough, now they have to really hammer it home with ANOTHER play on words, the "two" instead of "too," which I'm sure isn't going to confuse people at all who are already staring, eyes aglaze, at this poster that has so much going on. 

I'm just saying, that sounds like a pretty good deal on sandwiches and I'm sure the purpose of it is to try to get people (in my neighborhood, at least) to start thinking about Subway sandwiches for dinner, but this poster is too much information at once, and someone needs to tell someone at an ad agency that two puns in one poster– just, oh my God. 

                                
I found this during Operation Stink and thought it was so funny, I couldn't resist taking a photo.   You can barely see the word "small" on here, so it just looks like "All Mighty" on the bottle.  God Soap!  Who knew?  I don't think this is just a test-market product, as I saw it in several stores.  This leads me to my common-sense question I always ask– did no one, from the design/ concept phase all the way through to production and packaging, ever look at it and think "All Mighty"– that's what some people call God, and maybe it would be confusing to put that name on a bottle of detergent.  Nope.  Apparently not.

Really, though, "All small and mighty" is a hilarious name for a product as well.  "Don't get all small and mighty with me, detergent!  Who do you think you are??"