I’ve talked a lot about commercials, and when you watch commercials for as long as I have you notice certain things. Some of just tricks that the advertisers use to make their product more appealing, and others are just plain gimmicks which have no place in reality but damn it looks so cool!
Here are five tricks advertisers use that I can’t help but chuckle at.
That works fast!!
I always roll my eyes at medicine commercials that show a person suffering from some malady. And then they get handed some medicine. The scene changes, and suddenly the person is saying they feel great. Um, am I really supposed to believe this ad? Obviously the actor just changed his tone and he was never sick.
I love this one, are we supposed to believe they really waited nine hours and had the lady come all the way back to film her feeling better? The nine hours later is about as reliable as a Frank Miller time stamp, I mean you can slap any time on there what difference does it make?
Glue in Cereal?
Ok this is more of a behind the scenes one, and for print ads more than TV, but it’s one I always loved. There are lots of way advertisers fool us in food ads. And it makes sense, since usually the food we see in ads always seem perfect. We never see McDonald’s hamburgers look quite a good as they do in those ads! And everything from mashed potatoes and melted marshmallow has stood in for ice cream. But my favorite trick has to be using glue in lieu of milk. It makes sense, milk is probably hard to photograph. Yes that’s actually glue you see on that box.
Where Are They Playing?
As I don’t watch kids commercials anymore I have no idea if they do this still, but in the 80’s it wasn’t enough to just show kids playing with the toys. Oh no, we needed the kids to be in some crazy setting with mood lighting! Didn’t you use dry ice when you played with your toys? As a kid I never gave it much thought but I guess it makes sense, jutst showing kids playing with figures isn’t very interesting what’s wrong with a little set decorating to spice up the action?
Adults are so lame!!
Yeah this one is just so transparent. How do you get your kid to get into a product? Well you make it so adults either hate it or are baffled by it! Yeah this was all over the place back in the 90’s when “Kids ruled” and adults were so “square”. Can’t say if it’s still around today but it probably is.
Movie Tie-In’s
Oh good lord the tie-in’s! It really does get crazy. We all know McDonald’s Happy Meal’s that tied into every pop culture event that’s ever happened.
But it doesn’t stop there. How about Batman for Diet Coke? Or Spider-Man for Cheez-Itz? What the hell does Casper have to do with Pepsi?? And I think people remember the Small Soldiers Burger King as better than the actual movie!
I could go on and on. I mean it doesn’t even make sense, why would I like a product more just because they slapped the name of a popular movie on it? But one of the most epic has to be what KFC/Pizza Hut/Taco Bell did when Phantom Menace came out. Just watch.
There are loads more, but that’s it for now.
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