Don’t let the fact that you’re disturbed on multiple levels dissuade you from buying some stuff
Published by Kyso Kisaen December 27th, 2006 in Entertainment, MediaMy boyfriend is bugging me about getting cable television and after three blissful TV-free years, I’ve been a little loathe to call Time Warner. But Slate.com has reminded me of what I’m missing, and that when I turned off the tube, I cut myself off from one of modern life’s greatest pleasures: bitching about woefully misguided commercials.
The ad that troubles me most at the moment: This spot for Alberto VO5, in which two young people—apparently subjects of a repressive government somewhere in Asia—use hair products as a tool of rebellion. This ad is actually sort of cute, with the couple bonding over their shared love of the wet look. But I’m a little iffy on using totalitarian regimes to sell styling gel. The ad suggests we should just airdrop VO5 over North Korea, and then sit back and watch the freedom (and fauxhawks) bloom. (Side question: What about Zimbabwe? Does Alberto make a product that both promotes liberty and works on afros?)
This is the ad in question, a UK VO5 ad of astonishing inappropriateness that must be viewed and goggled at by all who wish to feel smug about how they don’t use Alberto VO5’s shitty, shitty hair products. I should send this to my mom, maybe then she’d spring for some conditioner that doesn’t feel like you just coated your hair with liquid fabric softener.
And I don’t want to brag here, but our own punkass Marc called Fudgems from a mile away. The commercial slate links to on youtube suggests to me that Dominos saw the “that looks like shit” complaint in advance, and thought that maybe a clever ad could make people laugh their way past the discomfort inherient in paying for and serving a dessert that would look more appropriate in the catbox. They were partially successful in diffusing the Fudgems-feces connection.
Fudgems is not a popular guy with ARC readers. Or with my girlfriend: She literally changes the channel whenever he appears. Personally, I can’t understand this. It seems like a great idea to advertise a fudge brownie by first anthropomorphizing it, and then having it smear gucky brown goo over everyone who touches it. But I may be missing something:
I thought I had to be wrong. Domino’s can’t be offering a free block of hashish with every pizza, because even though it might make the pizza taste good for the first time, they’d go broke doing it. Also, it is illegal.
But the real theme for commercials in ought-six was apparently “Buy our product because you could die at any moment.” Volkswagon was the winner; following up a graphic commercial in which two couples survive horrendous accidents with an even more graphic commercial in which two women debating the merits of the first commercial get absolutely fucked.
This Passat ad is extremely postmodern, with its ouroboros, self-referential framework. I hate it for two reasons: 1) What happens to the passenger-side woman who says she didn’t like the previous set of crash ads? She gets an out-of-control SUV up her wazoo. Meanwhile, the driver, a defender of the older ads, gets off scot-free. This (plus the fact that this new ad is titled “Critique”) suggests that the ad agency holds a grudge against anyone who dared take issue with the first set of spots. Let it go, already.
Runner up for scaremongering: Traveler’s Insurance:
Have you seen the latest ad for Travelers Insurance? They show a guy in a steel cage, photographing sharks, when one of the sharks almost breaks through the bars. So, the diver fires off his spear gun, which chases them away. Unfortunately, the spear pierces his boat, which blows up and sinks. The last shot is of this diver, trapped in the steel cage, being dragged to a slow and agonizing death.
I fail to see how having adaquate insurance would help this man, who is as good as dead. But Seth Stevenson is willing to go the extra distance that those pussy ad men wouldn’t:
There should be a follow-up ad, with the guy still trapped in the cage, now sitting on the ocean floor. The sharks have almost battered a hole through the steel at this point, and their attacks are growing fiercer. He checks his regulator and finds he’s running out of air. He realizes, with a lancing pang, that he will never see his family again. The camera holds on his despairing eyes, seen through the thick Plexiglas of his dive mask. The soundtrack is silent, save for the escaping bubbles that represent his final few breaths. Fade to Travelers logo.
I’m calling Time Warner right now. If this is how low adverstisers are willing to sink, then 2007 will be a can’t miss year for couch media critics everywhere.
That is a detail, but the Alberto VO5 ad is not located “somewhere in Asia”, it is clearly set in “hardcore communist” (probably Northern) China: the note the boy passes to the girl says “let’s have fun together”, there is a map of China on the classroom wall and a slogan that says (in clumsily written Chinese) “no wind no wave” (a parody of a well-known buddhist expression probably referring here to the “effect” that the hair gel is supposed to create). The teacher’s shouting is partly unintelligible, but the last words are “Get out right away!” (kuai chuqu!) in Mandarin.
In that case, color me shocked. For a commercial I’d not expect that much attention to detail, considering the average Brit (and American, would it air here) would just come away from all that with “somewhere in Asia.”
I was surprised as well. After reading the Slate description, I expected something with fake “Asian-like” language and script, like we had (here in France) in an ad for artificial cheese “Babybel” set in an authoritarian country designed to “look like” Burma, China, Indonesia, altogether.
It would be interesting to know where the advertising agency is based (the “nostalgic” communist classroom setting is common in Chinese ads and music videos usually produced in Hong Kong; see the “Pepsi” ad where Wang Fei sings “Jingcai” in her old primary school).
For what it’s worth, this is the video I was referring to (taken from the karaoke VCD). Obviously, only a short part of it was in the commercial (you can see her holding a Pepsi can at the end). Wang Fei’s “English name” is Faye Wong (this is one of her worst songs, not representative at all).
Now, if I were an ad-man, my instinct would be to say “Isn’t it kind of squicky to use actual oppression to sell our haircare products? I mean, real people have really died fighting oppression in China; it seems a little callous to suggest they could’ve survived if only they’d had shinier hair.”
Am I wrong about this? I mean, it would’ve been just as easy to do some kind of Logan’s Run/THX-1138/1984 thing.
Unless the ad was actually filmed on location in China.
I liked the Home Depot commercial where Santa got pulled over by the police for speeding in his sleigh and the announcer said that Christmas was up to “you” this year. Actually, I kind of did like it…”What’s in the bag?”
But as a kid, I might be worried.
The vo5 commercial was located in argentina buenos aires