Crazy

Watching baseball on Fox and a NCAA BCS title game ad came on, finishing with a shot of two players looking at the National Championship trophy. The two teams represented? USC and - Missouri.

Of course, that's not looking like a great choice this week (although I guess the Tigers could be right back in position if they somehow pull out a win this weekend) but as a Missouri alum, it's pretty odd to see anybody put the Tigers in line for a Championship.

cavemen

The Geico cavemen ads have clearly outlasted their humor usefulness, but that rarely stops advertising executives.

The new tennis ad simply baffles me, though. As you're sure to have seen unless you're one of those who manage to live without the pleasures of television, the caveman is playing a match against Billy Jean King. As he taunts her, she points out he's not winning and hasn't even gotten a serve in, to which he responds "you might want to look at the scoreboard." Both do, which shows that, in fact, he hasn't scored a point.

So here's my problem with all this - what's the point of the caveman appearing to not know the rules of the game? The whole premise of the Geico campaign is fact the tagline "so easy, even a caveman can do it" plays into a wrong-headed stereotype in this alternate world where cavemen simply happen to be a hirsute minority constantly struggling with the perception they have not evolved past the primitive pre-humans who lived in caves.

So either this ad is saying cavemen really are so stupid they don't know what's going on, in which case the point of the previous commercials sort of gets lost, or maybe they're indicating that the whole match is rigged, right down to the scoreboard operators, which doesn't seem very sporting, really.

kiwi humour

I thought I'd posted this a long time ago, but they came up in conversation recently and I realized they hadn't made it onto my corner of the internet:

One of our favorite aspects of New Zealand culture was the willingness to poke fun at themselves, and just about anything else. It even manifested itself in a government advertising campaign for home safety. The ACC - Accident Compensation Commission - pays for all medical bills resulting in any accidents, for anyone in New Zealand. (This takes the place of personal injury lawsuits, which are generally not allowed in the New Zealand court system). The ACC put out a series of TV ads to try to lower accident rates around the home, but the ads have a serious black humor to them.

For example, every time this ad came on TV, Kirsten started laughing uncontrollably:

More of the ads can be seen here. And here's one more that wasn't on-air while we were in NZ.

kiwi humour, part II

One more for you-

This is an official Australian tourism commercial that got a ton of play in NZ our last few months there. Apparently it created some controversy in the UK, since "bloody hell" was seen to be a bit dirty:

This is a NZ take on the ad, apparently put together by a consumer advocate program:

at least you could try

The new American Express commercial with Tina Fey bugs me. I think the commercial itself is pretty funny, at least the first few times ("No, the other kind of German Shepherds"). But the concept of the whole thing bugs me.

The ad is supposed to show how her American Express card is the only easy thing about Tina Fey's life. That's how they sell it. The problem I have with it is this: they're not showing Tina Fey's life. They're showing the life of Liz Lemon, her character on 30 Rock.

This probably shouldn't be a sticking point with me. It's not like I expect a commercial with Tina Fey to accurately portray her life. But this isn't even trying. And don't people have enough trouble sorting out the difference between celebrities and the characters they play?