Chew on This

by Katrocket

It's not easy for an advertising agency to launch a new brand of chewing gum. The market is oversaturated with gimmicky, mouth-assaulting flavours and textures, and I suspect that the majority of people who enjoy chewing gum have already settled on a long term favourite from their youth, some of which may include very unfunny comics from the 1940s (I'm lookin' at YOU, Bazooka Joe).

Here's two new gum brands with two different approaches to advertising - physical comedy vs. special effects - with one clear winner.

I don't have any official marketing data on this, but I'm guessing the primary demographic for chewing gum is likely around ages 12-24, a powerful consumer group that demands high production values and edgy visuals, so it's not surprising that BBDO went apeshit with some crazy CG and elaborate sets for their "Stimulate Your Senses" campaign for Wrigley's "5" Gum:

Campaign: "Stimulate Your Senses" for Wrigley's 5 Gum
Fire That Agency!: Energy BBDO Chicago / AMV BBDO London

Spot 1: Flare (Cinnamon)


This could be my age talking, but when I chew gum, I'm not all that interested in having a Lara Croft experience. I just want some fresh breath, man - no need for extreme sports. I also like to know what flavour I'm about to chew, so please stop naming your product after drag queens.

Spot 2: Elixer (Mouthwatering Berry)


Another Tomb Raideresque adventure in gum chewing. This time, Lara's trapped in a bizarre purple Kool-Aid flood tube and apparently loving it. This ad always reminds me of that Simpson's episode where Rainer Wolfcastle is assaulted by a tidal wave of nuclear waste: "My eyes! The goggles do nothing!".

Spot 3: Lush (Crisp Tropical)


Can we all agree that getting bombed by sticky bits of citrus is not the most desirable or refreshing feeling ever? This commercial gives me the sudden urge to shower. I'd like to see the footage taken 2 minutes later when the giant bee swarm shows up for sloppy seconds.

Spot 4: Rain (Spearmint)


Okay, this is just plain ridiculous. If I wanted to lie down with metal balls and the world's biggest speakers, I'd be sleeping with Lemmy from Motorhead.

Spot 5: Cobalt (Peppermint)


I think someone at BBDO may have watched Running Man the night before this pitch. This ad might be slightly more enjoyable if the Hockey Death Squad was allowed to play along.

Campaign: "Spit It Out" for Cadbury Adams USA LLC's Stride Gum
Hire That Agency!: JWT New York



JWT takes the perceived weakness of the Stride brand (long-lasting flavour = reduced consumption of product) and literally knocks it on its ass with a stealth groin shot from an angry ram. It's unexpected, it's hilarious, it's a cheaper ad to produce, and it effectively communicates the brand's message without insulting our intelligence. Well played.

Oh, Yes, I Suppose There Were Some Commercials During The Super Bowl

by BeckEye from The Pop Eye

Wow! Did you guys catch those Super Bowl ads? Did they not make up some of the most exciting and historic moments in Super Bowl history?? Like when that Clydesdale intercepted Alec Baldwin's pass and returned it 100 yards for a TD to end the first quarter? Or when the E-Trade baby caught that bag of Doritos deep in the right corner of the end zone with only 35 seconds left in the game? Brilliance, people. Sheer brilliance.

Okay, so if you didn't already know, you might be getting the sense that the Super Bowl itself was much more important to me than the commercials. And, although it damn well was, I did manage to pick out several ads that I liked. This was especially quite a feat in the 4th Quarter, considering that my heart actually stopped a couple of times.

I realize that we tend to focus on ridiculing "badvertising" here at FTA, but I am in a damn good mood and will, therefore, give some love to the best of this year's Super Bowl commercials.

1st Quarter
Like its last play, the 1st quarter's last commercial was the best. Even though I hate Budweiser because it's kind of shitty and always gives me a throbbing headache, I adore any of their commercials with the Clydesdales and that beer-loving Dalmatian.

Budweiser "Fetch"


Honorable mention: Conan O'Brien's Bud Light spot was a vroom vroom party starter!

2nd Quarter
It's the triumphant return of the E-Trade baby! I realize that most of America is still split over the whole talking baby issue, and while I agree that such things are usually creepy, this particular baby never fails to crack me up. And baby's new friend spontaneously bursting into a Mr. Mister '80s classic nearly had me choking on my meatball sandwich. (See, Bruce? Not ALL of America was eating chicken fingers.)

E-Trade Babies, "Broken Wings"

Honorable mention: The ultimate point behind the Cars.com "David Abernathy" ad was weak, but everything up until the sell was pretty funny.

3rd Quarter
Commercials about job suckage are always good. And while this year's CareerBuilder spot wasn't as funny as their previous monkey campaign, how often do you get to see a bespectacled Koala get punched in the face?

CareerBuilder.com, "Hate Work"


Honorable mention: It wasn't funny, but I loved the Coca Cola "Picnic" commercial. The special effects were cool and the whole thing was just very cute and clever, especially the ending where the Coke was poured into the leaves.

4th Quarter
The last quarter had the highest percentage of good commercial spots, and they weren't the only "spots" I was seeing at that point.

Hulu, Alec Baldwin
Mmmmmmmmm...cerebral mush.


Cash 4 Gold, MC Hammer/Ed McMahon
My gold sledgehammer!


Honorable mention: Will Forte's foray into commercials with his SNL character MacGruber aka Pepsuber, also starring Kristin Wiig and Richard Dean "MacGyver" Anderson.

My favorite commercial of all also came in the last quarter, and it should shock no one that it was a Steelers-related ad. When the Troy Polamalu Coke Zero spot started, I was actually annoyed, thinking that they were going to do a frame-by-frame ripoff of the classic Mean Joe Green commercial. However, the ad poked fun at how lame that would really be and...well, it starred Troy Polamalu so it was AWESOME!!! And so was the game!!! STEELERS, BABY!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOO!!!!

Coke Zero, Troy Polamalu/Brand Managers

I'd also like to share my favorite Super Bowl-related print ad, which I saw in Monday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. I couldn't fit the whole page in, so just make a note that this ad is brought to us by the good folks at Highmark.



Whoever Highmark's ad agency is really knows us Southwestern Pennsylvanians. Just combine two of our favorite things - fuzzy rodents and football - and we're happy. There's only one way that ad could be better, and that would be if Punxsy Phil were eating a Smiley cookie.

2009 Superbowl Ads: Hyundai's World Domination

From the Imaginary Reviewer at the Imaginary Review


Football, like many team sports, can be seen as a metaphor for war. There's the need to gain territory, offensive and defensive strategies, the crushing desire for victory and, of course, the metal hats that keep your head from getting hurt.

So maybe it was just because it was shown within the context of the Superbowl that this ad brought to mind a certain - how can I put this? - international conflict.



Is it just me? Am I the only one here who sees businessmen from a Japanese company and a German company getting all upset about Hyundai's success, and thinks, "Heh, in your face AGAIN, Axis Powers!"? There's points in this ad when I feel like I'm watching that scene from the film Downfall when Adolf is going mental in the bunker, only instead of realising he's lost the war, he's realising that his company's dominance in the North American luxury vehicle market is being eroded by an up-and-coming Korean car manufacturer.

It's like the ad is suggesting that in some way, Hyundai is somehow preventing a potential rise in global facism by keeping BMW and Lexus in check. I'm not crazy, am I? Isn't that the beginning of the theme music to The Dambusters playing in the background?

Pause the ad at 29 seconds: doesn't the big screen show a split second from the end of The Great Escape, with Steve McQueen jumping over the fence on a motorcycle? A Hyundai motorcycle? No, wait, maybe I am going crazy. I should probably close my eyes and count to ten.

Christ, this ad makes me want to buy a Hyundai, and not because I like the cars, not because I need one, but because I feel like I'd be helping out with the war effort! Never mind that the war ended more than sixty years ago, you can't be too careful when the freedom of the world is at stake! Sign me up for two, and I'll take some war bonds while you're at it!

I tell you what, though: Ferrari must be pissed that they didn't make it into this ad. Just saying.

2009 Superbowl Ads: Doritos 2

by pistols at dawn of save your generation

In this second Doritos ad apparently airing this evening, we learn a lesson thanks to familiar character in the Commedia dell'arte of advertising stereotypes - the 20something Slacker Dude.



As the ad opens, Dude is taunting his roommate's cat with a laser pointer, a poignant metaphor for the endless, Sisyphean tasks that comprise all our lives, hours spent grasping at straws that turn out never to have been there at all, leaving us empty vessels which only process pain into slightly more tolerable pain via a soul-deadening process of hard liquor, drugs, passionless coupling, and snack chips.

Knowing this, and egged on by his angry girlfriend, Dude's roommate taunts Dude similarly - with moving Doritos. Dude then proceeds to chase said Doritos, and numerous pratfalls - allegedly comic ones - ensue.

There is but one problem with this: as a huge fan of Doritos, I can tell you that no huge fan of Doritos can get up off the couch, much less chase a moving bag of Doritos around a room. One of the main reasons fat guys love Doritos is because, unlike women who want "dinner" and "you not to stare at their boobs" and "you to get their consent before filming them doing it with you," Doritos never play hard to get.

Also, taunting a cat is still okay, because cats are dumb, as they lack the single most important aspect of intelligent life: the ability to establish mercantile systems with the end result of enabling its participants to purchase Doritos.

Pistols and a 2009 Superbowl Doritos Ad: The Perfect Storm

If there's one thing people value in both jokes and ads, it's originality. So today, when you're watching what advertisers call "The Big Game," because the term "The Super Bowl" is trademarked or copyrighted or whatever and can only be used with hefty licensing fees, make sure to say, "Sometimes, the commercials are better than the game!" because no one in the history of time has ever said that before, you effing Oscar Wilde.

Your witty repartee thus established for the evening, let's turn to an ad for All That Is Good And True In This World: Doritos.



This ad, which I suppose we should call "The Power of Crunch," since "Backdoor Vixens #8" is already taken by a very popular (with me) DVD series - starts off with a fairly plausible thesis: that Doritos are crunchy enough to have magical/sonic force level powers.

Naturally, our male protagonist's first use of this power (as it inevitably was in every single movie in the 1980s where a male gained magical powers, be it Zapped!, Zapped Again, or School Spirit) is to rip the clothes off of an attractive woman, leaving her in her incredibly ornate underthings.

(Note: if these movies and fantasy scenes are to be believed, women always wear a matching set of sexy-yet-not-actually-that-revealing bra and panties, as well as stockings and a garter belt. Having lived with women upon whom I used my magical powers (read: roofies) to undress them regularly, I can say that this is, unfortunately, not always the case.)

Somehow, our hero decides to not just use this version of the power and disrobe every semi-attractive woman around (showing the director's disdain for realism), and instead aims the crunch power of Doritos at an ATM. While this is an apparently easy way to earn extra money to buy more Doritos, it does raise the important question: how do we ensure that terrorists never learn of the explosive crunch power of Doritos? Sure, I do my part by eating four bags a week, but I'm only one man (unless you weigh me, in which case, I'm technically two).

As money pours out of the ATM, a man who appears to be a stripper dressed as a police officer gets out of his cop car to restore order. "Not so fast," our anarchic, devil-may-care protagonist says (via his actions, the way a real man "speaks"), biting a chip in Johnny Law's direction.

Naturally, instead of knocking his clothes off, as it did to the attractive woman just eight seconds ago, it turns the cop into a capuchin monkey (easily one of the four funniest monkeys one can be turned into), because Doritos inherently know that the male body is hideous and should never be seen unclothed, and adjust their crunch power accordingly from "extremely localized gale-force winds" to "transmogrification."

Then, as if all this weren't enough, the protagonist gets hit by a bus.

So, in short, if you buy Doritos, you will gain magical powers that will enable you to kind of see parts of the breasts of attractive women, destroy our financial systems via attacks on innocent ATMs, and mock the efforts of law enforcement to reign in your crunch-based Reign of Terror. And yet still, you will be brought low by the oldest trick in the "we need an allegedly funny end to our ad, and we've got 1.7 seconds to do it in" book: cheap physical humor.

It's really a metaphor for life.

2009 Superbowl Commercials - PEDIGREE

By Skylers Dad from Some days it's not worth chewing through the leather straps.

Ahh yes, the Superbowl. Whether or not you like football doesn't mean diddly squat because it is also big dollar commercial time, and advertisers trot out their best to premier to the largest TV viewing audience in the US.

PEDIGREE is running an ad about alternative pets that some people have decided to get, and the point at the end is that perhaps they should have thought about a dog. It's pretty funny, which always works in my book.

But the best part about the commercial is that they have also produced 4 "Behind the scenes" commercials which I think are even better!

Here is the main spot:


Behind the scene video #1:


"His droppings are like golden eggs of money" - The best is the roommate though...

Behind the scene video #2:


"I've leaned to stay away during mating season"... Classic!

Behind the scene video #3:


"You know that swine ain't my kind"... Love it!

And the final behind the scene video #4:


I started knitting little horn holders... Even better with the horrible singing and guitar playing!